Americans across the country are facing enormous scam risks because of their president.

In a fundraising email circulated Monday, Donald Trump told his supporters that Democrats would steal their “tariff rebate checks” if they didn’t donate money to him within the hour.

“Troubles are BOILING OVER,” the email reads. “Dems want to send your check to illegals if you don’t respond in the next hour!”

Earlier this month, Trump floated the idea that the federal government would subsidize checks to American citizens to offset the cost of his “Liberation Day” tariff plan, seemingly similar to how he distributed funds during the Covid-19 pandemic. But within hours, scammers were already attempting to cash in on the national confusion. One scam flagged by the Better Business Bureau promised call recipients with unclaimed tariff rebate checks worth upwards of $5,000.

But Trump’s team has not taken heed of just how similar their fundraising language is to that of scam callers, seemingly more than happy to jump in on the hysteria.

“Only a massive and immediate response will do,” the president’s fundraising email continued. “I need YOU to help me hit my end-of-year fundraising goal by midnight tomorrow or EVERYTHING we’ve worked so hard to accomplish could go BYE BYE.”

A similar fundraising email issued by Trump’s team earlier this month urged recipients to “confirm” their names in order to receive the government checks. At the bottom, the message claimed to be “the only tariff rebate email authorized by President Trump.” That ad was paid for by “Never Surrender, Inc.,” a recently rebranded super PAC that mechanized Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and noted that it was not official communication with the U.S. government.

Regardless of the fact that Trump’s email has more in common with well-worn messages from a Nigerian prince than official White House communication, the entire concept of a tariff rebate program is nonsensical. Economists have repeatedly pointed out that tariffs are effectively taxes paid by importers and offset to consumers, rather than a legitimate revenue stream that pools money for future use.

Still, that hasn’t stopped Trump from claiming that his administration has made “millions”—or maybe “billions”—off of the unstable trade plan.

The National Guard presence in Washington hasn’t put a dent in violent crime in the nation’s capital.

At least, that’s the reality for the families of local murder victims, who claim that the Trump administration is ignoring their plight in order to push a narrative that crime has been practically eradicated from Washington, D.C.

There were at least 128 murders in the nation’s capital over the course of 2025, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department.

One of those murders involved 17-year-old Tristan Johnson, who was shot and killed in November over what his family believed was the attempted theft of his favorite jacket. Just two weeks later, Donald Trump completely bypassed Johnson’s death to tell the nation that the city hadn’t “had a murder in six months.”

The boy’s mother, Juanita Sampler, told The New York Times that bold-faced lies about crime in the city were “heartbreaking.”

“For the president to say there’s no murders? That’s heartbreaking, that’s devastating to me,” she told the newspaper. “That’s my son. He is someone. He is somebody. His name was Tristan Johnson.”

Washington was a critical component of Trump’s agenda when he returned to office in January. Alongside other Democrat-led cities such as Los Angeles and Seattle, Trump used Washington to push a baseless claim that America’s cities have been consumed by violence—violence that could only be settled by the federalization of the target areas’ law enforcement.

That resulted in the deployment of thousands of National Guard members to different cities across the country, whom the administration used to assist ICE agents and safeguard its immigration agenda. So far, that has involved tearing parents from their children and deporting people, without trial, to a Salvadoran prison well known for its systemic torture practices and inmate deaths.

White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the Associated Press in November that Trump’s strategy had transformed Washington “from a crime-ridden mess into a beautiful, clean, safe city.” In a statement to the Times for Monday’s story, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said that the president had “done more than any elected official in recent history to address violent crime in cities around the country.”

Homicides rates in Washington have gone down, but it doesn’t seem that the National Guard has had anything to do with it. Washington now experiences roughly seven killings per month, as opposed to 2024 when it had 12 murders per month on average. But those rates were already on the decline before Trump ordered troops to occupy the capital in September.

The material truth of Washington’s crime figures have not been flattering for Trump’s attempted rebrand. Instead, he’s claimed that crime has fallen to “virtually nothing” and that the city has “no crime”—unfounded assertions that have left real victims feeling utterly forgotten.

“I want the world to know about my son,” Carlena Durbin, the mother of shooting victim Jermaine Durbin, told the Times. “He had a family. He was loved. I want his story out so at least Trump can see that too.”

Carlitos Ricardo Parias—the TikTok streamer and immigration journalist who was shot by ICE in south Los Angeles this October—has had his indictment dropped by a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Fernando M. Olgin on Saturday

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