Colombia's Council of State suspends Petro's labor reform referendum
The decree, which Petro issued last week, sparked criticism from political opposition, which labeled it a coup d'état and an overt challenge to the nation's institutions and congress, which must authorize such measures.
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The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Trump wants to put Washington DC under full federal control. Can he?
President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced intentions to place Washington D.C. under complete federal control, citing a need to curb crime. This stance comes despite city officials saying that crime rates are already on the decline. While the president holds some sway over the capital's police force and National Guard, a comprehensive federal takeover would almost certainly face legal challenges and likely be blocked in court. The U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1787, established a federal capital district to serve as the permanent seat of government. It explicitly grants Congress complete legislative authority over the district. However, Congress has historically delegated a degree of day-to-day municipal governance to other bodies. How is DC governed? A federal law passed by Congress in 1973, known as the Home Rule Act, allowed city residents to elect a mayor and council, who have some autonomy to pass their own laws. Congress still has budgetary oversight over D.C., however, and can overturn local legislation. Congress did that most recently in 2023, voting to overturn changes to Washington's laws that lowered penalties for some crimes. Who controls DC law enforcement? The Democratic mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, has authority over the city's Metropolitan Police Department. However, the Home Rule Act allows the president to take control of the MPD for federal purposes during emergencies if 'special conditions of an emergency nature exist.' A presidential takeover is limited to 30 days, unless Congress votes to extend it through a joint resolution. Trump invoked this part of the Home Rule Act on Monday, saying in an executive order that there is a "crime emergency" in the city that necessitates federal management of the police department. Bowser has pushed back on Trump's claims of unchecked violence, saying the city is "not experiencing a crime spike" and highlighting that violent crime hit its lowest level in more than three decades last year. Violent crime, including murders, spiked in 2023, turning Washington into one of the nation's deadliest cities, according to city police data. However, violent crime dropped 35 per cent in 2024, according to federal data, and it has fallen an additional 26 per cent in the first seven months of 2025. Trump also has broad control over the D.C. National Guard's 2,700 soldiers and airmen. They report directly to the president, unlike counterparts in other states and territories. Trump said on Monday he was deploying 800 National Guard troops to Washington. Can Trump 'federalize' DC? It is highly unlikely. To exert full federal control of D.C., Trump would need Congress to repeal the Home Rule Act. Such a repeal would require 60 votes in the U.S. Senate, where Trump's Republican Party has a 53-47 advantage. Democrats have been supportive of home rule for DC and are not expected to cross party lines to endorse Trump's vision. But there are ways Trump can exert more influence over the district without fully taking it over. Trump in recent months has directed federal law enforcement agencies such as the FBI to increase the police presence in Washington. Trump has broad authority to reallocate FBI personnel, and in recent months, FBI agents around the country have been given temporary assignments to help with immigration enforcement. Trump also signed an executive order in March to make D.C. "safe and beautiful," establishing a task force to increase police presence in public areas, maximize immigration enforcement, and expedite concealed carry licenses. Trump has said homeless people must move out of Washington, without offering specifics of a plan to accomplish this. "I'm going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before," Trump said on Truth Social. "The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital." The federal government owns much of Washington's parkland, so the Trump administration has legal authority to clear homeless encampments in those areas, like President Joe Biden did while in office. But the federal government cannot force people to move out of the city because they lack shelter, legal experts said.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Salmond, independence strategy and sexism: what we've learned from Nicola Sturgeon's book
Nicola Sturgeon's much-anticipated political memoir Frankly is now on sale after a cascade of hype and teasing interviews. The once stratospherically popular Scottish Nationalist leader, who led her party to repeated electoral success before becoming by her own admission a polarising force in Scottish politics, reflects on her working-class upbringing and the 'burning sense of destiny' that drove her. As Scotland's first female first minister, she participated in some of the most significant moments of modern political history – the independence referendum, the Brexit vote and its aftermath, and the Covid pandemic. But her revelations have already inflamed many of the divisions she discusses in the book. So what have we learned? Sturgeon's political partnership with her predecessor as first minister, Alex Salmond, dominates the memoir far more than any of her romantic relationships. She describes tensions that existed between them long before their catastrophic falling out over her government's handling of sexual harassment complaints against him. Salmond later stood trial and was cleared of all 13 charges, although a pattern of bullying and inappropriate behaviour towards younger female staff emerged in court. Asked directly in pre-publication interviews if she knew about Salmond's alleged behaviour, she insisted she did not, telling Sam Baker on The Shift podcast: 'I have searched my own soul over this so many times.' The memoir includes a forensic deconstruction of the conspiracy theory espoused by Salmond before his death last autumn that the allegations were confected by Sturgeon's inner circle – 'he was determined to destroy me,' she writes – and she includes the startling suggestion that Salmond himself may have leaked the initial story to the Daily Record. Her treatment of Salmond has drawn immediate fire from his allies. The former SNP MP Joanna Cherry accused Sturgeon of 'impugning a dead man who cannot defend himself' while others have demanded a retraction and an apology to his widow, Moira. David Clegg, the journalist who broke the story after receiving an anonymous envelope containing details of the harassment investigation, described Sturgeon's allegation as 'a conspiracy theory too far'. He told the BBC: 'It shows the level of suspicion and the deep rift that had formed between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon prior to his death.' Writing about the bruising parliamentary passage of her flagship gender recognition measures, aimed at making it easier for a trans person to change their legal sex, Sturgeon uses far more ameliorative language than she has done before. She admits she should have considered pausing the legislation as the debate around it became increasingly toxic, although she says she still 'fervently believes' that the rights of women and the interests of trans people are not irreconcilable. She writes how she was 'blindsided' when the case of the double rapist Adam Graham, who was initially sent to a female prison after self-identifying as a woman called Isla Bryson, came to light and 'gave a human face to fears that until then had been abstract for most people'. She accepts she 'lost the dressing room' when she was unable to answer directly whether Bryson was a woman. In interviews now she remains evasive on that question, saying someone who commits a crime of such gravity 'forfeits their right' to change gender, and explains that 'anything I say about Isla Bryson will immediately be taken and transferred to every trans person'. The campaign group For Women Scotland, which opposed the measures, has accused Sturgeon of belatedly displaying 'retro reasonableness … in order to promote her book'. Sturgeon is legally constrained in what she can write about Operation Branchform, the Police Scotland investigation into the SNP's finances, while her husband, Peter Murrell, a former party chief executive from whom she is now separated, awaits trial for embezzlement. But she describes feeling as if she had 'fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel' when the police knocked on her door to arrest Murrell in April 2023 and she was arrested herself a few months later. 'I was devastated, mortified, confused and terrified,' she says. And although she insists she knew nothing of the alleged embezzlement, she writes of the shame she felt at how others would interpret events. ''No smoke without fire' is a strong human instinct,' she writes. In another striking moment of candour, Sturgeon describes having a panic attack 'on the floor of my home office, crying and struggling to breathe' as she struggled to edit her the Scottish government's white paper on independence. The 2014 campaign was 'like trying to push a boulder up hill', she writes, and she is particularly critical of what she describes as biased and London-centric media coverage. She assesses her later strategy critically and accepts she was 'probably wrong' to try to cast the 2024 general election as a de facto independence referendum – but predicts that 'within 20 years … the UK in its current form will no longer exist'. In a line pored over by interviewers, she writes: 'I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary.' Pressed on what she meant by this, Sturgeon – who has been the subject of prurient and often lesbophobic speculation in the past – said she was not intending 'some big revelation' and that she hoped in future her relationships would remain private matters. On the breakup of her marriage, she writes that the strain of the police investigation was 'impossible to bear'. She also writes with graphic honesty about the gruelling miscarriage she went through aged 40, and shares the name she had chosen for the baby, whom she believed would be a girl, Isla. The title of the memoir, Frankly, raised some eyebrows when it was announced considering the repeated criticisms of Sturgeon's government for its lack of transparency, in particular during the Covid pandemic. Evidence to the UK Covid inquiry revealed mass deletions of WhatsApp messages by senior Scottish government figures and unminuted crisis meetings. Sturgeon reveals she sought counselling for the first time in her life when she came 'perilously close to a breakdown' after giving evidence to the inquiry – where she was confronted with a 'devastating' accusation that she had been self-serving and politically motivated. Sturgeon writes of the misogyny and sexism she faced – 'so endemic that I didn't always recognise it as such' – and the pressures she put on herself. 'Living up to the honour of being the first female incumbent of my office became almost an obsession,' she says. She sets out how a male MSP bullied her during her first term at Holyrood, spreading a 'horrible' rumour that she had injured a boyfriend during oral sex and giving her the nickname 'gnasher'. She also writes about how she was accompanied by almost crippling self-doubt, but she told Baker on The Shift that she believed her lack of confidence became her 'superpower' as it fuelled her ferocious work ethic and determination to succeed. Sturgeon says at the conclusion of her memoir that she is more content and more resilient than she has ever been, while the process of writing had been 'a form of therapy in action … amidst a constant cacophony of voices claiming to know me better than I do myself'. She has hinted she may leave Scotland for a time, telling a BBC News podcast: 'This may shock many people to hear, but I love London.'
Reuters
3 hours ago
- Reuters
Can Trump take control of Washington to fight the city's crime?
Aug 12 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to put Washington, D.C., under full federal control to reduce crime, even as city officials stressed crime is already falling. While Trump does have some authority over the capital city's police force and National Guard soldiers, a full federal takeover would likely be blocked in court. Here is why. The U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1787, provided for the creation of a federal capital district to serve as the permanent seat of the government. The Constitution made clear that Congress has complete legislative authority over the district. But Congress has historically delegated at least some of the day-to-day work of municipal government to other entities. A federal law passed by Congress in 1973, known as the Home Rule Act, allowed city residents to elect a mayor and council, who have some autonomy to pass their own laws. Congress still has budgetary oversight over D.C., however, and can overturn local legislation. Congress did that most recently in 2023, voting to overturn changes to Washington's laws that lowered penalties for some crimes. The Democratic mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, has authority over the city's Metropolitan Police Department. But the Home Rule Act allows the president to take control of the MPD for federal purposes during emergencies if 'special conditions of an emergency nature exist.' A presidential takeover is limited to 30 days, unless Congress votes to extend it through a joint resolution. Trump invoked this part of the Home Rule Act on Monday, saying in an executive order that there is a "crime emergency" in the city that necessitates federal management of the police department. Bowser has pushed back on Trump's claims of unchecked violence, saying the city is "not experiencing a crime spike" and highlighting that violent crime hit its lowest level in more than three decades last year. Violent crime, including murders, spiked in 2023, turning Washington into one of the nation's deadliest cities, according to city police data. However, violent crime dropped 35% in 2024, according to federal data, and it has fallen an additional 26% in the first seven months of 2025. Trump also has broad control over the D.C. National Guard's 2,700 soldiers and airmen. They report directly to the president, unlike counterparts in other states and territories. Trump said on Monday he was deploying 800 National Guard troops to Washington. It is highly unlikely. To exert full federal control of D.C., Trump would need Congress to repeal the Home Rule Act. Such a repeal would require 60 votes in the U.S. Senate, where Trump's Republican Party has a 53-47 advantage. Democrats have been supportive of home rule for DC and are not expected to cross party lines to endorse Trump's vision. But there are ways Trump can exert more influence over the district without fully taking it over. Trump in recent months has directed federal law enforcement agencies such as the FBI to increase the police presence in Washington. Trump has broad authority to reallocate FBI personnel, and in recent months, FBI agents around the country have been given temporary assignments to help with immigration enforcement. Trump also signed an executive order in March to make D.C. "safe and beautiful," establishing a task force to increase police presence in public areas, maximize immigration enforcement, and expedite concealed carry licenses. Trump has said homeless people must move out of Washington, without offering specifics of a plan to accomplish this. "I'm going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before," Trump said on Truth Social. "The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital." The federal government owns much of Washington's parkland, so the Trump administration has legal authority to clear homeless encampments in those areas, like President Joe Biden did while in office. But the federal government cannot force people to move out of the city because they lack shelter, legal experts said.
