Maine neighbors calling for evil ICE Gestapo to be abolished

Dear Maine Neighbor:  

Letter from Representative Raphael Macias of Topsham, Maine.


On Monday morning, our state witnessed a devastating and unacceptable tragedy. Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old husband and father, was shot and killed during an ICE operation in broad daylight on the streets of Biddeford. My heart is with Johan’s family and with everyone in the community grieving this profound loss.

Reports indicate that Johan was not the target of the enforcement action and that he had work authorization in the United States. If accurate, this was not merely a mistake. It was a catastrophic failure of federal law enforcement that demands full transparency, independent investigation, and real accountability. No agency should have the power to take an innocent life. Without the most rigorous public scrutiny, they will be emboldened to do it again.

Constitutional protections do not disappear at the curbside, at a traffic stop, or when federal agents put on masks. This tragedy raises urgent questions that cannot be brushed aside. Who authorized this operation

❓ Why was lethal force used❓ Who will be held responsible❓ And what concrete changes will be made to ensure this never happens again❓ The people of Maine deserve clear answers, not silence, deflection, or empty promises. This has shaken public trust in the federal government’s willingness and ability to enforce the law while protecting innocent people and upholding due process.

Let’s be clear, if armed, masked federal agents from outside our communities can enter Maine and kill someone ❗ 💢😡😠during an operation that appears to have targeted someone else, then every person in our state has reason to be alarmed. 

Tourists, visa workers, asylum seekers, non-English speakers, immigrant families, and citizens alike must be able to trust that government agents will respect constitutional rights and human life. Without that trust, Maine’s safety, economy, and basic sense of community are all harmed.

As a member of the Maine Legislature, I call for the abolishment of ICE and will continue to sponsor legislation that defends our state from this rogue agency. But meaningful reform and oversight of federal agencies rests with Congress. I urge you to contact Maine’s congressional delegation and demand a full, independent investigation, public transparency, and enforceable reforms.

This is about the limits of government power. It’s about due process. It’s about whether people can live without fear of preventable harm at the hands of their own government. A government worthy of public trust must welcome accountability, not resist it.

Please continue supporting Johan’s young family, our immigrant neighbors, and everyone affected by this horrific tragedy. Take care of yourselves and of each other.

Rafael Macias Serving House District 51 in Topsham, Maine

Contact Our Maine Congressional Delegation
Senator Susan Collins       (202) 224-2523
Senator Angus King          (202) 224-5344
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree  (202) 225-6116

Donald Trump incarcerating innocent migrants in filthy detention camps. In my opinion, call them concentration camps.

"The New Ellis Island" is a July 2026, review essay by journalist Julia Preston for The New York Review of Books. It examines the book El Paso: Five Families and One Hundred Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory by Jazmine Ulloa, using the history of El Paso, Texas, to explore national immigration policies. 

Preston uses Ulloa’s book to explain how El Paso, Texas, has become a modern-day equivalent to historic Ellis Island. 

Historically, Ellis Island in New York Harbor processed over 12 million European immigrants who sought a new start in America. Today, El Paso serves as a major gateway and "bellwether" for US immigration policy, where the country's complicated history of welcoming and rejecting migrants is embroiled in American history.

In this blogspot, I want to highlight the final page of Preston's essay in her book review, because she describes the here and now of this ongoing challenging story.

Preston describes Ulloa’s determination to elevate El Paso was spurred by a horrific event. As a reporter for The Boston Globe, she returned to El Paso to cover the aftermath of a mass shooting by Patrick Crusius, a young white supremacist armed with an AK-47-style rifle and one thousand rounds of ammunition, at a local Walmart on August 3, 2019. He killed twenty-three people, among them both the mother and the father of an infant. Minutes before the attack, Crusius had posted a manifesto online in which he decried “the Hispanic invasion of Texas” and said, “I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement.” 

At the time, Donald Trump was routinely vilifying Mexicans as criminal predators stampeding over the border. Crusius amplified to an extreme the fear of Mexicans that had long permeated the Southwest and was spreading, fanned by Trump’s rhetoric, across the country.

El Paso closes with the advent of Trump 2.0, as the he revives the specter of an alien invasion to justify an evilmass deportation blitz. Yet the outcomes for Ulloa’s families are mostly positive, proving her point about borderland social mobility. Raúl Reyes, the grandson of Miguel Martinez, is a historian in El Paso dedicated to recovering the past of his and many other Texas families. The judge who arraigned the Walmart shooter in an El Paso courtroom was a descendant of the Chews. Blanca and Susan Rubio, the daughters of Sabino, were elected to seats in the California state legislature.

“We are those bad Mexicans that he talks about,” Blanca Rubio said, referring to Trump, in a newspaper interview not long after Susan was sworn in. “We were undocumented, and then we fought hard, we got an education, and now we’re sitting here.”

In his State of the Union address this February, President Trump revived the tropes of Manifest Destiny to express his view of the nation’s origins. Americans, he said, had “carved pass through an unforgiving wilderness, settled a boundless frontier, and tamed the beautiful but very, very dangerous wild west. From empty marshes and wide-open plains, we raised up the world’s greatest cities.” Ulloa comprehensively refutes this version of events. In the Texas borderlands, the marshes were never empty nor were the plains wide open. The story Ulloa tells also makes clear that the unfettered nativism of Trump’s second term is not new in American history—not the poisonous invective depicting Venezuelans and other immigrants as gangsters and thieves, not the cruel removals of people who provide essential labor in American workplaces, not the roundups that ensnare noncitizens and citizens alike.

The border at El Paso is quieter now than it has been in decades, as Trump has made good on at least one of his campaign promises, to impose control by blocking illegal crossings and eliminating access to asylum along the boundary line. By the end of Trump’s first year back in the White House, Border Patrol encounters with migrants at the Mexican border had plummeted to the lowest numbers since 1970, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.

Yet, consistent with Ulloa’s argument, El Paso is still an epicenter of the United States’ system of social engineering through immigration. Despite the calm at the border, the city has not been spared Trump’s deportation campaign. The Catholic ✝️bishop of El Paso, Mark J. Seitz, in a pastoral message shared in parishes throughout the diocese on March 15, described its impacts. “Neighbors are being snatched as they walk out of immigration court proceedings downtown,” the bishop reported.

Workers are being taken from construction sites across the city…. Young women are languishing in mental torture for months in private detention centers, even when, coerced by the conditions of their imprisonment, they beg to be deported…. So many people are once again being made to feel like they are less than American.

In the first half of 2025, El Paso was second in the country in the number of deportation arrests of immigrants after hearings at the city’s immigration courts, surpassed only by arrests at the courts in New York City, according to a study by the mathematician Joseph Gunther.

El Paso is also a major juncture in the United States’ punitive immigration infrastructure. Not far from downtown sits Camp East Montana, an enormous tent city constructed in 2025 in a bleak patch on the grounds of Fort Bliss, a US Army base that makes recurring appearances in Ulloa’s account. The camp is the country’s largest immigration detention center, part of an archipelago that the Department of Homeland Security is assembling nationwide to hold as many as 100,000 immigrants. People who were arrested as far away as Chicago and Minneapolis have been sent to Camp East Montana. Under Trump’s rules, immigrants have been denied bond and forced to wait out slow-moving immigration court proceedings in detention, with the evident intent of causing them to despair and leave the United States on their own. To date more than four hundred federal judges and three appeals courts have ruled this policy unlawful and ordered immigrants released; two appeals courts have backed the policy, allowing DHS to continue.

Despite receiving $45 billion for detention in Trump’s big 2025 tax and spending bill, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has demonstrated that it is overwhelmed by the demands of jailing so many people. Almost as soon as it opened, Camp East Montana devolved into a hellhole with inedible food, eating areas flooded with sewage, a lack of basic hygiene, and dangerously inadequate medical care that led to outbreaks of measles and tuberculosis, according to a report in December by the American Civil Liberties Union that was based on interviews with forty-five detainees. The death on January 3 of a Cuban detainee, Geraldo Lunas Campos, was ruled a homicide by the El Paso County medical examiner. It was the result of a “spontaneous use of force” by guards, ICE admitted in an official incident report. The report states that the guards were trying to prevent Lunas Campos “from harming himself.” But a witness interviewed by the El Paso Times said he heard the man pleading for asthma medication. Lunas Campos is one of three detainees who have died in the camp since December. According to a report published on June 9 by the US Government Accountability Office, another detainee died in January by suicide after being left alone and unattended in a windowless holding room. The GAO report found that some of the teeming dormitories at the camp were cleaned only once a week. No treatment plans were in place for detainees with HIV or diabetes. The conditions posed “serious risks to the safety and security” of detained people and staff, the report found. In March ICE fired the contractor running the facility, but then hired another one instead of closing the camp down.

What is new in Trump’s second term is the scale of the deportation blitz. The whole country is becoming a borderland, as DHS tries to achieve Trump’s goal of deporting one million people this fiscal year. Acting largely on his executive edicts, agents have extended into the country’s interior the race-based stops, strong-arm arrests, disregard for due process, and fast-track removals that have long been the regular practice of the Border Patrol in remote reaches along the line. A Border Patrol chief from California, Gregory Bovino, led Operation Metro Surge, the occupation by more than three thousand agents of Minneapolis and surrounding areas, applying what he called, in an interview with The New York Times, his strategy of “total immigration domination.” After the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, protesters who were US citizens, Trump sensed that the show of force had gone too far. 

Trump replaced Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem with Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator who is equally hard-line but said in his confirmation hearing that DHS would be less conspicuous: “My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day.” Bovino retired. But under the command of the “border czar,” Tom Homan, agents are still hunting down immigrants, regardless of whether they have criminal records, in homes, schools, grocery store parking lots, and workplaces, if less noisily. On June 5 the Republican-led Congress voted to provide another 💲70 billion to ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and other DHS offices for enforcement, detention, and deportation. (Maine Writer, this appropriation was approved by Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins in exchange for passing more tax cuts for the rich and multimillionaires like herself.)

Also new is the widespread resistance to Trump’s crackdown. In Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Charlotte, and many other places where ICE arrived—including El Paso—citizens have rallied with whistles and horns to alert immigrants of danger, tracked agents’ movements with phone cameras in hand, provided food for families too scared to leave their homes, and even offered places for them to hide. When ICE has tried to open new detention centers, towns have been fighting back with lawsuits, city council resolutions, environmental restrictions, petition drives, and street protests. Places as distant as Chester, New York, and Oklahoma City have succeeded in stopping ICE’s projects. As with the social blend of El Paso, many immigrant families now include a mix of legal status, with undocumented parents, US-born children (who are by definition citizens), and relatives with other forms of status. Neighbors can see that the kids attend local schools and the parents work in the community. More Americans have become witnesses to the damage left behind when parents are separated from their children, including many who are US citizens, and deported. 

Polls re[prt how Trump’s assault is losing public support. In a survey in March by the Public Religion Research Institute only 35 percent of Americans rated Trump’s handling of immigration favorably, down from 48 percent in March 2025; 48 percent held very unfavorable views. If Ulloa’s history is any guide, it may be that the country is reaching the nadir (aka, "lowest point") of one of its perennial immigration cycles.

Donald Trump"s incoherent speech to the nation on July 16 gave no evidence to support his dangerous false claims about the six year old 2020 election!

Trump’s Election Denial Has Never Been More Dangerous

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Jim Hines the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Donald Trump gave a rare (buy typically incoherent) prime-time address to the nation- but two TV stations refused to carry it and the third cut him off and returned to the regular programming. 

Is Republican Susan Collins of Maine listening❓ 

So, for those who managed to endure listening, Trump revived the debunked claim that he, not Joe Biden, won the presidential election of 2020, the same claim that led to the lethal but unsuccessful attack on my workplace, the U.S. Capitol, on January 6, 2021. But this time there will be a difference.

Trump now has at his disposal the full backing of his incompetent cabinet and much of the Republican Party, including key leaders of the American intelligence community. And, he reportedly intends to use newly declassified American intelligence in an attempt to lend credence to these lies.

It is critical that the American people understand what foreign intelligence tells us about the security of our elections, past and future.

After Russia interfered in the 2016, election, our intelligence agencies made detecting foreign interference in our democratic process a priority. In past elections, members of Congress have regularly received briefings on how nations such as Russia and China monitor our elections, and what, if anything, they’re doing to interfere in or influence them.

Those updates are generally classified, but after elections, a declassified summary is typically released to the public.

In fact, you can read these assessments yourself, and you will find them broadly reassuring. They show that foreign nations do indeed attempt to influence our elections and democratic processes, but we have no credible evidence that they attempt to change the actual vote count or disrupt the casting of ballots, let alone that they have succeeded. We have been and remain very good at spotting and countering their activities.

After the 2020, election, our intelligence community found “no indications that any foreign actor attempted to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections by altering any technical aspect of the voting process.” That assessment reflected a rigorous look at all available information and expert judgments by nonpartisan professionals. In fact, there’s been no evidence of successful interference in the tabulation of votes in any federal election since I have been on the intelligence committee, and I have seen no credible intelligence that the upcoming midterms will be different.

First, he misrepresented what classified intelligence actually says. Last year, his administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act to defend deporting undocumented Venezuelan immigrants without due process. To justify the use of this centuries-old authority, Trump claimed that classified intelligence showed that the Venezuelan government was directing the actions of the Tren de Aragua gang. A now declassified assessment has revealed that most of America’s intelligence agencies believed such classified intelligence was “not credible.”

Another tactic Trump was to present a scrap of raw, unverified reporting as if it were proven truth. He or his acting director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, could, say, declassify an unsubstantiated report that includes an explosive allegation from a human source about rigged elections. The reality is that raw intelligence collection is full of things that aren’t true. Sources are sometimes unreliable — we learned that in spades after the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003. Reliable intelligence analysis fuses hundreds of different sources of information with expertise to produce something we can validate and trust.

Finally, if Trump declassifies intelligence about the 2020, election, it is nearly certain he will be cherry-picking bits and pieces that make his falsehoods look true. The findings of the 2020, assessment by the U.S. intelligence community have been declassified, but the basis for its findings has not.

I have read the most detailed version of that assessment, and the declassified findings are fully consistent with the classified material, which was based on exceptionally sensitive, high-value, high-confidence intelligence. The government has a legal obligation to share critical information with the House intelligence committee, and in nearly six years it has provided nothing that would call these findings into question.

Trump attempted other tricks to mislead the public about their democracy on Thursday. The American people should know that our elections are strong and secure because of the quiet and dignified work of thousands of patriotic Americans in the intelligence community, in state and local election offices and in polling places themselves. We all can be confident that they will continue to speak truth to power and perform their duties without fear or favor.

Those are the facts.

But ahead of this year’s midterms, Trump is setting the stage to undermine the confidence of the American people in our elections. He has packed his administration with election deniers and hired an acting director of national intelligence with zero national security experience and a history of abusing his position to target political opponents. The F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, has made his career chasing the president’s conspiracy theories, most recently with the devotion of massive resources to a sham investigation in Georgia.

Under this corrupt Trump administration, their agencies have gutted elements intended to identify, assess and counter foreign threats to U.S. elections, including the Foreign Malign Influence Center at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Foreign Influence Task Force at the F.B.I. Last week, Trump fired the remaining members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, which was created to help states fairly administer elections. Without these institutions, and without principled leadership to fight for the integrity of their agencies and for the truth, our intelligence community stands precariously exposed to the president’s whims.

As a result, there are a number of ways he can muddy the waters by abusing the powers of the presidency. He’s done it before.

And from the many comments on this opinion: Many towns and cities could use election workers. I've been doing it for years. I think when people actually work an election they'll find that whatever they hear from this administration or conservative media is quite different from the reality. 

I've also come away with a sincere respect for our democratic system of choosing our leaders and deciding issues. Sure, I may not like the outcome, but the process itself is better than other places where things are decided by the gun or it's preordained by the government. Don't fall for the lies. Democracy needs informed citizens.

(Maine Writer P.S.......I hope the optimism can overcome Donald Trump's ruthless corruption.)

Another wrong Supreme Court decision to harm immigrants who have Temporary Protected Status

The cruel reality of our American immigration system. In other words, immigrants who are contibuting to American economy will now be subject to deportation.  How evil is that❓

Temporary Protected Status for immigrants.

The Supreme Court decision allowing the end of protected status for Haitians and Syrians underscores a huge political failure.

Echo editorial published in the Boston Globe. 

The Supreme Court’s decision has allowed the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian migrants has been described as a major expansion of the president’s power to dictate the rules of immigration.

But it was something else as well: a cruel demonstration of the nation’s dysfunctional immigration system and the utter failure of its federal government to make it either more humane or rational.

Congress enacted the law, known as TPS, in 1990 to protect migrants who had fled El Salvador, which was then riven by civil war. Over the decades, the designation has been given to at least 16 more countries facing violent turmoil or catastrophic natural disasters, including not just Haiti and Syria but also Venezuela, Ukraine, and Sudan.

Though intended to provide short-term sanctuary, the status has often been extended when conditions in those countries did not materially improve. So, that is what happened with Haiti, which received the designation in 2010, after a devastating earthquake, and has had it extended more than half a dozen times. Today, the State Department continues to warn American citizens against traveling there because of the threat of “kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited health care.”

During those many years in the United States, millions of immigrants under TPS legally found work, paid taxes, bore children, and became essential members of hundreds of communities around the country — all while Congress failed time and again to craft a comprehensive immigration policy that might have allowed many of them to find a pathway to citizenship.

More than half a million Haitians live in the United States (including more than 60,000 in Massachusetts), and of those more than 300,000 have Temporary Protected Status. 

By some estimates, one-third of the Haitian TPS holders work in the health care industry. They are medical technicians and hospital orderlies, provide essential home care for the elderly, and work with children with autism or elderly people with dementia. They fill crucial jobs that often go begging for workers.

Here is what Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican congressman from the suburbs north of New York City, had to say after the Supreme Court decision: “Immediately shutting off TPS will create a crisis in our hospitals, nursing homes, and in the I/DD [intellectual and developmental disability] community.” And he is not the only Republican saying such things.

The Republican mayor of Springfield, Ohio — the city that Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, claimed in 2024 and 2025 had been invaded by “illegal” Haitians who spread disease, committed violent crimes, and even ate residents’ pets — called those same Haitians “our neighbors, coworkers, business owners, taxpayers and parents.

“They contribute to our local economy, support our schools, strengthen our neighborhoods and have become part of the fabric of Springfield,” the mayor, Rob Rue, said in a statement following last week’s Supreme Court decision.

The Republican governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, agreed, saying on Sunday that Haitian TPS holders have helped revitalize communities like Springfield. “It’s Haitians who, many times, are taking care of your mom or your dad who has Alzheimer’s, taking care of family members who might be in a nursing home,” Dewine said on CNN’s State of the Union. “And to say we’re going to pull all those [people] out, it’s just not in our own self-interest.”

Contrast those statements about the Haitian community with Trump’s, some of the choicest of which were recounted by Justice Elena Kagan in her blistering dissent to the Supreme Court majority’s TPS ruling: “Filthy, dirty, disgusting,” “like a death wish for our country,” and “poisoning the blood” of the nation.

Kagan called such statements “so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print.” Yet somehow Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, could conclude, risibly, that “None of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary [of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, at the time] was overtly racial.”

The impending deportation of thousands of Haitian TPS holders has so outraged some residents of Springfield that they are, according to The New York Times, “preparing to protect Haitians, with some making plans to care for their Haitian neighbors’ native-born children and even to hide and shelter immigrants who remain.” (Those children are US citizens, a status reaffirmed by a separate Supreme Court decision Tuesday that upheld birthright citizenship.)

Representative Ayanna Pressley, Democrat from Hyde Park and cosponsor of a bipartisan bill that passed in the House to extend protections for Haitians, counseled Haitian TPS holders that “until you receive notification regarding your work authorization being rescinded, you are still authorized to work.” And she called on the Senate to pass her bill extending protected status.

The chances of that happening are small, given the anti-immigrant fever that grips the Republican Party. But there is evidence that the nation is tiring of Trump’s cruelty toward migrants, the vast majority of whom are peaceable, law-abiding, and productive members of society.

It is not wrong for Republicans to point out that the T in TPS stands for temporary, and that under the law the status could be rescinded when migrants’ home countries regain some semblance of peace and security. But that has not happened in many of the TPS countries, Particularly not in Haiti.

The bigger issue here is the chronic failure of Congress to replace the ad hoc US immigration system with something more comprehensive, clear, predictable, rational, and humane. In a saner time, it would not be a fever dream to believe that Congress could, with some courage and will, find a way to secure the nation’s borders while also reaffirming its proud role as a beacon of hope and opportunity for tempest-tossed immigrants.

Alas, we are not in that time but here instead, in the Trump era, when it feels daunting to ask Congress to simply apply another layer of duct tape to our jerry-rigged system. For now, though, that would be enough to save, at least for a time, thousands of Haitian, Syrian, and in the fall, probably El Salvadoran TPS holders from being forced to leave the homes, families, and communities they have built in America.

Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.

Donald Trump can not read. So a literate person in the White House should read this aloud to him. His illegal war with Iran has failed!

Iran and US slide back into dead end of war
Editorial  Echo opinion published in Le Monde

Americans are not reading the updates about the illegal Iran war. We must access foriegn news like Le Monde to find the truth. Merci❗

Both sides remain locked in an escalating standoff with no way out. Tehran cannot withstand a long-term blockade of its ports, and Donald Trump risks further alienating American public opinion four months ahead of midterm elections. Meanwhile, the escalation further undermines the global economy.

After a few weeks of relative calm, the illegal Trump war of choice between the United States and Iran has returned, to the point of calling into question an agreement signed less than a month ago at Versailles. That agreement was meant to replace a ceasefire announced in April, the main goal of which was reopening the Strait of Hormuz (that had been opened and free prior to February 28, 2026). 

From the start of the Israel- and US-led attack, which aimed to force regime change in Tehran, Iran had used the strait as a major deterrence tool by blocking the strategic route for hydrocarbon exports.

What followed was a systemic crisis in global energy markets that made the war even more unpopular in the US, as it broke with President Donald Trump's campaign promises to use force only when American interests were at stake, a claim that seemed doubtful in this case. Disillusionment and his administration's hallmark improvisational style led Donald Trump to accept a poorly structured agreement, which explains much of the current stalemate.

The Iranian regime is using the vague wording of the clause concerning the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to claim control over the passage, including by force. (Although it had been open and free prior to February 28, 2026).

At the same time, the US has sought to establish maritime routes through Omani waters, on the opposite shore of the strait, to bypass Iran.
Time running out

The current focus on the chokepoint is a short-term victory for the Iranian regime, since its nuclear program, presented as one of the major reasons for the attack on Iran, is no longer being discussed. By announcing his intention to levy a fee on ships passing through the strait under American protection and then quickly backtracking, Trump also lent credibility to Iran's claim to impose a toll there, in disregard of freedom of navigation.

Despite being severely hit by US and Israeli bombings, the Iranian regime, hardened by war and convinced it had won this confrontation simply by surviving, could only be drawn into a deadly spiral of escalation, the consequences of which would fall mainly on its people. As the hawkish wing regains influence in the US, Trump could once again be blinded by his country's overwhelming military superiority, the limits of which were nonetheless exposed during the initial phase of this asymmetric war.

Time is running out for both sides. Despite its bluster, the Iranian regime is unlikely to be able to withstand a prolonged blockade of its ports by the US Navy. Meanwhile, Trump risked further angering public opinion, with midterm elections, traditionally perilous for the party controlling the White House, less than four months away.

The double deadlock has once again exposed the Arab Gulf states to Iranian reprisals and further weakened a significant part of the world economy held hostage by the crisis. It also highlighted the impotence of the US administration, whether it chose to wage war or fall back on diplomacy. A devastating verdict for a president who had promised to make America great again.

Le Monde

Donald Trump and maga Republicans made America vulnerable to attacks on our national security- Be Afraid! Very Afraid!

Of all the responsibilities assigned to an American president, none is more important than keeping the country safe from its enemies. 

Echo opinion published in The Hill and Yahoo.com by William S. Becker

Yet, the U.S. has rarely, if ever, been as vulnerable as it is today under Donald Trump. He has become our greatest national security threat. (In other words, Donald Trump is a clear and present danger. Republicans must impeach him❗)

Let's assess how much damage Trump has done.

He launched a war of choice against Iran, a strategic and economic ally of Russia and China. The war quickly depleted America's supply of critical weapons. Experts say it will take at least three years to rebuild the arsenal. The Center for Strategic and International Studies says this has "created a window of vulnerability for a potential Western Pacific conflict."

Trump railed against NATO allies France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany for not supporting his (illegal❗) attacks on Iran, even though NATO is a defense alliance, not a war alliance. 

Iran retaliated by attacking U.S. military facilities in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan. Trump's relationship with Saudi Arabia has been strained by the kingdom's refusal to let U.S. forces use its bases and airspace during the war.

Trump has frequently lashed out at and alienated NATO, which, at 77, is one of history's oldest security alliances. Lately, he has publicly insulted Italy's leader, told his staff during a news conference to cut off trade with Spain, and outraged Belgium by interfering with its World Cup match against the United States.  

He has threatened to take Greenland from Denmark, by force if necessary. That would obligate the alliance's other 31 members to defend Denmark against his aggression.

Trump has launched military operations against nearly a dozen countries during his two terms, including strikes against Syria, Somalia, Nigeria and Venezuela. He apparently is not inclined to stop; he has hinted that he'd like to control or annex Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, the Panama Canal, and even Canada.

Russia and China are watching closely. They undoubtedly notice that Trump has degraded the government's ability to anticipate and defend against attacks. 

Hundreds of America's top military, intelligence and security officials have either been fired or pushed out for political reasons, or because they considered the administration's orders unconscionable.

Since Trump's second term began, about 300 FBI agents who worked on national security have left the bureau. The loss has been characterized as a "purge" that has greatly depleted the FBI's capabilities.

Now, the administration has diverted 260 FBI analysts to focus on a "priority investigation" of the 2020, election. Their task is to find proof of Trump's six-year fantasy that he won against Joe Biden.

The Department of Homeland Security is preoccupied with White House adviser Stephen Miller's goal of deporting 1 million immigrants this year, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as "racist and draconian" rather than related to homeland security. Meanwhile, there has been a sharp drop in morale at the Pentagon, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired 15 senior officers while the U.S. is at war.

Trump, who prefers to follow his gut rather than facts, has hollowed out the government's vital intelligence agencies and replaced career experts with political loyalists. He recently named Bill Pulti, a housing developer, as acting director of National Intelligence.

Pulti immediately fired more than 50 intelligence experts and promised more, leading to speculation that he would declassify allegations that China has interfered with elections so that Trump could declare a national security emergency and manipulate the rules of the midterm election.  

Last November, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, warned that the Trump administration had created a "deepening threat to our security" by purging a third of the nation's cybersecurity experts in other agencies besides the FBI, reassigning up to 45 percent of FBI agents to help round up immigrants, and forcing thousands of security experts out of government for political reasons.

In March, after U.S. airstrikes killed Iran's supreme leader, ABC News reported that the Trump administration intercepted an encrypted message that appeared to be "an operational trigger" from Iran to its "sleeper assets." Iran, Russia, China and North Korea are suspected of having secret operatives on U.S. soil.

Dr. Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism expert at the Washington Institute, calls this a heightened security environment. "If there were ever a time where Iran (was) going to pull out the stops and try to do something, now would be it," he warns.

China and Russia undoubtedly see that Trump is preoccupied with building monuments to himself and showing signs of cognitive decline. Insofar as he seems concerned about enemies, they are his imagined "enemies within," his political opponents and people on the left.

Under the circumstances, the most important thing Congress can do to strengthen national security is to remove Trump from office as soon as possible.

William S. Becker is co-editor of and a contributor to "Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People"" and a contributor to "Democracy in a Hotter Time." He previously served as a senior official in the Wisconsin Department of Justice. He is currently executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

Senator Susan Collins owns this horribly tragic ICE murder of Mr. Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero

 Echo opinion letter published in Central Maine News

Memorial for Mr. Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in Biddeford killed by evil ICE on July 13, 2026.

Susan Collins voted to give ICE more power. Don’t forget it. | Letter

Sen. Collins’ support of a budget resolution funding ICE and Border Patrol to the tune of 💲70 billion is incomprehensible.

There’s been yet another fatal ICE shooting. This time, ICE’s paramilitary violence has stolen a life right here in Maine.

As our grief-stricken neighbors face the dread of an occupying force killing someone in our backyard, it’s imperative that Mainers shine a magnified beam of light on the fact that Republican Sen. Susan Collins voted to increase ICE’s funding earlier this year.

Biddeford Maine memorial

It's worth remembering how Senator Collins voted for this titanic after evil ICE activity surged in Maine earlier this year in the project "Catch of the Day". 

"Operation Catch of the Day" was a targeted, multiday immigration enforcement surge launched by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Maine. Initiated in January 2026, the operation primarily focused on arresting noncitizens.

It’s worth remembering that Collins voted for this titanic budget increase after ICE activity surged in Maine earlier this year during its vile Operation Catch of the Day. Thanks in large part to this newspaper, Central Maine News, there was detailed reporting on ICE’s abductions and the devastating local impact on Mainers trying to go about their everyday activities while under ICE’s boot.

Americans living in France are asked about Donald Trump

When it comes to politics, the French appear to exercise free speech rights with more consistency than many Americans are comfortable with. I recall one visit to Paris when the husband of our hotel concierge identified my husband as an American who is fluent in French.  He got himself off of his couch potato position seated in the hotel's small lounge to give my husband a long lecture in French about why it was so stupid for Americans to fight in Vietnam....he talked on and on for over 20 minutes, while my husband, who is a Vietnam war veteran, patiently and politely listened.

This echo report was published in The Connexion newsletter by 

Sujena Soumyanath

Americans in France on being asked 'are you for Trump❓'

Democrats and Republicans tell of conversations ranging from rewarding to challenging.

Ruth Miller’s backpack is worth a thousand words.

This Brittany resident, 71, carries on her back a bag with a picture of US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s face. Next to Ocasio-Cortez, in white letters, reads “a woman’s place is in the resistance.”

Miller, who moved to France from the US in 2015, has had the backpack for about two years and decorated it herself. Since then, she says more than half the time she goes out with it, someone comments on the bag’s display of American politics.

Miller is far from the only American in France to find themselves repeatedly unpacking US politics. Americans from both sides of the political spectrum say moving to France has sparked frequent, sometimes unexpected discussions about their home country.

The conversations come at a time when more Americans are moving to France. At the same time, according to an early 2026 poll, French respondents said they increasingly view the US under Trump as an enemy country. As a result, for some Americans in the Hexagon, sharing their nationality with a French person quickly sparks a discussion about everything from the electoral college and gerrymandering to New York mayor Zohran Mamdani. Or, their interlocutor may skip the chatter entirely, and ask, ‘you’re not for Trump, are you?’

At the heart of these interactions lies a key cultural difference. A 2025 Alliance Francaise article notes that while Americans prefer more casual small talk, the French enter quickly into deep, bold topics.

Members of the US Republican party in France find the French not only question their political affiliations, they sometimes challenge them, said Republicans Overseas France media director Paul Reen. The organization has about 200 members.

“Unfortunately, many French people think Trump is racist and fascist and sexist, so they just get angry and walk away,” Reen told The Connexion.

Despite this, there’s a growing number of French people willing to have an open dialogue and migrating to the right, he said.

Reen noted French people bring up a wide range of global-facing US policy issues, like tariffs, Ukraine, Palestine and, more recently, the Iran War. Most share similar opinions - from condemning the Iran War to supporting Palestine.

“The minority will stay and listen,” Reen said. “The majority just get angry.”

Leila Meresman, spokesperson for Democrats Abroad France, said American politics remain a fixture of French fascination: “I don't think a day goes by when I talk to French people [...] where somebody will not ask me once they figure out that I'm American, ‘what the heck is going on with Trump and the US administration❓’”

Democrats Abroad France does not publish membership numbers per country, spokesperson Amy Porter said.

Meresman noted that French people are “extremely well informed” and it's always a pleasure for her to talk about politics. However, that was not the case for one American who contacted The Connexion last June.

“I am fed up with having to be responsible for and explain my native country’s decisions to people in France,” the reader wrote.

A master’s student in Paris from the US, Micah Polsky said some people immediately ask them if they support Trump.

“That’s not how you start a conversation,” they said.

Still, Polsky told The Connexion that they enjoy discussing politics and explaining how the US government works. They have even developed some “canned responses” to explain concepts like the voting system that come up often.

Addressing the Trump question is particularly tricky for members of the Republican party.

“'Oh you’re American, you don’t like Trump I hope’ - that's how a Frenchman will start the conversation,” Reen said. “So you’re immediately on your backfoot.”

It is an experience Republicans coming from the States don’t expect at first, Reen said. He suggested joining groups like Republicans Overseas France and having some facts ready to share in a discussion.

From there usually sparks one of the many conversations she has had with French people over the years about the US. Sometimes it’s someone expressing support for Ocasio-Cortez. Other times, it’s a person asking her about the presidential election. She’s even discussed politics with her doctor and veterinarian here in France.

“I’m always happy to talk about it,” said Miller, who is active with Democrats Abroad Brittany. “I feel like it’s part of my responsibility.”

“Try to stay friendly and don't get confrontational,” he said. “Maybe you can change some hearts and minds.”

While in France political discussions spark frequently, in a 2024, survey by the American Psychology Association, 72％ of US adults polled said they hoped to avoid discussing politics with their family over the holidays. That was shortly after the divisive election that sealed Trump’s second term.

Christopher Davis, a Franco-American teacher in Lille, has integrated that election’s results into his teaching. He often explains the American political situation to his post graduate-level students and said they are curious about everything from immigration, to understanding the Republican voter base.

In the wake of Trump's re-election and his tariffs on Europe, some Americans worried about their safety when visiting France. A tourist interviewed by BBC last year said he covered the US flag logo on his hat before stepping out in Paris.

Most Americans The Connexion spoke to said they haven’t encountered any politics-related hostility.

“People have the ability to differentiate a citizen from the government,” Davis said. He added that making an effort to speak French and respecting the local culture greatly improves Americans’ perception in France.

As a word of advice for those less willing to discuss politics: “you’re allowed to say, this isn’t really my area of expertise,” Polsky said.

According to a recent analysis cited last year by BBC, the US expat community in France is overwhelmingly pessimistic about their home country’s future. But for Davis, like many others, the chance to talk about the US situation is more of an opportunity than a burden.

“I'm sad for my country, in a sense, where I don't recognize the direction we're taking,” he said. “That's why I feel that it's important to explain it, rather than to just let it by.”

Canadian news media are a source for truth! Reporting on the Canadian-U.S. evaporated trade deal in the Toronto Star

The United Kingdom‘s PM Keir Starmer was first to strike a trade deal with Donald Trump, writes Daniel Tisch, only to discover it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. 

Maine Writer-  In my opinion everything Donald Trump signs is written in "invisible ink".  His "deals" are always evaporating.

Canadian PM Mark Carney should pay attention.

Don't feed the crocodiles! An echo article published in The Toronto Star, by Daniel Tisch, president and CEO of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce.

Just over a year ago, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was quite chuffed- a little too sure of himself.  But, guess what❓ His delight was short lived.

After Donald Trump announced punishing tariffs on goods from America’s major trading partners, Starmer became the first to strike a deal with Trump. In exchange for substantial new access to the U.K. market for American agricultural exports, Trump agreed to lower tariffs on British goods to 10 per cent, down from 25 per cent.

At the time, some Canadian commentators praised Starmer’s decisiveness in protecting the U.K. economy. 

In contrast, Canada’s approach — a blend of retaliation and protracted negotiation — had achieved nothing but pain for our most targeted industries.

A year later, Canada still has no deal with Trump. Indeed, the U.S. refusal to extend the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) to 2042, has left the deal in place but in the purgatory of annual renewals, creating prolonged uncertainty when business craves just the opposite.

With hindsight, however, Starmer’s gambit (calculated risk) looks even worse.

Peace with Trump didn’t last.  Regardless of the deal, typical of Trump, he still wields his tariff threats whenever the U.K. displeases him, which is often, such as when it opposed the U.S. annexation of Greenland and military action in Iran, and imposed a digital services tax on American tech giants. But "HELL-O❓" - what about the U.S.-U.K. trade deal❓ It “can always be changed,” Trump declared.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Starmer — now on his way out of office — would have done well to heed Winston Churchill’s warning that appeasing an aggressor is like feeding a crocodile, hoping it will eat you last.  (In other words, Donald Trump lies about everything❗)😟😞🤥

For Canadian leaders and trade negotiators, there are other lessons:

Understand the speed limit: With Trump, the fastest deal is likely the worst deal. If anything, high inflation, weak job numbers and his growing unpopularity ahead of November’s midterm elections may weaken his hand further. This may create an opportunity for a deal to mitigate Trump’s sectoral tariffs. Until then, governments will need to continue short-term supports for our affected industries.

Use pencils, not sharpies: Negotiators sometimes refer to Trump’s preferred trade agreements as “sharpie deals”: they’re short documents, signed for the cameras, lacking detail, enforcement provisions or dispute resolution mechanisms — which means they’re easily revoked, changed or ignored. “Pencil deals,” in contrast, are like CUSMA (Canada United States Mexico Agreement) : finely crafted, and far more enforceable and resistant to unilateral change. When negotiating with a partner whose word cannot be trusted, that is what Canada needs.

Make no unilateral concessions:

Last year, Prime Minister Mark Carney rescinded Canada’s digital services tax as a goodwill gesture — and got nothing in return. Now, the U.S. ambassador is pressing Canadian provinces to put U.S. liquor back on store shelves — another unilateral concession. When concessions are one-way, Canada’s answer must be ‘no way.’

Open multiple fronts:  Recently, we have heard a rising chorus of U.S. business and bipartisan political leaders in favor of CUSMA. In past trade negotiations, Canadians have enlisted powerful allies by leveraging their abundant relationships across America. Progress will not come from Canadians persuading Americans; it will come from Americans persuading Americans. 

Negotiate from a position of strength:  With slow productivity growth and an overreliance on one market, Canada was woefully unprepared for this trade war. In the last 18 months, provincial and federal leaders have worked to lower business costs, improve our investment climate, reduce barriers to trade within Canada, and build infrastructure to stimulate the economy and diversify our global trading relationships. The early results are encouraging: outbound trade with other markets is growing, as is inbound investment.

The unavoidable reality is that even as Canada becomes a stronger, more diversified trading nation, we will always need the U.S.

It’s equally true, however, that the U.S. needs Canada: for the energy that fuels their cars and heats their homes; the fertilizer that grows their crops; the lumber to build their houses; and the metals and minerals essential to their defense.

Canadians are also Americans’ biggest customers, with some eight million U.S. jobs relying directly or indirectly on trade and investment with Canada.

That means Canada can neither give in nor give up.

As Trump grows weaker — and likely more volatile — our negotiators must be both patient and persistent. 

Moreover, with evidence about how Trump routinely breaks his own agreements, our businesses must continue to invest in productivity and diversify their trade and supply chains.

We must remember that the Canada-U.S. relationship will long outlast Trump.

Most Americans want stable, secure trade with Canada. That makes this a relationship worth preserving.

Donald Trump more crazy middle of the night screeds to violate American First Amendment Rights

 Heather Cox Richardson Letter from an American July 11, 2026

Department of Justice has subpoenaed reporters from the New York Times over a story the newspaper published. 

Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, and Eric Schmitt reported that the Secret Service had security concerns about the Trump emolument violation new Air Force One Boeing 747-8 given to the U.S. by Qatar. So, when tensions escalated with Iran while Trump was in Türkiye for the NATO summit, they asked the president to use one of the other, older, Air Force One planes for his return journey.

Trump and White House officials pushed back strongly against the idea that the new plane had any security problems after pouring what appears to have been hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into renovating the plane. But, according to Adam Gramegna of Military . com, U.S. officials told CBS News that the speed with which the plane was rushed into service meant that it does not have the same protections as the older planes.

According to Devlin Barrett, Glenn Thrush, and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, the story that his prized plane was not as good as the older ones enraged Trump, and the White House called in FBI director Kash Patel to find the two anonymous sources who leaked it. Patel spent about 8 hours on Friday running an investigation from the White House, rather than FBI headquarters, before the reporters received the subpoenas.


U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton, whom Trump has nominated to be the next director of national intelligence, issued the subpoenas. The reporters are ordered to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday “in regard to an alleged violation of federal criminal law.” The Department of Justice said the subpoenas are related to “the crime of leaking national security information.”

The Justice Department emphasized that “reporters are not the targets. Those leaking classified information are.” But issuing subpoenas to U.S. journalists, who are protected from government interference by the First Amendment, is a huge red flag. As former Time magazine editor Rick Stengel noted: “The reporting that the Times journalists have been subpoenaed for is exactly the kind of journalism the First Amendment is designed to protect: matters involving national security and taxpayer dollars. Reporting that embarrasses a president is protected speech.”

David McCraw, senior vice president and deputy general counsel for the Times, said: “The appearance of Federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects. Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public’s right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used. This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”

By 11:18 PM on Friday, Trump’s fury had turned back to Iran. He posted on social media that if Iran tried to assassinate him, “Locked and Loaded” missiles would begin to rain down on the country “to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran—PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!”  (Maine Writer: Obviously this bullshit 💩💩is an insult to Allah and all Christians should be disgusted by this inappropriate language.)

Today he turned his anger toward those questioning his mental acuity, particularly New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, who commented on MS NOW about his reference in Türkiye to the “Islamic State of Japan.” At 12:23 PM he lashed out at “Maggot Hagerman” and then, to refute her claims, wrote that he “just finished a perfect physical at Walter Reed, I do it every six months, and I requested another Cognitive Test, the only President to do so, three times, and I aced them all—Got every question right. Few people in Washington, D.C., could do so, including Maggot and her flunky associate, Jonathan Swan. I would be willing to bet they couldn’t get 50% of the questions right.”

The White House said Trump was referring to a physical he underwent in May.

Then, at 3:16, the president’s account posted a screed of almost 450 words complaining angrily that “I win the Election IN A LANDSLIDE against the entire Dumocrat Party,…against almost 100% negative press and Fake News,…especially Maggot Hagerman, one of the most unattractive people in the News “Business,” and her lightweight assistant, Jonathan Swan…. All I do is WIN, often against all odds,” yet no one compliments him on his great successes.

Here he may have had in mind Thursday’s news story from Catherine Rampell of The Bulwark about his claim on social media on Monday that Walmart would be “dropping the price of ground beef by almost 15 percent” “at my Administration’s request.” Rampell reported that a Walmart spokesperson told her a different story: the price cuts were part of usual summer rollbacks, which had begun the week before Trump took credit for them. Rampell noted that Trump “looks for opportunities to slap his name on politically useful things that companies were already planning to do—seasonal sales, major investments, hiring, et very much cetera.”

White House spokesperson Kush Desai clarified on social media that the president’s “announcement was that the sale is extending all summer long,” adding, “The media’s obsessive need to try to undermine any good news when it affects President Trump is pathological.”

A rant about the news media took up most of Trump’s long post, as he insisted that those reporting his bad poll numbers and policy failures “have no credibility…. If the Election was held again today, I would win by even more—Actually, much more!” he posted. “The Dumocrats don’t have what it takes, their Policies are wrong, and they are, generally, stupid people. They are going COMMUNIST because they are a desperately ‘sinking ship,’ and there’s not a thing they can do about it.

“Instead of writing inaccurate, false articles, for over 10 years now, shouldn’t it be time that they say, ‘We give up, we can’t beat him, there seems nothing we can do.’ Isn’t it time they say, ‘TRUMP IS THE BEST POLITICAL ATHLETE OF ALL TIME! CONGRATULATIONS, MR. PRESIDENT. YOU HAVE BEATEN US FOR 10 YEARS, AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO WASTE OUR TIME FIGHTING YOU ANY LONGER. WE CAN’T WIN. DO A GREAT JOB, SIR, RUNNING OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!’”

Journalist Aaron Rupar used a common meme often used to respond to unreasonably long posts. “I ain’t reading all that,” he commented. “I’m happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened.” Conservative lawyer George Conway wrote: “A severely mentally ill man has control of the launch codes for America’s nuclear arsenal, but it doesn’t seem that many people care.”

Almost 450 words evidently weren’t enough. At 4:54 he reiterated the themes of the long post in a shorter one, then a minute later, accused “the Dumocrats” of being communists. A minute after that, he claimed: “The Radical Left Lunatics, often referred to as Dumocrats, have lost control of their Party.”

Apparently, media criticism still stung. At 5:27, Trump took on reports of the high cost of his damaging renovations in Washington, D.C. Posting photos of what he said was “the horrible front of the White House,” he continued: “The Radical Left Dumocrats criticize me for spending so much time bringing our White House back to the Glory of 100 years ago—Actually, it will be far better than that, and they will not shame us for bringing our Great and Brilliant Monuments to the past and the future back to levels never seen before. This is what we are doing all over Washington, D.C., and, in different ways, with our Country, itself!”

But his confidence that American voters will support Republicans in the 2026 elections is shaky enough that he continues to call for the Senate to rig them. At 6:07 he reposted what purported to be a poll from right-wing loyalist Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) claiming that 97.2% of supporters want the Senate to take up the voter suppression SAVE America Act when it goes back into session next week, while only 2.8% want the Senate to take up “Anything else.”

Meanwhile, on Friday a Pentagon official told Rebecca Turco of WJLA 7News in Washington, D.C., that National Guard troops will stay activated in Washington through Inauguration Day 2029 “until law and order are fully restored in our Nation’s Capital.”

“So,” Bill Kristol of The Bulwark commented. “[M]ilitary troops under the direct control of Trump and Hegseth will be on the streets of our nation’s capital for the rest of Trump’s term. The rationale—they’re here to help with a crime emergency—is laughable. But of course the real reason is ominous.”
Notes:

https://www.military.com/justice-department-subpoenas-reporters-air-force-one-security

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/us/politics/trump-air-force-one-security.html

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/11/g-s1-133160/justice-department-subpoenas-new-york-times-reporters-over-air-force-one-reporting

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/us/politics/air-force-one-trump-cost.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/us/politics/white-house-patel-investigation-times.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/business/media/new-york-times-trump-subpoenas.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-walmart-beef-white-house-b3012769.html

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-just-finished-physical-walter-reed-2026-07-11/

https://cbs4local.com/news/nation-world/national-guard-washington-dc-pentagon-donald-trump-dc-safe-and-beautiful-mission-metropolitan-police-department-mpd-anti-crime-freedom-250-crime-federal-law-enforcement-emergency-executive-order-7news-district-of-columbia