A federal takeover of the nation's capital
Make Me Smart
Marketplace
4.6 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
President Trump today said he’s temporarily taking over Washington’s police department and sending in National Guard troops to crack down on crime. We’ll get into the legal questions surrounding the move, and Kimberly shares her thoughts as a local. Plus, key inflation data set to come out this week could bring the impact of tariffs into clearer view. Then, we’ll smile about meteor showers and beach glass.
Here’s everything we talked about today:
- "Trump says he's placing Washington police under federal control and deploying the National Guard" from AP News
- "Trump says crime in D.C. is out of control. Here’s what the data shows." from The Washington Post
- "What Trump can — and can’t — do in his bid to take over law enforcement in DC" from Politico
- "Small Businesses Brace for the Punishing Side Effects of Trump’s Tariffs" from The New York Times
- "July Inflation Data: What to Watch in Tuesday’s CPI Report" from The Wall Street Journal
"How to Watch the Perseids, the Strongest Meteor Shower of the Summer" from The New York Times
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today |
| 0:11.5 | make sense. And I'm Rie Mae Jerez. Today is Monday, August 11th. We are going to start with the |
| 0:17.9 | news as usual. And then later in the show, we'll do some smiles. |
| 0:21.7 | Do you want to go first, Kimberly? |
| 0:23.9 | Yes, because, I mean, I feel like I have the news in my hometown today, which is, well, not exactly my hometown. |
| 0:30.9 | My hometown is still technically St. Louis, but I live in D.C. and I've been there for a very long time. |
| 0:36.5 | And today, the, you know, President Trump |
| 0:39.6 | made this big announcement that he was going to use federal law enforcement to take over |
| 0:46.0 | law enforcement in the city, placing, I'm reading here at the AP, placing Washington police |
| 0:52.5 | under federal control and deploying the National Guard. |
| 0:55.8 | Can we just take a moment to acknowledge that it is within the president's power to deploy the |
| 1:02.8 | National Guard, which hopefully will put to rest this January 6th controversy over whose responsibility |
| 1:10.1 | and who had the authority to deploy the National Guard? |
| 1:13.1 | Because this has been one of the long-running misinformation things about January 6th was like, |
| 1:17.9 | why didn't Nancy Pelosi deploy the National Guard? And it's like, that was always the president's prerogative. |
| 1:24.7 | And as we've seen, he can do it when he wants to. |
| 1:28.3 | Yes, he was not going to do it back then. |
| 1:30.3 | Yeah. |
| 1:31.3 | No, no. |
| 1:32.3 | But one thing that's interesting as I was watching this all play out today is that Trump is doing in D.C. |
| 1:40.3 | effectively what he tried to do in Los Angeles with all of the ICE protest and where he sent |
| 1:46.4 | in the National Guard and was trying to basically big foot the local Los Angeles law enforcement, |
... |
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