President Trump declares a “Crime Emergency” in Washington, D.C., and federalizes the city’s police force to crack down on rampant crime. In a novel deal, the Trump administration will receive a 15% cut of revenue from U.S. tech companies’ AI chip sales to China. The Trump administration reclaims border wall materials sold off by the previous administration and allocates billions to complete the project.

It’s Tuesday, August 12, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.

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Trump Federalizes D.C. Police Amid Crime Wave

Topline: President Trump announced on Monday that he is placing the Washington, D.C., police department under federal control in an unprecedented effort to crack down on the capital’s rampant violent crime.

Invoking the Home Rule Act, President Trump signed an executive order officially declaring a “Crime Emergency” in D.C. “Today, we’re formally declaring a Public Safety Emergency,” Trump said from the White House. “I don’t like being up here talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting this once beautiful Capital was.” Attorney General Pam Bondi will now assume control of the city’s police department. Trump also announced the deployment of at least 800 National Guardsmen and hundreds of other federal agents to the city to “immediately begin massive enforcement operations targeting known gangs, drug dealers and criminal networks.”

The move was prompted by D.C.’s soaring crime rate, which last year was the fourth highest in the country. The president is also pushing Congress to eliminate the city’s no-cash bail policy and end its sanctuary status for illegal aliens.

The D.C. Police Union released a statement supporting the federal intervention as a “critical stopgap.” Democrats and the legacy media have decried the move, with some calling it the “road to authoritarianism.”

U.S. Gets Cut of AI Chip Sales to China

Topline: In a first-of-its-kind deal, tech giants Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the U.S. government a 15% share of the revenue they earn from selling certain artificial intelligence chips to China.

The agreement is a compromise that allows the American companies to continue selling to the lucrative Chinese market while avoiding a total ban, which the administration had considered due to national security concerns. The specific chips are critical for AI development and have both commercial and military applications.

President Trump explained that the deal was possible because the chip in question, the H20, is an “old chip” and that China’s Huawei already has a similar one. “If I’m going to do that, I want you to pay us as a country something, because I’m giving you a release,” Trump said.

While Nvidia and AMD are relieved to have avoided a total ban, other tech industry leaders are reportedly “panicking” over the precedent of the government taking a cut of a private company’s revenue. Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, appeared to support the administration’s goals, saying, “We want the American tech stack to be the global standard.”

Trump Reclaims Border Wall Materials

Topline: The Trump administration is reclaiming border wall materials that the previous administration was set to auction off, using billions in new funding to restart construction and complete the “Big Beautiful Wall.”

The company GovPlanet, which had been tasked with selling the materials, has reached an agreement with the administration to transfer them back to the government “at-cost” over the next 90 days. The move reverses a Biden administration effort that critics said was intended to hamstring Trump’s border security agenda.

The “Big Beautiful Bill” allocated nearly $50 billion to complete the border wall. The administration has pointed to recent tragedies as evidence that the wall is still necessary. On Monday, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, an illegal alien who raped and murdered Rachel Morin, a mother of five, in 2023, was sentenced to life in prison.

In a victim impact statement, Morin’s son said, “Every time I see a picture of her, I think about the life I had with her and my four sisters. I miss her.”

The judge told Hernandez, “You are not a candidate for rehabilitation. You took a life that was not yours to take.”

CNN’s chief data analyst said on Monday that the numbers don’t lie: the Democrat and media driven pressure campaign to use the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s case as a weapon against President Donald Trump is falling flat.

Harry Enten broke down the polling during a segment with anchor Kate Bolduan, telling her that persistent efforts to tie Trump to his administration’s handling of case had failed to do any real damage. “This is, from at least a political point of view, quickly turning into a dud of a story,” he said.

WATCH:

The Epstein saga is becoming a political dud & nothingburger.

-Google searches for Epstein are down 89% from just 3 weeks ago.
-Trump’s approval rating is holding steady & much higher than term 1 at this point in his presidency
-Less than 1% say it’s the nation’s top issue pic.twitter.com/rnp2M8qzdf

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) August 11, 2025

“Take a look here, Google searches for Epstein down 89% versus just three weeks ago, falling through the floor! It is no longer the top term searched alongside Donald Trump’s name,” Enten explained. “That’s been trading off between tariffs and Vladimir Putin with obviously the meeting coming up later this week. But at this particular point, the American people’s interest in this story, it’s quickly becoming something of a nothingburger.”

Bolduan pressed him on overall polling, asking whether there was any indication that support for Trump was waning in reaction to his administration’s handling of the case and the related files that have not yet been released.

“No, not really,” Enten replied. “I mean, take a look here. Let’s take a look at the overall numbers. Trump’s approval rating in July of 2025, it was 45%. It’s still well within that margin of error here at 44%. And you compare that to where he was in his first term at this point, he was at 37%. So he’s seven points higher, very much in a different political universe now, significantly higher in terms of his overall approval rating than he was at this point in his first term.”

“And more than that, among Republicans, his approval rating is near a record high, hovering right at about that 90% mark,” Enten added. “So no, he hasn’t lost any of that base. And when it comes to that center of the electorate, he’s basically holding on there. And his overall approval rating, 44%, is pretty gosh darn good for him, considering where he was at this point in term number one.”