By CHRIS MEGERIAN and JACQUELYN MARTIN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump plans to join a Thursday evening patrol in the nation’s capital as federal authorities deploy checkpoints around the city and sometimes ask people for their immigration status after stopping them.

“I’m going to be going out tonight with the police and with the military,” the Republican president told Todd Starnes, a conservative commentator.

Trump’s presence during his controversial crackdown, which has lasted for two weeks, would be the latest show of force from the White House. Hundreds of federal agents and National Guard soldiers have surged into Washington this month, leaving some residents on edge and creating tense confrontations in the streets.

A Washington Metropolitan Police Department special operations division officer directs traffic during a checkpoint on New York Avenue in northeast Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday visited some of the troops at Union Station, showing their support while protestors chanted “free D.C.”

Although the city has historically struggled with crime, statistics show the problem was declining before Trump declared there was a crisis that required his intervention.

Immigration enforcement has been a core part of the crackdown, rattling people in some of the city’s neighborhoods. A daycare was partially closed on Thursday when staff became afraid to go to work because they heard about federal agents nearby. An administrator asked parents to keep their children at home if possible.

Other day cares have stopped taking kids on daily walks because of fears about encountering law enforcement.

Since Aug. 7, when Trump began surging federal agents into the city, there have been 630 arrests, including 251 people who are in the country illegally, according to the White House. Trump has been ratcheting up the pressure since then, seizing control of the D.C. police department on Aug. 11 and deploying more National Guard troops, mostly from Republican-led states.

Soldiers have been largely stationed in downtown areas, such as monuments on the National Mall and transit stations.

South Carolina National Guardsmen patrol at the base of the Washington Monument, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

However, federal agents are operating more widely through the city. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser acknowledged the proliferation of traffic checkpoints on Thursday.

“The surge of federal officers is allowing for different types of deployments, more frequent types of deployments, like checkpoints,” Bowser said.

Not a normal traffic stop

On Thursday morning, as Martin Romero rode through Washington’s Rock Creek Park on his way to a construction job in Virginia, he saw police on the road up ahead. He figured it was a normal traffic stop, but it wasn’t.

Martin Romero, 41, of Glen Burnie, Md., talks to the members of his work crew who are left after they were stopped by Park Police during a traffic stop near Rock Creek Park, and two of the workers in their truck were taken away by ICE, Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025, in Washington. “I feel desperate for my co-workers, for their families,” says Romero. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Romero, 41, said that U.S. Park Police were telling pickup trucks with company logos to pull over, reminding them that commercial vehicles weren’t allowed on park roads. They checked for licenses and insurance information, and then U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents came over.

Romero said there were two agents on one side of his truck and three on the other. He started to get nervous as the agents asked where they were from and whether they were in the country illegally.

“We just came here to work,” Romero said afterwards. “We aren’t doing anything bad.”

Two people in his truck were detained and the agents didn’t give a reason, he said. He also saw three other people taken from other vehicles.

“I feel really worried because they took two of our guys,” he said. “They wouldn’t say where they’re taking them or if they’ll be able to come back.”

Romero said he called his boss, who told him to just head home. They wouldn’t be working today.

Enrique Martinez, a supervisor at the construction company, came to the scene afterwards. He pondered whether to call families of the detained men.

“This has never happened to our company before,” Martinez said. “I’m not really sure what to do.”

Checkpoints are legal, to a point

The Supreme Court has upheld the use of law enforcement and government checkpoints for specific purposes, such as for policing the border and for identifying suspected drunk drivers.

But there are restrictions on that authority, especially when it comes to general crime control. Jeffrey Bellin, a former prosecutor in Washington and professor at Vanderbilt Law School who specializes in criminal law and procedures, said the Constitution doesn’t allow “the government to be constantly checking us and stopping to see if we’re up to any criminal activity.”

Washington Metropolitan Police Department special operations division officers arrest a person during a traffic checkpoint on New York Avenue in northeast Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

He said checkpoints for a legally justifiable purpose — like checking for drivers’ licenses and registrations — cannot be used as “subterfuge” or a pretext for stops that would otherwise not be allowed. And though the court has affirmed the use of checkpoints at the border, and even some distance away from it, to ask drivers about immigration status, Bellin said it was unlikely the authority would extend to Washington.

Anthony Michael Kreis, a professor at Georgia State College of Law, said the seemingly “arbitrary” and intrusive nature of the checkpoints in the capital could leave residents feeling aggrieved.

“Some of the things could be entirely constitutional and fine, but at the same time, the way that things are unfolding, people are suspicious — and I think for good reason,” he said.

From Los Angeles to D.C.

There are few places in the country that have been unaffected by Trump’s deportation drive, but his push into D.C. is shaping into something more sustained, similar to what has unfolded in the Los Angeles area since early June.

In Los Angeles, immigration officers — working with the Border Patrol and other federal agencies — have been a near-daily presence at Home Depots, car washes and other highly visible locations.

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In a demonstration of how enforcement has affected routines, the bishop of San Bernardino, California, formally excused parishioners of their weekly obligation to attend Mass after immigration agents detained people on two parish properties.

Immigration officials have been an unusually public presence, sending horse patrols to the city’s famed MacArthur Park and appearing outside California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s news conference last week on congressional redistricting. Authorities said an agent fired at a moving vehicle last week after the driver refused to roll down his window during an immigration stop.

The National Guard and Marines were previously in the city for weeks on an assignment to maintain order amid protests.

A federal judge blocked the administration from conducting indiscriminate immigration stops in Southern California but authorities have vowed to keep the pressure on.

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Ashraf Khalil in Washington and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed reporting.

By GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press

When the U.S. Justice Department sought information from doctors and clinics that provide gender-affirming care for young transgender patients, officials weren’t just asking for policies. They also demanded information about individual patients.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced in a statement July 9 that the department had sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics that provide the care. The request represented an elevation in President Donald Trump’s administration’s effort to halt the medical treatment for transgender youth, even in states where it’s legal.

Bondi said the requests were part of investigations into “healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.” No charges have been announced so far, but the probes have had a chilling impact on the availability of care.

Specifics of the requests were not made public until a court filing in a separate lawsuit this week.

Advocates say the requests are invasive and unnecessary.

“It turns doctor-patient confidentiality into government surveillance,” said Jennifer Levi, GLAD Law’s senior director of Transgender and Queer Rights.

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At least one of the requests seeks names and social security numbers of patients

The subpoena sent to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia on June 11 was included in a legal filing Monday in challenges from the states of Minnesota, Oregon and Washington to the administration’s attempts to bar the treatment for patients under age 19.

The 18-page document demanded an expansive list of documents be provided.

Among them: Documents to identify “by name, date of birth, social security number, address and parent/guardian information” patients who were prescribed puberty blockers or hormone therapy.

The requests also covered personnel files for various categories of hospital employees, information about patient intake procedures and about which insurance billing codes the hospital used for gender-affirming care.

The due date listed was July 9.

It’s not clear whether subpoenas sent to other providers were identical.

Neither the hospital nor the Department of Justices responded to requests for comment on Thursday.

Gender-affirming care has emerged as part of a political and legal battle

Gender-affirming care includes a range of medical and mental health services to support a person’s gender identity, including when it’s different from the sex they were assigned at birth. It encompasses counseling, medications that block puberty and hormone therapy to produce physical changes as well as surgeries to transform chests and genitals, though those are rare for minors.

Most major medical groups say access to the treatment is important for those with gender dysphoria and see gender as existing along a spectrum.

While there’s wide, if not universal, medical consensus, the political situation is contentious.

Since 2021, at least 27 states have adopted laws restricting or banning the care for minors, and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June affirmed the states’ right to have such policies, at least under certain conditions.

Trump has signed one executive order defining sex as only male or female — and as unchangeable — and another that seeks to end federal funding of the care for patients under 19. He’s also sought to bar transgender military service members and keep transgender athletes out of certain sports competitions.

And the administration released a document that questions the standards of treatment for transgender youth and suggests relying solely on talk therapy rather than medical interventions.

The investigation is one reason some clinics have halted the care

At least eight major hospitals and hospital systems announced in July that they were stopping or restricting gender-affirming care, even though they’re in states where it is not banned.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is not among those that have announced they’re curtailing care, though a place it has referred patients for surgeries — Penn Medicine — said in May that it would no longer perform them on patients under 19.

A group of Democratic state officials across the country are suing the Trump administration, claiming it is intimidating healthcare providers to stop the care.

GLAD Law’s Levi said the investigation is just one of many factors that have led providers to change their policies.

“It’s chilling,” she said.

By BERNARD CONDON, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Federal auto safety regulators are investigating why Tesla has repeatedly broken rules requiring it to quickly tell them about crashes involving its self-driving technology, a potentially significant development given the company’s plans to put hundreds of thousands of driverless cars on U.S. roads over the next year.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a filing on Thursday that Tesla’s reports on “numerous” incidents involving its driver assistance and self-driving features were submitted far too late — several months after the crashes instead of within five days as required.

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The probe comes two months after the electric vehicle maker run by Elon Musk started a self-driving taxi service in Austin, Texas, with hopes of soon offering it nationwide. The company also hopes to send over-the-air software updates to millions of Teslas already on the road that will allow them to drive themselves.

Investors enthusiastic about such plans have kept Tesla stock aloft despite plunging sales and profits due to boycotts over Musk’s support for U.S. President Donald Trump and far-right politicians in Europe.

The safety agency said the probe will focus on why Tesla took so long to report the crashes, whether the reports included all the necessary data and details and if there are crashes that the agency still doesn’t know about.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment, but the agency noted that the company has told it the delays were “due to an issue with Tesla’s data collection,” which Tesla says has now been fixed.

The new investigation follows another probe that began in October into potential problems with Tesla’s self-driving technology in foggy weather and other low visibility conditions, which has led to several accidents including one death. That probe involves 2.5 million Tesla vehicles.

Tesla stock fell nearly 1% in midday trading Thursday to $321.

By JAKE OFFENHARTZ, MICHAEL R. SISAK and ANTHONY IZAGUIRRE, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A former top aide to New York City Mayor Eric Adams was hit Thursday with a second wave of bribery charges in a swirling corruption investigation of City Hall, with prosecutors alleging she exchanged political favors for cash, home renovations and a speaking role on a TV show.

Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’ former chief of staff and closest confidant, her son Glenn D. Martin, former state Sen. Jesse Hamilton and two of Adams’ political donors, siblings Tony and Gina Argento, are among those facing new charges.

Lewis-Martin and the other defendants were expected to appear in court on Thursday.

Adams himself has not been charged, but the case will thrust the corruption allegations that have dogged the Democrat back into focus as he seeks to regain voters’ trust ahead of a contested election in November. A spokesperson for Adams did not immediately return a request for comment.

On Thursday, Lewis-Martin was charged with four additional counts of conspiracy and bribe receiving in a series of indictments Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg described as “classic bribery conspiracies that had a deep and wide-ranging impact on city government.”

“As alleged, Lewis-Martin consistently overrode the expertise of public servants so she could line her own pockets. While she allegedly received more than $75,000 in bribes and an appearance on a TV show, every other New Yorker lost out,” Bragg said in a statement.

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Lewis-Martin’s attorney, Arthur Aidala, vowed to fight the charges, saying, “This is not justice — it is a distortion of the truth and a troubling example of politically motivated ‘lawfare.’”

She resigned last December ahead of her indictment in a separate case in which she and her son are accused of taking bribes in exchange for speedy approval of construction projects. That case is still pending. She has continued to volunteer for the Adams campaign while awaiting trial.

The fresh round of indictments brought against Adams’ close allies could add to political headwinds already facing the mayor, whose own indictment on federal bribery charges was abandoned by President Donald Trump’s administration earlier this year.

The corruption scandals have opened the door to challengers in the upcoming election, including the Democratic primary winner, Zohran Mamdani, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Adams is running as an independent, claiming the case brought against him — in which he was accused of accepting bribes and travel perks from foreign interests — had prevented him from campaigning in the Democratic primary. Those charges were dismissed in April following an extraordinary intervention by U.S. Justice Department officials, who said the case was impeding Adams from assisting in Trump’s immigration crackdown.

In the months since, the status of other federal probes linked to Adams’ key allies, including his former police commissioner and several deputy mayors, has remained uncertain. The new charges were brought by Bragg, who prosecuted Trump last year and who is also running for reelection.

Both federal and state investigators seized Lewis-Martin’s phone at Kennedy Airport last September as she returned from a trip to Japan with several colleagues.

Hours later, Lewis-Martin appeared on her attorney’s radio show, denying that she had “done anything illegal to the magnitude or scale that requires the federal government and the DA’s office to investigate us.”

Both she and her son pleaded not guilty to charges of accepting improper gifts worth more than $100,000 in exchange for speeding construction approvals for two real estate investors.

Earlier this week, a spokesperson for Adams’ campaign, Todd Shapiro, said the mayor would stand with Lewis-Martin.

“Ingrid has dedicated her life to the people of New York City,” Shapiro said, “and she deserves the presumption of innocence and the support of those who know her best.”

Last week, federal prosecutors wrapped up their two remaining Adams-related cases.

Mohamed Bahi, who served as the mayor’s chief liaison to the Muslim community, pleaded guilty to soliciting straw donations to Adams’ campaign, and Brooklyn construction magnate Erden Arkan was sentenced to a year of probation for his involvement in a straw donor scheme.