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An abandoned Los Angeles Times vending machine is seen in Covina, California, in 2011.
There is one real solution to creating a modicum of job stability: Taming Wall Street’s greed.
Mass layoffs are ripping through the news industry. More than 20,000 media jobs were cut in 2023 with many more on the chopping block. Just this past week, the Los Angeles Times announced the layoffs of 20% of its newsroom employees.
And private equity and hedge funds like Alden Global Capital are buying up newspapers and gutting staffs, again and again.
The reason is obvious, right? Social media is eating into newspaper revenues. Advertisers have discovered that you can reach more people and sell more products by paying influencers and running ads on social media, Amazon, and Google. And many people prefer to get their news for free from their algorithm-informed social media feeds, rather than from the traditional press. At first glance it appears these mass layoffs of journalists might be nothing more than the pain and suffering that goes with technological progress, just like the obsolescence of elevator operators or turnpike toll collectors.
Well, tell that to the workers in the tech sector who create and staff the online mega-stores and build those marketing algorithms, the pride and joy of the new knowledge economy. In 2023, a year in which the U.S. had historically low unemployment, rising wages, and declining inflation, approximately 262,000 workers in the tech industry lost their jobs, and another 24,500 have joined them so far in January 2024. These mass layoffs are taking place even though these companies have been earning record profits and achieving record valuations.
It’s high time for politicians of all stripes to realize that their policy choices created this dangerous and enlarging inequality, and it should now be their duty to protect the livelihoods of the American people, not the enormous profits on Wall Street.
The research for my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, reveals a full-scale epidemic hitting all sectors of the economy. We estimate that approximately 30 million U.S. residents have experienced mass layoffs since 1996. Add in the indirect effects on their families and communities and more than half of the U.S. workforce has felt the enormous adverse financial, health, and emotional stresses and strains caused by mass layoffs (defined as 50 or more workers laid off at one time for at least a month).
The “new high-tech economy,” it turns out, operates on a long-established Wall Street value: unabashed greed. And mass layoffs, high-tech and low, media and industrial, are caused by that greed. To enrich themselves, the leaders of Wall Street hedge funds, private equity firms, and investment banks demand that corporations go into the stock market and repurchase their own shares—stock buybacks. This causes their stock prices to immediately rise, since future earnings expectations are now spread over a smaller number of shares. Rising stock prices transfer enormous amounts of corporate wealth to the largest investors and top company officers, who are compensated with stock incentives.
To pay for these stock buybacks that exclusively benefit shareholders, publicly traded corporations cut costs, most often and effectively through mass layoffs of their employees. You’ll find this at all the big-name high-tech companies, including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. You’ll also find it in manufacturing (Siemens), retail (Toys R Us), banking (Wells Fargo), pharmaceuticals (Roche), and services (Marriott International). Citigroup just announced the layoff of 20,000 employees. In 2023, it conducted $1.5 billion in stock buybacks.
Leveraged buyouts, which have negatively affected so many journalists, are another form of financial pillage. When private equity firms and hedge funds buy up companies the deals are financed largely with borrowed money, debt that is then put on the books of the company that was purchased. Servicing that debt becomes a major corporate expense, most often paid for by cutting costs through mass layoffs. Again, in almost all cases, there’s a connection between leveraged buyouts and mass layoffs. Just ask the former employees at Twitter, who got X-ed out because of the enormous debt load Elon Musk added after he purchased the company. The same is true for all those working for newspapers acquired in recent years by Alden Global Capital.
Most policymakers in both major political parties continue to view mass layoffs as a product of the unstoppable forces of technology and globalization. That’s the story their Wall Street donors tell them. But the victims of wave after wave of mass layoffs are not buying this. Americans believe, and rightfully so, that working people should not have to be put in a position of abandoning their communities and move because of mass layoffs. They understand that policy choices inspired by greed, not unstoppable economic laws, are at play.
As recent polling reports: “Seventy percent of respondents preferred a focus on ’helping struggling areas to recover’ while only 30% chose ‘helping people move to opportunity.’ Views were broadly similar across nearly all demographic breakdowns, including class, region, gender, party, and generation.”
Overall, 62% of respondents said they were willing to pay higher prices as a result of policies that “strengthen American manufacturing by ensuring that more of the things I buy are made in America.” Perhaps they would even pay more to see their local newspapers freed from Wall Street vultures.
The real divide that is tearing us apart is between the wealthy with secure livelihoods and those who have seen their entire world turned upside down by mass layoffs.
Nevertheless, politicians and pundits alike continue to ignore mass layoffs. Instead, they attribute working class anger to what they argue is increasing polarization between the educated and uneducated (those without college degrees). Supposedly, the educated, especially in urban areas, are moving more to the Democratic Party, while the uneducated are joining the angry MAGA hordes.
As one think tank leader put it, “The fetish for manufacturing is part of the general fetish for keeping white males of low education outside the cities in the powerful positions they’re in in the U.S.” And when workers objected to the 2024 proposed purchase of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, former Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross dismissed it by saying, “There is no real concern other than xenophobia.”
But, as we show clearly in Wall Street’s War on Workers, the data is extremely flimsy for trashing the working class in this fashion. In fact, working class people are growing more liberal on social issues (including immigration), and do not form a disproportional percentage of the dreaded MAGA base. The same is no doubt true for many of the journalists who are out in the street.
The real divide that is tearing us apart is between the wealthy with secure livelihoods and those who have seen their entire world turned upside down by mass layoffs.
There is one real solution to creating a modicum of job stability: Taming Wall Street’s greed. We should:
As for the media, the newspaper industry needs a new system like those proposed in Canada and Australia, where companies like Google and Facebook must pay for all the journalistic content they are grabbing for free in the U.S. And artificial intelligence should pay for using news content to train its generative programs.
Such solutions may seem obvious, once we look closely at these issues, but we’re not close to adopting reforms. Neither major political party is willing to support policies that might upset their Wall Street donors. And few politicians are eager to close the revolving door to future jobs in high finance.
The disconnect with the American public is enormous. Another recent poll revealed that 85% of Americans believe that mass layoffs have a negative impact on workers, and 71% believe mass layoffs harm the overall economy.
Clearly, the American people want elected politicians of both major parties to face up to the obvious: Layoffs hurt working people and increase Wall Street’s domination of our economy. It’s high time for politicians of all stripes to realize that their policy choices created this dangerous and enlarging inequality, and it should now be their duty to protect the livelihoods of the American people, not the enormous profits on Wall Street.
It will take guts for the political establishment to wean itself from Wall Street cash. But if our democracy keeps failing to provide a modicum of job stability, our democracy itself will be endangered.
Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy, justice, and a free press are escalating — putting everything we stand for at risk. We believe a better world is possible, but we can’t get there without your support. Common Dreams stands apart. We answer only to you — our readers, activists, and changemakers — not to billionaires or corporations. Our independence allows us to cover the vital stories that others won’t, spotlighting movements for peace, equality, and human rights. Right now, our work faces unprecedented challenges. Misinformation is spreading, journalists are under attack, and financial pressures are mounting. As a reader-supported, nonprofit newsroom, your support is crucial to keep this journalism alive. Whatever you can give — $10, $25, or $100 — helps us stay strong and responsive when the world needs us most. Together, we’ll continue to build the independent, courageous journalism our movement relies on. Thank you for being part of this community. |
Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and author of the new book, “Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It." (2024). Read more of his work on his substack here.
Mass layoffs are ripping through the news industry. More than 20,000 media jobs were cut in 2023 with many more on the chopping block. Just this past week, the Los Angeles Times announced the layoffs of 20% of its newsroom employees.
And private equity and hedge funds like Alden Global Capital are buying up newspapers and gutting staffs, again and again.
The reason is obvious, right? Social media is eating into newspaper revenues. Advertisers have discovered that you can reach more people and sell more products by paying influencers and running ads on social media, Amazon, and Google. And many people prefer to get their news for free from their algorithm-informed social media feeds, rather than from the traditional press. At first glance it appears these mass layoffs of journalists might be nothing more than the pain and suffering that goes with technological progress, just like the obsolescence of elevator operators or turnpike toll collectors.
Well, tell that to the workers in the tech sector who create and staff the online mega-stores and build those marketing algorithms, the pride and joy of the new knowledge economy. In 2023, a year in which the U.S. had historically low unemployment, rising wages, and declining inflation, approximately 262,000 workers in the tech industry lost their jobs, and another 24,500 have joined them so far in January 2024. These mass layoffs are taking place even though these companies have been earning record profits and achieving record valuations.
It’s high time for politicians of all stripes to realize that their policy choices created this dangerous and enlarging inequality, and it should now be their duty to protect the livelihoods of the American people, not the enormous profits on Wall Street.
The research for my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, reveals a full-scale epidemic hitting all sectors of the economy. We estimate that approximately 30 million U.S. residents have experienced mass layoffs since 1996. Add in the indirect effects on their families and communities and more than half of the U.S. workforce has felt the enormous adverse financial, health, and emotional stresses and strains caused by mass layoffs (defined as 50 or more workers laid off at one time for at least a month).
The “new high-tech economy,” it turns out, operates on a long-established Wall Street value: unabashed greed. And mass layoffs, high-tech and low, media and industrial, are caused by that greed. To enrich themselves, the leaders of Wall Street hedge funds, private equity firms, and investment banks demand that corporations go into the stock market and repurchase their own shares—stock buybacks. This causes their stock prices to immediately rise, since future earnings expectations are now spread over a smaller number of shares. Rising stock prices transfer enormous amounts of corporate wealth to the largest investors and top company officers, who are compensated with stock incentives.
To pay for these stock buybacks that exclusively benefit shareholders, publicly traded corporations cut costs, most often and effectively through mass layoffs of their employees. You’ll find this at all the big-name high-tech companies, including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. You’ll also find it in manufacturing (Siemens), retail (Toys R Us), banking (Wells Fargo), pharmaceuticals (Roche), and services (Marriott International). Citigroup just announced the layoff of 20,000 employees. In 2023, it conducted $1.5 billion in stock buybacks.
Leveraged buyouts, which have negatively affected so many journalists, are another form of financial pillage. When private equity firms and hedge funds buy up companies the deals are financed largely with borrowed money, debt that is then put on the books of the company that was purchased. Servicing that debt becomes a major corporate expense, most often paid for by cutting costs through mass layoffs. Again, in almost all cases, there’s a connection between leveraged buyouts and mass layoffs. Just ask the former employees at Twitter, who got X-ed out because of the enormous debt load Elon Musk added after he purchased the company. The same is true for all those working for newspapers acquired in recent years by Alden Global Capital.
Most policymakers in both major political parties continue to view mass layoffs as a product of the unstoppable forces of technology and globalization. That’s the story their Wall Street donors tell them. But the victims of wave after wave of mass layoffs are not buying this. Americans believe, and rightfully so, that working people should not have to be put in a position of abandoning their communities and move because of mass layoffs. They understand that policy choices inspired by greed, not unstoppable economic laws, are at play.
As recent polling reports: “Seventy percent of respondents preferred a focus on ’helping struggling areas to recover’ while only 30% chose ‘helping people move to opportunity.’ Views were broadly similar across nearly all demographic breakdowns, including class, region, gender, party, and generation.”
Overall, 62% of respondents said they were willing to pay higher prices as a result of policies that “strengthen American manufacturing by ensuring that more of the things I buy are made in America.” Perhaps they would even pay more to see their local newspapers freed from Wall Street vultures.
The real divide that is tearing us apart is between the wealthy with secure livelihoods and those who have seen their entire world turned upside down by mass layoffs.
Nevertheless, politicians and pundits alike continue to ignore mass layoffs. Instead, they attribute working class anger to what they argue is increasing polarization between the educated and uneducated (those without college degrees). Supposedly, the educated, especially in urban areas, are moving more to the Democratic Party, while the uneducated are joining the angry MAGA hordes.
As one think tank leader put it, “The fetish for manufacturing is part of the general fetish for keeping white males of low education outside the cities in the powerful positions they’re in in the U.S.” And when workers objected to the 2024 proposed purchase of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, former Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross dismissed it by saying, “There is no real concern other than xenophobia.”
But, as we show clearly in Wall Street’s War on Workers, the data is extremely flimsy for trashing the working class in this fashion. In fact, working class people are growing more liberal on social issues (including immigration), and do not form a disproportional percentage of the dreaded MAGA base. The same is no doubt true for many of the journalists who are out in the street.
The real divide that is tearing us apart is between the wealthy with secure livelihoods and those who have seen their entire world turned upside down by mass layoffs.
There is one real solution to creating a modicum of job stability: Taming Wall Street’s greed. We should:
As for the media, the newspaper industry needs a new system like those proposed in Canada and Australia, where companies like Google and Facebook must pay for all the journalistic content they are grabbing for free in the U.S. And artificial intelligence should pay for using news content to train its generative programs.
Such solutions may seem obvious, once we look closely at these issues, but we’re not close to adopting reforms. Neither major political party is willing to support policies that might upset their Wall Street donors. And few politicians are eager to close the revolving door to future jobs in high finance.
The disconnect with the American public is enormous. Another recent poll revealed that 85% of Americans believe that mass layoffs have a negative impact on workers, and 71% believe mass layoffs harm the overall economy.
Clearly, the American people want elected politicians of both major parties to face up to the obvious: Layoffs hurt working people and increase Wall Street’s domination of our economy. It’s high time for politicians of all stripes to realize that their policy choices created this dangerous and enlarging inequality, and it should now be their duty to protect the livelihoods of the American people, not the enormous profits on Wall Street.
It will take guts for the political establishment to wean itself from Wall Street cash. But if our democracy keeps failing to provide a modicum of job stability, our democracy itself will be endangered.
Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and author of the new book, “Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It." (2024). Read more of his work on his substack here.
Mass layoffs are ripping through the news industry. More than 20,000 media jobs were cut in 2023 with many more on the chopping block. Just this past week, the Los Angeles Times announced the layoffs of 20% of its newsroom employees.
And private equity and hedge funds like Alden Global Capital are buying up newspapers and gutting staffs, again and again.
The reason is obvious, right? Social media is eating into newspaper revenues. Advertisers have discovered that you can reach more people and sell more products by paying influencers and running ads on social media, Amazon, and Google. And many people prefer to get their news for free from their algorithm-informed social media feeds, rather than from the traditional press. At first glance it appears these mass layoffs of journalists might be nothing more than the pain and suffering that goes with technological progress, just like the obsolescence of elevator operators or turnpike toll collectors.
Well, tell that to the workers in the tech sector who create and staff the online mega-stores and build those marketing algorithms, the pride and joy of the new knowledge economy. In 2023, a year in which the U.S. had historically low unemployment, rising wages, and declining inflation, approximately 262,000 workers in the tech industry lost their jobs, and another 24,500 have joined them so far in January 2024. These mass layoffs are taking place even though these companies have been earning record profits and achieving record valuations.
It’s high time for politicians of all stripes to realize that their policy choices created this dangerous and enlarging inequality, and it should now be their duty to protect the livelihoods of the American people, not the enormous profits on Wall Street.
The research for my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, reveals a full-scale epidemic hitting all sectors of the economy. We estimate that approximately 30 million U.S. residents have experienced mass layoffs since 1996. Add in the indirect effects on their families and communities and more than half of the U.S. workforce has felt the enormous adverse financial, health, and emotional stresses and strains caused by mass layoffs (defined as 50 or more workers laid off at one time for at least a month).
The “new high-tech economy,” it turns out, operates on a long-established Wall Street value: unabashed greed. And mass layoffs, high-tech and low, media and industrial, are caused by that greed. To enrich themselves, the leaders of Wall Street hedge funds, private equity firms, and investment banks demand that corporations go into the stock market and repurchase their own shares—stock buybacks. This causes their stock prices to immediately rise, since future earnings expectations are now spread over a smaller number of shares. Rising stock prices transfer enormous amounts of corporate wealth to the largest investors and top company officers, who are compensated with stock incentives.
To pay for these stock buybacks that exclusively benefit shareholders, publicly traded corporations cut costs, most often and effectively through mass layoffs of their employees. You’ll find this at all the big-name high-tech companies, including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. You’ll also find it in manufacturing (Siemens), retail (Toys R Us), banking (Wells Fargo), pharmaceuticals (Roche), and services (Marriott International). Citigroup just announced the layoff of 20,000 employees. In 2023, it conducted $1.5 billion in stock buybacks.
Leveraged buyouts, which have negatively affected so many journalists, are another form of financial pillage. When private equity firms and hedge funds buy up companies the deals are financed largely with borrowed money, debt that is then put on the books of the company that was purchased. Servicing that debt becomes a major corporate expense, most often paid for by cutting costs through mass layoffs. Again, in almost all cases, there’s a connection between leveraged buyouts and mass layoffs. Just ask the former employees at Twitter, who got X-ed out because of the enormous debt load Elon Musk added after he purchased the company. The same is true for all those working for newspapers acquired in recent years by Alden Global Capital.
Most policymakers in both major political parties continue to view mass layoffs as a product of the unstoppable forces of technology and globalization. That’s the story their Wall Street donors tell them. But the victims of wave after wave of mass layoffs are not buying this. Americans believe, and rightfully so, that working people should not have to be put in a position of abandoning their communities and move because of mass layoffs. They understand that policy choices inspired by greed, not unstoppable economic laws, are at play.
As recent polling reports: “Seventy percent of respondents preferred a focus on ’helping struggling areas to recover’ while only 30% chose ‘helping people move to opportunity.’ Views were broadly similar across nearly all demographic breakdowns, including class, region, gender, party, and generation.”
Overall, 62% of respondents said they were willing to pay higher prices as a result of policies that “strengthen American manufacturing by ensuring that more of the things I buy are made in America.” Perhaps they would even pay more to see their local newspapers freed from Wall Street vultures.
The real divide that is tearing us apart is between the wealthy with secure livelihoods and those who have seen their entire world turned upside down by mass layoffs.
Nevertheless, politicians and pundits alike continue to ignore mass layoffs. Instead, they attribute working class anger to what they argue is increasing polarization between the educated and uneducated (those without college degrees). Supposedly, the educated, especially in urban areas, are moving more to the Democratic Party, while the uneducated are joining the angry MAGA hordes.
As one think tank leader put it, “The fetish for manufacturing is part of the general fetish for keeping white males of low education outside the cities in the powerful positions they’re in in the U.S.” And when workers objected to the 2024 proposed purchase of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, former Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross dismissed it by saying, “There is no real concern other than xenophobia.”
But, as we show clearly in Wall Street’s War on Workers, the data is extremely flimsy for trashing the working class in this fashion. In fact, working class people are growing more liberal on social issues (including immigration), and do not form a disproportional percentage of the dreaded MAGA base. The same is no doubt true for many of the journalists who are out in the street.
The real divide that is tearing us apart is between the wealthy with secure livelihoods and those who have seen their entire world turned upside down by mass layoffs.
There is one real solution to creating a modicum of job stability: Taming Wall Street’s greed. We should:
As for the media, the newspaper industry needs a new system like those proposed in Canada and Australia, where companies like Google and Facebook must pay for all the journalistic content they are grabbing for free in the U.S. And artificial intelligence should pay for using news content to train its generative programs.
Such solutions may seem obvious, once we look closely at these issues, but we’re not close to adopting reforms. Neither major political party is willing to support policies that might upset their Wall Street donors. And few politicians are eager to close the revolving door to future jobs in high finance.
The disconnect with the American public is enormous. Another recent poll revealed that 85% of Americans believe that mass layoffs have a negative impact on workers, and 71% believe mass layoffs harm the overall economy.
Clearly, the American people want elected politicians of both major parties to face up to the obvious: Layoffs hurt working people and increase Wall Street’s domination of our economy. It’s high time for politicians of all stripes to realize that their policy choices created this dangerous and enlarging inequality, and it should now be their duty to protect the livelihoods of the American people, not the enormous profits on Wall Street.
It will take guts for the political establishment to wean itself from Wall Street cash. But if our democracy keeps failing to provide a modicum of job stability, our democracy itself will be endangered.
Any such effort, said one democracy watchdog, "would violate the Constitution and is a major step to prevent free and fair elections."
In his latest full-frontal assault on democratic access and voting rights, President Donald Trump early Monday said he will lead an effort to ban both mail-in ballots and voting machines for next year's mid-term elections—a vow met with immediate rebuke from progressive critics.
"I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly 'Inaccurate,' Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election," Trump wrote in a social media post infested with lies and falsehoods.
Trump falsely claimed that no other country in the world uses mail-in voting—a blatant lie, according to International IDEA, which monitors democratic trends worldwide, at least 34 nations allow for in-country postal voting of some kind. The group notes that over 100 countries allow out-of-country postal voting for citizens living or stationed overseas during an election.
Trump has repeated his false claim—over and over again—that he won the 2020 election, which he actually lost, in part due to fraud related to mail-in ballots, though the lie has been debunked ad nauseam. He also fails to note that mail-in ballots were very much in use nationwide in 2024, with an estimated 30% of voters casting a mail-in ballot as opposed to in-person during the election in which Trump returned to the White House and Republicans took back the US Senate and retained the US House of Representatives.
Monday's rant by Trump came just days after his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Trump claimed commented personally on the 2020 election and mail-in ballots. In a Friday night interview with Fox News, Trump claimed "one of the most interesting" things Putin said during their talks about ending the war in Ukraine was about mail-in voting in the United States and how Trump would have won the election were it not for voter fraud, echoing Trump's own disproven claims.
Trump: Vladimir Putin said your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting… he talked about 2020 and he said you won that election by so much.. it was a rigged election. pic.twitter.com/m8v0tXuiDQ
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 16, 2025
Trump said Monday he would sign an executive order on election processes, suggesting that it would forbid mail-in ballots as well as the automatic tabulation machines used in states nationwide. He also said that states, which are in charge of administering their elections at the local level, "must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do."
Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket, which tracks voting rights and issues related to ballot access, said any executive order by Trump to end mail-in voting or forbid provenly safe and accurate voting machines ahead of the midterms would be "unconstitutional and illegal."
Such an effort, said Elias, "would violate the Constitution and is a major step to prevent free and fair elections."
"We've got the FBI patrolling the streets." said one protester. "We've got National Guard set up as a show of force. What's scarier is if we allow this."
Residents of Washington, DC over the weekend demonstrated against US President Donald Trump's deployment of the National Guard in their city.
As reported by NBC Washington, demonstrators gathered on Saturday at DuPont Circle and then marched to the White House to direct their anger at Trump for sending the National Guard to Washington DC, and for his efforts to take over the Metropolitan Police Department.
In an interview with NBC Washington, one protester said that it was important for the administration to see that residents weren't intimidated by the presence of military personnel roaming their streets.
"I know a lot of people are scared," the protester said. "We've got the FBI patrolling the streets. We've got National Guard set up as a show of force. What's scarier is if we allow this."
Saturday protests against the presence of the National Guard are expected to be a weekly occurrence, organizers told NBC Washington.
Hours after the march to the White House, other demonstrators began to gather at Union Station to protest the presence of the National Guard units there. Audio obtained by freelance journalist Andrew Leyden reveals that the National Guard decided to move their forces out of the area in reaction to what dispatchers called "growing demonstrations."
Even residents who didn't take part in formal demonstrations over the weekend managed to express their displeasure with the National Guard patrolling the city. According to The Washington Post, locals who spent a night on the town in the U Street neighborhood on Friday night made their unhappiness with law enforcement in the city very well known.
"At the sight of local and federal law enforcement throughout the night, people pooled on the sidewalk—watching, filming, booing," wrote the Post. "Such interactions played out again and again as the night drew on. Onlookers heckled the police as they did their job and applauded as officers left."
Trump last week ordered the National Guard into Washington, DC and tried to take control the Metropolitan Police, purportedly in order to reduce crime in the city. Statistics released earlier this year, however, showed a significant drop in crime in the nation's capital.
"Why not impose more sanctions on [Russia] and force them to agree to a cease-fire, instead of accepting that Putin won't agree to one?" asked NBC's Kristen Welker.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday was repeatedly put on the spot over the failure of US President Donald Trump to secure a cease-fire deal between Russia and Ukraine.
Rubio appeared on news programs across all major networks on Sunday morning and he was asked on all of them about Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin ending without any kind of agreement to end the conflict with Ukraine, which has now lasted for more than three years.
During an interview on ABC's "This Week," Rubio was grilled by Martha Raddatz about the purported "progress" being made toward bringing the war to a close. She also zeroed in on Trump's own statements saying that he wanted to see Russia agree to a cease-fire by the end of last week's summit.
"The president went in to that meeting saying he wanted a ceasefire, and there would be consequences if they didn't agree on a ceasefire in that meeting, and they didn't agree to a ceasefire," she said. "So where are the consequences?"
"That's not the aim of this," Rubio replied. "First of all..."
"The president said that was the aim!" Raddatz interjected.
"Yeah, but you're not going to reach a cease-fire or a peace agreement in a meeting in which only one side is represented," Rubio replied. "That's why it's important to bring both leaders together, that's the goal here."
RADDATZ: The president went in to that meeting saying he wanted a ceasefire and there would be consequences if they didn't agree on a ceasefire in that meeting, and they didn't agree to a ceasefire. So where are the consequences?
RUBIO: That's not the aim
RADDATZ: The president… pic.twitter.com/fuO9q1Y5ze
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 17, 2025
Rubio also made an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation," where host Margaret Brennan similarly pressed him about the expectations Trump had set going into the summit.
"The president told those European leaders last week he wanted a ceasefire," she pointed out. "He went on television and said he would walk out of the meeting if Putin didn't agree to one, he said there would be severe consequences if he didn't agree to one. He said he'd walk out in two minutes—he spent three hours talking to Vladimir Putin and he did not get one. So there's mixed messages here."
"Our goal is not to stage some production for the world to say, 'Oh, how dramatic, he walked out,'" Rubio shot back. "Our goal is to have a peace agreement to end this war, OK? And obviously we felt, and I agreed, that there was enough progress, not a lot of progress, but enough progress made in those talks to allow us to move to the next phase."
Rubio then insisted that now was not the time to hit Russia with new sanctions, despite Trump's recent threats to do so, because it would end talks all together.
Brennan: The president told those European leaders last week he wanted a ceasefire. He went on television and said he would walk out of the meeting if Putin didn't agree to one, he said there would be severe consequences if he didn’t agree to one. He spent three hours talking to… pic.twitter.com/2WtuDH5Oii
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 17, 2025
During an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," host Kristen Welker asked Rubio about the "severe consequences" Trump had promised for Russia if it did not agree to a cease-fire.
"Why not impose more sanctions on [Russia] and force them to agree to a cease-fire, instead of accepting that Putin won't agree to one?" Welker asked.
"Well, first, that's something that I think a lot of people go around saying that I don't necessarily think is true," he replied. "I don't think new sanctions on Russia are going to force them to accept a cease-fire. They are already under severe sanctions... you can argue that could be a consequence of refusing to agree to a cease-fire or the end of hostilities."
He went on to say that he hoped the US would not be forced to put more sanctions on Russia "because that means peace talks failed."
WELKER: Why not impose more sanctions on Russia and force them to agree to a ceasefire, instead of accepting that Putin won't agree to one?
RUBIO: Well, I think that's something people go around saying that I don't necessarily think is true. I don't think new sanctions on Russia… pic.twitter.com/GoIucsrDmA
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 17, 2025
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump said that he could end the war between Russian and Ukraine within the span of a single day. In the seven months since his inauguration, the war has only gotten more intense as Russia has stepped up its daily attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.