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President Donald Trump c⁠racked down on crime⁠ in the nation’s capital this week. On Monday, he declared a state of emergency in Washington, D.C., through an executive order, temporarily placing the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control. He also deployed more than 800 National Guard troops, resulting in over 100 arrests so far.

⁠Trump’s move⁠ has us wondering: Has it always been this easy to clean up our city?

We break it all down on today’s episode of “Problematic Women," and share some of our own wild encounters with crime in D.C.

This week wasn’t just heavy on politics—it was packed with pop culture wins.

⁠Taylor Swift⁠ made her podcast debut on “New Heights,” hosted by NFL stars Travis and Jason Kelce, crashing the livestream in the process. One segment in particular has us buzzing about the political implications of the ⁠“trad” trend⁠, and if Swift could destigmatize that.

Meanwhile, ⁠Demi Lovato⁠ surprised fans by joining the Jonas Brothers on tour—an epic Camp Rock reunion. More than that, her appearance exemplified what being clean from the woke-mind virus looks like. Not long ago, she was a short-haired feminist using they/them pronouns and battling addiction. Today, she’s a healthy, happy, straight newlywed—back on stage and performing at her best. 

We’re joined by Emily Jashinsky, D.C. correspondent for UnHerd news site, host of “After Party with Emily Jashinsky,” a new podcast from the Megyn Kelly podcast network, and ⁠pop culture⁠ aficionado. She shares her take on Trump’s crime crackdown and gives her unfiltered thoughts on these big pop culture moments.

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 Should I even send my kids ⁠back to school⁠ at all? Parents at every level are asking this question, whether they're concerned about the exploding cost of higher education or the liberal takeover of the preschool classroom, because there is a disease running rampant through our education system.

Though Dr. Matthew Spalding, a Ph.D., is not a medical doctor, he has diagnosed this disease that has led to more parents questioning America’s educational institutions. As the dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C., campus and a Gov. Ron DeSantis appointee to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees, Spalding continues to work on a cure. He joins ⁠“The Signal Sitdown”⁠ this week to discuss.

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Victor Davis Hanson revisits some points he made and reiterates that the real issue is the danger of racially divisive language coming from the leader of a major public university in California on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”

“ Dr. Luke Wood—I think his full name is Jonathan Wood. Jonathan Luke Wood is upset because he gave an interview in which—and it was not sliced and diced. There's a long segment of 30 seconds or so. And you can see it, that segment has not been edited, when he says he wants to “eliminate whiteness.”

The problem is that he's on record saying it. It resurfaced. People saw it. And it spread like wildfire over the internet. Hence, my attention to it and my discourse to you about it. But I can't help it if Dr. Wood has said things in his past that seem to be racialist and divisive. …  And yet, nevertheless, he suggests that he's not responsible, I guess, for saying what he did because he said it in 2017 and it's been reappearing, most recently, in clips. ”

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(0:00) Introduction

(2:19) Dr. Wood's Claims

(4:02) Addressing the University's Corrections

(5:57) The Broader Implications

(7:42) Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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The stakes couldn’t be higher. Will this summit move the world toward peace or harden the deadlock?

Hanson lays out why the Biden administration has avoided such meetings, why the “Putin puppet” narrative has gone silent, and what Trump’s high-stakes negotiating strategy could mean for the war’s endgame on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”

“We’re gonna have this summit. And Trump is going to say to Putin, ‘You can have no NATO Ukraine. You can have the Crimea. You can have the Donbas. I think I can get Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people to agree. But we’ve gotta fight over how far west you are and whether you have to go back or will stay in place.’

And then he’s going to have to tell Zelenskyy, ‘We’re supplying you. That’s the only leverage we have against Putin, along with a secondary boycott. But you have to decide whether you’re going to cede the Donbas, Crimea, and some of the territory. Because if you don’t, there’s not going to be a peace. And if there’s not going to be a peace, we can’t assure you a blank check forever.’”

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(0:00) Upcoming Trump-Putin Summit 

(0:57) Historical Context

(2:00) Trump's Leverage Against Putin

(3:29) Potential Risks

(3:49) Current State of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

(4:56) Possible Peace Agreement

(7:05) Final Thoughts

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On today’s Top News in 10, we cover:

Read George Caldwell’s article on free speech violation in D.C. here: 

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Not only is Trump succeeding, he is exceeding expectations as well. But the Left is not going down without a fight. Victor Davis Hanson explains the challenges being poised against Trump’s counterrevolution, and what he believes are the next steps on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”

“ The symptoms of the progressive project are not just the Democrats exercising power in Congress or holding the White House, it's how they get that power. And they get that power through PBS and NPR, now defunded; cable news and slanted network news, now under assault when they lie and defame and face court ramifications.

“ The majority of the American people oppose [Democrats’] agenda. And they do this through the bureaucracies, through the media, through the universities, through the popular culture. And these are the very sources that Donald Trump is asking them to reform. And the government is going to shrink. The government's gonna get out of the media business. The government's gonna take a hard look at universities, who want and obtain federal funds.”

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(0:00) The Greatest Counterrevolution

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“I told you so starts here”

Over the past 200 days (the first 200 of the second Trump term) many details have come to light that confirmed things that for years had been dismissed as “conspiracy theories.” Just this week, details that show that the FBI, under Trump’s own AG, Jeff Sessions, had whistleblower testimony that they failed to follow up on regarding classified document leaks from then-Congressman Adam Schiff that were leaked to trigger embarrassing investigations into the President in time to impact the 2018 mid-term elections. Also this week, the Capitol Police Chief finally spoke out and confirmed that the President had asked for the National Guard be deployed to the Capitol building on January third. Three days before the deadly riots.

Stories like this come from courageous independent investigative reporters like John Soloman at ‘justthenews.com’ our guest, Walter Curt of ‘WCdispatch.com’ who shares with us two stories. The first is of two teenage girls who allege that they were taken to get abortions by Fairfax County school officials without alerting their parents. Just now, we are learning that Governor Youngkin has announced that he is “directing the Virginia State police bureau of criminal investigation to open a full criminal investigation.” The second regards a group of former US intelligence officers that call themselves “the Steady State” who have endorsed their former co-worker in the intelligence field, Abigail Spanberger, for Virginia Governor.

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“What Gives Him the Right?”

President Trump has temporarily federalized the Washington DC police and sent in ICE agents and National Guard troops to “pursue and arrest every violent criminal in the district who breaks the law, undermines public safety and endangers law-abiding Americans,” according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

The move was welcomed by the DC police union chief who said that the union “supports the President’s announcement this morning to assume temporary control of the MPD in response to the escalating crime crisis in Washington, DC.” However, Mayor Muriel Bowser made this cryptic statement: "unsettling and unprecedented." "My message to residents is this: We know that access to our democracy is tenuous,"

The Daily Signal spoke with former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli about the President’s actions and the repercussions.

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I’m Daily Signal politics editor Bradley Devlin, in for Tony Kinnett. The date is August 13, 2025, and this is your Top News in 10. Let’s get into it.

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