Good morning. It is August 11th. It is a warm but not too humid summer morning here in New York City in the northern and western hemispheres. And this is the return of your Indignity Morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, back, if not totally recalibrated, from far away vacation, taking a look at the day and the news.

First up, here in the United States, the Washington Post writes, “the FBI, that's the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has begun dispatching agents in overnight shifts to help local law enforcement prevent carjackings and violent crime in Washington. According to two people familiar with the matter, as President Donald Trump threatens a federal takeover of the nation's capital and considers calling up the National Guard. The president is planning a news conference today about crime in DC.” The Post adds. “Trump on Sunday,” the Post writes “compared forthcoming action against DC crime to his administration's aggressive crackdown against illegal immigration at the southern border, saying that he plans to immediately clear out the city's homeless population and take swift action against crime.” 

NPR had a report describing what some of that swift action looks like on the streets of the Capitol last night. “Groups of uniformed agents,” NPR writes “from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and other agencies could be seen strolling streets in small groups. At least 120 FBI agents were reassigned from other duties to take part in Sunday's patrols. At one intersection, the story continues, a minor traffic accident between a car and a moped brought at least two dozen agents running, some wearing masks and one carrying a rifle. Local DC Metropolitan Police were also on scene.” 

And now, in breaking news, President Trump just made his announcement about what he was going to do, which is putting the Metropolitan Police Department under the control of the Justice Department and sending 800 National Guard troops out into the streets. The New York Times Life Blog writes, “speaking from the White House briefing room, the president painted a dystopian picture of a Capitol, including bloodthirsty criminals and roving mobs of wild youth, that many people who live in it are unlikely to recognize and stood in sharp contrast to official figures. Federal officials announced in January that violent crime in the city was at a 30-year low.” The item goes on to note that last week, Edward Korstein, a 19-year-old vested by Elon Musk and Trump with the power to slash the federal government and ruin public services and civil servants' lives, reportedly got beaten up last week not by one of the many people he's harmed, but by random teenage would-be carjackers in the district.

The Israeli military assassinated an entire Al Jazeera news crew yesterday in Gaza City with a drone strike on their tent outside Al-Shifa Hospital. Two reporters and three photographers were killed. Israel had claimed that one of the reporters was a member of Hamas. And under the ongoing logic of Israel's campaign of mass murder in Gaza, that very much disputed claim about the one reporter inherently justified killing the other four. 

The New York Times reports that the would-be Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe, who was shot in June, died of his injuries after nine weeks in the hospital. The Times writes, “authorities have arrested four people in connection with the June 7th shooting, including a 14-year-old boy identified as the gunman, but have not disclosed a motive.” 

On the front of this morning's print edition of the New York Times, the lead news spot is two columns wide. “Quiet Technocrat Enables Ruthless Agenda of Putin / A Kremlin Chameleon Has Staged Elections and Is Guiding Ukraine War Politics.” It's a profile, necessarily a write-around profile, of Sergei V. Kiriyenko, Vladimir Putin's first deputy chief of staff, who the Times writes, “oversees wide ranging government efforts to tighten Mr. Putin's grip on the country and on occupied Ukraine. He has also,” Times writes, “recently gained new power inside the Kremlin, taking over much of the portfolio of another Putin aide who disagreed with the invasion of Ukraine.” The Times suggests that this portfolio is out of proportion to his modest title, which is a little odd, given that by all appearance, the day-to-day work of implementing a fascist white nationalist police state in the United States is being commanded by Donald Trump's deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, Stephen Miller. Kiriyenko even shares Stephen Miller's shaven head and overall ghoulish aspect to judge by the photo of him, although at least in his case, he's 63 years old, while Miller has become Nosferatu at the mere age of 39. 

At the top of the page is a photo of two people strolling along a beach with a caption directing readers to a story inside the paper, “A painful bond. Bite Club, a fraternity of shark bite victims, helps with physical and emotional recovery when very few others can relate. Pretty good story. 

Below that on the left is a NEWS ANALYSIS piece from Adam Liptak. “Justices Peel Away Election Guardrails /  Remaining Pillar of the Voting Rights Act Could Be Next.” 

“If Republicans succeed in pulling off an aggressively partisan gerrymander of congressional districts in Texas,” Liptak writes, “they will owe the Supreme Court a debt of gratitude. In the two decades Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has led the Supreme Court, the justices have reshaped American elections not just by letting state lawmakers, like those in Texas, draw voting maps warped by politics, but also by gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and amplifying the role of money in politics.” The piece continues, “developments in recent weeks signaled that some members of the court think there is more work to be done in removing legal guardrails governing elections. There are now signs that the court is considering striking down or severely constraining the remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act, a towering achievement of the civil rights movement that has protected the rights of minority voters since it was enacted 60 years ago last week.” After the jump, Liptak writes, “at the bottom, the court's election law decisions seem aimed at dismantling decisions of the liberal court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren from 1953 to 1969.” That seems basically incontestably right. The story doesn't quite dig down into the fact that this particular racist project is the clear organizing principle of the life and work of John Roberts, the respectable institutionalist chief justice whose sense of propriety and decorum will lead him sometimes to break with his far-right colleagues, but never on the question of whether white people should be permitted to diminish black people's political power and representation. Political inequality, on the basis of race, is the thing that John Roberts has fought for, and by now has pretty much won. 

Next to that on the front page, above the fold, children are eating weed gummies. The story says, “The Times identified dozens of children across the country who had consumed cannabis products from stashes belonging to relatives or friends and were hospitalized with paranoia, vomiting or other symptoms of poisoning.” This is what you get when grown-ups insist on taking their drugs like their babies.

Below the fold, more NEWS ANALYSIS. “After Almost Losing Trump, Putin Gets His Ideal Summit,” about how by repackaging his desire to keep the land that Russia seized from Ukraine by invasion as a matter of doing a little deal making where Ukraine and Russia are gonna swap some territory, Putin successfully convinced President deals that this was the way to go.

And further down the page on the left, “C.D.C. Shooting Followed Years of Demonization / Staff Feels Betrayed as Fears Come True.” Who could possibly have imagined that telling people that the nation's public health officials were tyrannizing and poisoning them would lead to an act of violence. And next to that, 

“Challenging ICE Raids Lifts L.A. Mayor’s Image / Bass’s Job Was in Peril
After the Wildfires.” Classic New York Times politics. It starts with an anecdote about how Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass skipped a news conference about wildfire recovery with Governor Gavin Newsom in July to instead go confront federal troops and agents who were putting on a militarized show of force in MacArthur Park. “Ms. Bass,” the Times writes, “has since framed the last-minute decision to challenge the agents at MacArthur Park as a natural response to an unfolding crisis. But the image of her facing down a literal Trump administration army has proved pivotal for a leader who only months ago was confronting a well-funded recall campaign.” Okay, but also ICE is terrorizing her city and she's fighting back against it. There's more to politics and at the moment much, much more than the art of positioning one's public image. That is the news. Thank you for listening.

The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You listeners keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Keep sending those along if you are able. It's wonderful to be back with you again. And if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.