Update: More than 2,000 National Guard troops have been assigned to the nation’s capital as part of President Trump’s “crime emergency” announced in an executive order nine days ago. But the troops aren’t in high-crime regions; rather, they’re sticking to tourist areas such as the National Mall and Union Station, the New York Times reported Tuesday. 

Rewind: Trump says crime is “out of control” in Washington despite Justice Department data showing violent crime in DC is at a 30-year low.

Being seen: “The National Guard presence, with desert sand-colored vehicles parked near the capital’s most visited tourist spots, is now showing up regularly on social media feeds in posts by visitors to Washington,” the Times reports. 

A U.S. military Humvee crashed into a car in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington early Wednesday, according to a video posted to Reddit. “Luckily [the] driver appeared conscious but firefighters brought out jaws of life to open [the car] door,” the Reddit poster said. 

Notable: “The National Guard has also started sending military lawyers to work on incoming misdemeanor cases stemming from the deployment of forces, to help relieve the burden on the often understaffed U.S. attorney’s office in Washington,” Helene Cooper of the Times writes. 

Expert reax: “This military occupation of the district is unprecedented and unjustified. If it’s allowed to stand, this country will be well on its way to becoming a police state,” said former Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Goitein, now with the Brennan Center for Justice. “There is a centuries-old principle against using the military for domestic law enforcement,” she added, referencing the Posse Comitatus Act. “The reason is obvious: if the president can turn the military against the people, he can suppress dissent, quash individual liberties, and undermine democracy.”

“To be clear, no court has endorsed this legal fiction, nor has Congress weighed in on the matter,” Goitein explained in a social media thread Monday. She goes on to unpack three legal loopholes in the Posse Comitatus Act that Trump is exploiting with the Guard assignment in Washington. 

“Through his manufactured emergency, President Trump is engaging in dangerous political theater to expand his power and sow fear in our communities,” said Hina Shamsi, director of ACLU’s National Security Project. 

“No matter what uniform they wear, federal agents and military troops are bound by the Constitution, including our rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech, due process, and safeguards against unlawful searches and seizures,” Shamsi said in a statement. 

How long can Trump’s DC occupation continue? “It’s not clear what could bring this to an end, other than intervention by the courts, by Congress or overwhelming public disapproval,” Goitein told NPR. “This administration is not immune to public pressure,” she noted in the social media thread. 

Coverage continues below…

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Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1998, the U.S. used cruise missiles to attack alleged al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in Sudan as a response to U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania two weeks prior. 

Developing: The U.S. Navy sent three warships close to Venezuela ostensibly to fight drug trafficking, Reuters reported Monday, noting the ships were expected to arrive on either Tuesday or Wednesday.

Involved: Three U.S. Aegis guided-missile destroyers—USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham and the USS Sampson. Around 4,000 troops as well as “several P-8 spy planes, and at least one attack submarine” have also been tasked to assist. 

Background: The White House has labeled eight drug cartels “foreign terrorist organizations,” and has reportedly ordered the U.S. military to attack the cartels, according to New York Times reporting on August 8. Two of those cartels are allegedly based in Venezeula—and the White House says one is under the command of the country’s leader Nicholas Maduro. (We discussed these developments in a recent podcast you can find, here.)

Expert reax: “It’s not legal to sink a boat in [international] waters, killing those aboard, on suspicion that it is carrying drugs for an organized crime group declared ‘terrorist.’ Congress has approved no Authorization for Use of Military Force for that,” said Adam Isaacson from the Washington Office on Latin America. 

Caracas reax: “In response to the increased U.S. military presence in the Caribbean, President Maduro announced a plan to mobilise 4.5 million militia members across the country,” according to LatinAmerica Reports, writing Tuesday. “No empire will come to touch the sacred soil of Venezuela, nor should it touch the sacred soil of South America, no empire in the world,” Maduro said in public remarks Monday evening. More, here. 

Additional reading: 

• “After chase, US Navy, Coast Guard intercept 1,296 pounds of cocaine” in the eastern Pacific, Military Times reported Tuesday; find the Navy release on this development, here; 
• “Fire breaks out on US Navy amphib New Orleans, operating near Japan,” Breaking Defense reported Wednesday; 
• “Marines investigating social media post that appears to mock potential recruit,” Task & Purpose reported Monday; 
• And “Trump ally Erik Prince plans to keep personnel in Haiti for 10 years to fight gangs and collect taxes,” Reuters reported Thursday. 

The Army has been tasked with protecting the ex-wives of Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth as part of a “sprawling, multimillion-dollar initiative” that spans family residences in Minnesota, Tennessee and D.C., the Washington Post reported Wednesday. However, the “unusually large personal security requirements are straining the Army agency,” which is the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or CID. 

“I’ve never seen this many security teams for one guy,” one official told the Post, adding, “Nobody has.” According to precedent, “Historically about 150 of the agency’s approximately 1,500 agents serve on VIP security details.” But one person said the current estimate is about “400 and going up,” while another put it somewhere “over 500.”

Reminder: A man dressed as a police officer and assassinated a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota in mid-June. The White House did not allege “out of control” crime or send any Guard troops or additional federal agents to the lawmakers’ family homes in Minneapolis in response. But Army agents are now working long-term assignments protecting Hegseth’s second wife in Minnesota where they “sit on luggage” or “sit in the cars on the driveway,” officials told the Post.

Also worth noting: Trump removed the security detail assigned to former Joint Chiefs Chairman Army Gen. Mark Milley upon taking office in January. “Administration officials said at the time that Milley’s security was taken away as a means to hold him accountable for perceived disloyalty,” the Post recalls. Read the rest, here. 

See also: “How Pete Hegseth’s zeal to bring religiosity to the Pentagon is dividing the military,” via Ben Makuch of the Guardian, writing last week. 

Ukraine

A U.S. firm is offering a Shahed-like drone. On Monday, Alabama-based drone manufacturer Griffon Aerospace unveiled the MQM-172 Arrowhead, which looks a lot like the Iranian-designed Shahed-136 that Russia is raining down on Ukraine by the thousands. The company’s website provides no range data, but the Arrowhead can apparently match the Shahed’s 100-pound payload. (Via Interesting Engineering.)

And ICYMI: “Late last week, Ukraine unveiled a ‘Flamingo’ cruise missile, with a claimed 3,000 km range and a warhead over 1,000 kg. The warhead is 2x that of the U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile,” analyst Byron Callan noted in his post-Anchorage assessment (PDF) this week. 

A new poll shows a “dramatic rise” in Republicans’ support for Ukraine, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs announced Friday. 

What’s new: A 21-point swing brought the share of Republicans who support sending military and economic aid to 51 percent.

Other takeaways:

• Among all Americans surveyed, six in 10 said the United States should keep sending arms and military supplies to Kyiv (62%, up from 52% in March) and providing economic assistance to Ukraine (61%, up from 55% in March)
• Six in 10 (60%) expressed a favorable view of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy; just 10 percent viewed Putin favorably.

Trump 2.0

DNI Tulsi Gabbard has revoked the security clearance of the NSA’s chief data scientist. The New York Times reports that Gabbard rebuffed a request by the acting NSA director, Lt. Gen. William J. Hartman, to show evidence that Vinh Nguyen should lose his clearance. “Ms. Gabbard, on orders from President Trump, fired the scientist, who was a leading government expert on artificial intelligence, cryptology and advanced mathematics.”

NYT: “Friends and former colleagues of Mr. Nguyen said he had been in charge of developing artificial intelligence systems to improve the gathering of foreign communications. He has also been involved in the intelligence community’s work on quantum computing, which has the potential to break current encryption systems and revolutionize espionage.” Read on, here.

Gabbard also revoked security clearances for about three dozen other people on Tuesday, including former White House officials. Announcing the move on social media, Gabbard said the people had “abused the public trust.” 

She “did not offer evidence to back up the accusations,” the Associated Press reports. 

Former CIA director: Gabbard’s actions are part of a campaign of retribution. “It is about breaking people and breaking institutions by sowing fear and mistrust throughout our government,” William Burns, the former diplomat and spymaster, wrote Wednesday in The Atlantic. “It is about paralyzing public servants — making them apprehensive about what they say, how it might be interpreted, and who might report on them. It is about deterring anyone from daring to speak truth to power.” Read on, here.

FBI Director Kash Patel is diverting agents from their specialties— combatting terrorism, hackers, public corruption, child sex crimes, white-collar crime and civil rights—to focus on violent crime, Ken Dilanian of MSNBC reported Tuesday. “If more agents are working on violent crime cases as their total number is being reduced, these officials say, there won’t be the manpower left to devote the same level of resources to national security and other threats. Multiple current and former FBI officials say they have already seen that happening over the past several months, as agents have been diverted to immigration enforcement and veterans with years of experience have left the bureau.” Read on, here.

Additional reading: “‘Profound harm’: Veterans blast Trump threat to mail-in ballots that could disenfranchise thousands of troops,” the UK’s Independent reported Tuesday. 

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