Update: President Trump avoids Chicago, opts instead to order National Guard troops to “fight crime” in Memphis next, he told Fox during an appearance Friday morning. “Memphis is deeply troubled. We’re gonna fix that just like we did Washington,” Trump said. “I would have preferred going to Chicago.”
In terms of violent crime, Memphis is nearly three times as dangerous as Washington, D.C., according to 2024 FBI crime statistics. Memphis recorded more than 15,000 instances with a population of 613,000 people last calendar year compared to 6,500 violent crimes in Washington, where more than 700,000 reside. Memphis ranked fourth in the nation for violent crime in 2024, behind New York City, Los Angeles and Houston.
Reminder: Trump offered false and exaggerated crime statistics to justify the Guard deployment and his takeover of the D.C. police last month.
Associated actions: “Trump’s announcement of a National Guard deployment comes just after [Tennessee Gov. Bill] Lee moved to send 50 Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers to assist the Memphis Police Department,” Fox writes.
Worth noting: This National Guard order from Trump is not necessary because Tennessee’s governor is Republican and could have sent the troops to Memphis without presidential intervention, national security law professor Steve Vladeck pointed out on social media. “Unlike in blue states, there’s just no need for this; even if circumstances warranted, Governor Lee, who still commands the TN National Guard, could’ve just sent them in himself,” said Vladeck.
Also, for now at least, “Chicago (and Illinois) won” in the showdown with Trump over presidential power, he added.
Another thing: “The number of Americans missing work for National Guard deployments or other military or civic duty is at a 19-year high, adding disruption to a labor market that’s already under strain,” the Washington Post reported Sunday. Economist Justin Wolfers called that statistic “Pretty remarkable when we’re not at war—except against our own people.”
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1980, a military coup overthrew Turkey’s government, leading to the execution of 50 people and the arrest of nearly 500,000.
Developing: Authorities in Utah believe they’ve captured the shooter responsible for killing right-wing activist Charlie Kirk on Wednesday. The suspect was reportedly captured around 10 p.m. local Thursday evening after his “father saw surveillance photos and worked with a pastor to encourage the surrender in Kirk’s killing,” the Associated Press reports.
“Officials have identified 22-year-old Tyler Robinson of Utah as the suspect in Kirk’s assassination. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said he is believed to have acted alone and that the investigation is ongoing,” AP writes.
Robinson appears to have taken part in several activities online related to “Groypers,” which is a white nationalist “far-right movement that had been critical of Kirk,” Reuters reports.
Trump says he “couldn’t care less” about extremism from far-right Americans. The president was asked during his appearance on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning, “We have radicals on the right as well, we have radicals on the left…How do we fix this country?”
Trump replied, “Well, I’ll tell you something that’s gonna get me in trouble—but I couldn’t care less,” he said. “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime, they don’t wanna see crime. They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in, we don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’ The radicals on the left are the problem. And they’re vicious, and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy, although they want men and women’s sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders.”
Related: SecNav warns U.S. sailors not to “display contempt” toward Kirk, adding in his X post that “any uniformed or civilian employee of the Department of the Navy who acts in a manner that brings discredit upon the Department, the @USNavy or the @USMC will be dealt with swiftly and decisively.” The Air Force secretary and National Guard issued their own warnings about public speech, but stopped short of overt threats.
Student shot at Naval Academy in cascade of events. On Thursday, a threat—later deemed not credible—was phoned into the school, which locked down its Annapolis campus. It’s not entirely clear what happened next, but NBC News reported that a law enforcement officer clearing the academy’s main building was mistaken for a threat by a midshipman, who “struck the officer with a parade rifle used for training.”
Academy officials said the officer then shot the student, who was evacuated to the Shock Trauma center in Baltimore and is expected to recover. Read on, here, or at USNI News.
Additional reading: “Historically Black colleges issue lockdown orders, cancel classes after receiving threats,” the Associated Press reported Thursday.
The Air Force’s second B-21 Raider has taken its first official flight, defense contractor Northrop Grumman and service Secretary Troy Meink announced separately Thursday. “With two B-21s now flying, our test campaign accelerates,” Meink wrote on X.
The aircraft “took off from Northrop Grumman’s manufacturing facility in Palmdale, Calif.[,] today, and arrived at Edwards Air Force Base after completing a robust test flight,” Grumman said in a press release.
“The addition of a second B-21 to the flight test program accelerates the path to fielding,” outgoing Air Force Chief Gen. David Allvin said in a statement. “By having more assets in the test environment, we bring this capability to our warfighters faster, demonstrating the urgency with which we’re tackling modernization,” he added.
Next up: Tests and analysis of the aircraft’s “weapons and mission systems,” including “An enhanced software package will demonstrate how Northrop Grumman will deliver seamless upgrades to the B-21 fleet, ensuring its mission capability and weapons evolve to outpace any threat,” the contractor said.
See a photo of the aircraft in flight Thursday over California, here.
New “Golden Dome” price tag warning: Veteran Pentagon budget and space policy analyst Todd Harrison just published a new, detailed accounting of costs and obstacles for President Trump’s ambitious, comprehensive missile defense shield for the U.S. he’s called “Golden Dome.”
Background: The project’s goals were first publicly discussed by President Reagan in the early 1980s, but they couldn’t be achieved due to technical limitations and exorbitant costs. More recently, however, Elon Musk’s pioneering work at SpaceX to lower the cost of satellite launches has changed that calculus, and opened the door for current U.S. military officials to proceed with plans to knit together existing missile defense elements into one network of sensors and effectors, including yet-to-be-developed space-based interceptors. (Defense One’s Patrick Tucker explained these dynamics for us in a podcast last month.)
President Trump said the system could cost just $175 billion. But Harrison is not nearly so optimistic, warning Friday, “A system that protects against the full range of aerial threats posed by peer and near-peer adversaries could cost $3.6 trillion over 20 years, and even then, it would fall short of the ‘100 percent’ effectiveness the president claimed.” That’s at least partly because, as Harrison writes, “Even small shifts in objectives for Golden Dome can produce outsized changes in cost, and the largest cost driver by far is space-based interceptors.” Indeed, he continues, “the $175 billion price tag President Trump cited only affords a much less capable system that is no match for the quantity of missiles China and Russia possess.”
New speedboat-strike wrinkle. Following a briefing to members of Congress this week by Pentagon officials, the New York Times reported Wednesday that the “Venezuelan boat that the U.S. military destroyed in the Caribbean last week had altered its course and appeared to have turned around before the attack started because the people onboard had apparently spotted a military aircraft stalking it.”
Why it matters: “The boat turning around has raised more questions about whether it posed an immediate threat to the US that necessitated military action,” CNN’s Natasha Bertrand reports. Indeed, “Even if one accepted that premise for the sake of argument, [legal experts told the Times], if the boat had already turned away, that would further undermine what they saw as an already weak claim of self-defense.”
Several senators from both parties “have indicated dissatisfaction with the administration’s rationale and questioned the legality of the action,” the Associated Press reported Friday, noting the lawmakers “view it as a potential overreach of executive authority in part by using the military for law enforcement purposes.”
“Our armed forces are not law enforcement agencies. They are not empowered to hunt down suspected criminals and kill them without trial,” Armed Services Committee ranking member Jack Reed of Rhode Island said on the Senate floor this week.
Many details remain murky. That includes “the administration’s evidence that [those on the boat] were gang members. One of the people familiar with the situation said some of those on the boat were affiliated, but not members, of Tren de Aragua,” according to AP. It’s also not clear if the boat was actually carrying drugs.
Lastly: The nominee to be Joint Chiefs vice chairman vows more procurement reforms. Gen. Christopher Mahoney, currently the Marines’ assistant commandant, told senators at his Thursday confirmation hearing that he’s ready to continue the changes launched by SecDef Hegseth earlier this year. In particular, Mahoney vowed to cut the red tape that slows programs’ progress through the Joint Requirements Oversight Council.
“The JROC—the concept—I think, is completely valid. We have to get rid of some of the bureaucracy, and [current vice chairman] Adm. [Christopher] Grady has started down that road,” Mahoney said. “We have to make the process less burdened by paperwork and more sensitive to speed and product.”
The ~100-day process sometimes swelled past 800 days, which a GAO report attributed largely to the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System, which Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered shut down in an Aug. 20 memo. Defense One’s Meghann Myers explains that and more, here.
Related reading:
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