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In today's issue:

▪ Trump eyes more cities for crime crackdown

▪ Redistricting may spread beyond Texas, California

▪ Will crypto campaign cash clobber Democrats?

▪ Vance: Peace still possible in Ukraine

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President Trump has escalated his threat to deploy National Guard troops to major cities to address crime as the federal crackdown in Washington, D.C., enters its third week.

Trump expanded his federal policing push over the weekend by suggesting he would turn next to Baltimore and Chicago, cities like D.C. that are overwhelmingly blue and represented by Democratic mayors.

But unlike D.C., where the federal government has some authority to exert over policing, other cities retain more local control. Trump issued an emergency order Aug. 11 to federalize crime fighting in Washington for 30 days under a law unique to D.C. Trump also controls the D.C. National Guard, while governors typically command other states' Guards.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), both touted by Democrats as potential 2028 presidential contenders, have rebuffed Trump's threat to send troops and pull federal funding for their state's largest cities.

Trump threatened to send the National Guard to Baltimore to "quickly clean up the crime,” squaring off with Moore, who invited Trump by letter last week to join him for a public safety walk through Charm City.

“As President, I would much prefer that he clean up this crime disaster before I go there for a walk,” Trump wrote. He suggested he could rescind federal funding for the Francis Scott Key Bridge’s nearly $2 billion reconstruction in Baltimore while separately swiping at Moore’s Bronze Star, received last year.

“After only one week, there is NO CRIME AND NO MURDER IN DC!” the president wrote, labeling Moore a "failing, because of Crime, Governor."

The comments spurred Moore to hit back in his own social media posts Sunday, writing at one point, "Donald Trump can stay obsessed with me – that’s fine – but I’ll stay obsessed with working in partnership to continue our historic success of driving down crime in Baltimore."

Chicago, according to The Washington Post, is part of Pentagon plans for deployment of several thousand National Guard troops. Trump bashed the Windy City on Friday, while Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) warned the president’s deployment of troops would be an illegal abuse of power.

Pritzker rebuffed the White House on social media. “The State of Illinois at this time has received no requests or outreach from the federal government asking if we need assistance, and we have made no requests for federal intervention,” the governor posted on Saturday.

The president says law and order, removal of homeless encampments and urban upkeep are his policy goals.

The Justice Department and D.C.’s police union released interim data showing a decrease in reported violent crimes and zero murders during the president’s public safety crackdown. The union, the administration and Republicans in Congress want to repeal the D.C. Council’s police reforms, passed in 2020 and again in 2022, as dangerously lenient, including with teenage carjackers, while being too restrictive with law enforcers.

While the president has boasted that Washington is crime free after just days of federal intervention, news outlets, lawyers, advocacy groups and eyewitnesses assert a centerpiece of the government’s crackdown in D.C. appears to be arrests of migrants without legal status.

As of Friday morning, 300 of the 719 people arrested in D.C. as part of the federal crackdown on crime were migrants without legal status.

White House immigration czar Tom Homan told NewsNation the administration envisions the deployment of 1,700 troops across 19 states as a “force multiplier” for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

▪ NBC News: ICE agents may enter D.C. schools this year, the federal government says.

▪ The Hill: Trump said he will request $2 billion from Congress for Washington, D.C., beautification and improvement projects and anticipates bipartisan support.

Trump in Los Angeles in June tested his federal authority to deploy active-duty Marines and National Guard members to bolster immigration enforcement amid pushback from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), whose legal challenge is being tested in the courts as the president expands his authority in the nation’s capital. Trump removed the troops he mobilized in California a month later.

In Washington, the Pentagon says 2,200 National Guard troops deployed as of Sunday are to be armed, even as news outlets report they’re mobilized in the city’s safest areas.

▪ The Hill: A possible government shutdown at the end of September coincides with tensions over the District’s budget.

▪ Fox News Sunday: Congress will need a continuing resolution at the end of the fiscal year to keep the government operating because there is insufficient time to complete Senate appropriations bills, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) predicted.

▪ The Hill: Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D) vowed on Sunday to advocate for Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s due process after the undocumented migrant accused of federal crimes, deported and then returned to the U.S. was temporarily released from a Tennessee prison and joined his family. Abrego Garcia must report this morning to an ICE field office in Baltimore. His lawyers say the government threatens to deport the 30-year-old sheet metal worker to Uganda if he does not plead guilty to human smuggling charges.

3 Things to Know Today

1. Triple-digit heat on the West Coast may ease today in some states. A Napa Valley wildfire in California was contained overnight.

2. Here’s why COVID is spreading again in

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