D.C. Cops Cooked the Stats. The Feds Just Started the Cleanup
Plus: Alito torches Jackson at the Supreme Court, a shootout near the White House, RFK takes aim at the pediatric pill mill, and the abortion pill bounces back into the mail.
Hey Friend!
If you missed yesterday’s Rivera and Reeves, we announced we’re heading into a summer hiatus. The pod will be back in September — fresh, rested, and probably with stronger opinions than when we left.
Which means I’m sitting on a chunk of newly recovered time, and I’m spending it on something a lot of you have been asking about for a while. Launching it here on It’s Meseidy. Going back to my roots a little. More on the what and when very soon — I’m cooking up something good. 😉
In today’s Brief:
Thirteen D.C. Metro officials are on administrative leave for allegedly making your city look safer than it was.
A 6-3 SCOTUS ruling lit a fuse, and Alito just publicly torched Justice Jackson’s “baseless and insulting” solo dissent.
Secret Service agents shot a Texas man near the National Mall after he drew a gun and fired first. A juvenile bystander was hit.
RFK Jr. wants doctors paid to take kids off psychiatric meds. The numbers he laid out are bracing.
The abortion pill is back in the mail until at least Monday at 5 p.m., courtesy of an Alito stay.
Quick Rundown: the EEOC sues the New York Times, the GOP keeps flirting with Fetterman, and the WHCD shooter gets indicted on four counts.
The D.C. Police Were Cooking Crime Stats. Thirteen Are Now Out.
Thirteen members of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department have been placed on administrative leave pending termination after a federal probe found the department had been quietly massaging crime classifications to make the city’s stats “artificially lower.” Roughly 6,000 reports reviewed. More than 50 witnesses interviewed.
The findings, per a House Oversight report, allege former Chief Pamela Smith pressured commanders to underreport, used humiliation and retaliatory transfers, and publicly dressed down anyone who flagged actual increases in violent crime. Smith resigned in December.
Among the highest-ranking officials reportedly facing termination: 2nd District Commander Tatjana Savoy and Commander Michael Pulliam. Both deny the allegations.
I mean, we all knew this. MPD Commander Michael Pullman was put on administative leave May 2025 for fudging crime reports to make the crime numbers appear lower.
But Democrats did their best to gaslight the public into believing that crime wasn’t a major issue in DC. Followed by a meltdown when the president did something about it.
Alito Just Set Jackson’s Dissent on Fire
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 last week that Louisiana’s congressional map is unconstitutional, striking it down and limiting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in the process. On Monday, the Court fast-tracked implementation. Louisiana now has to redraw the map before the 2026 cycle.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented alone. The other two liberals didn’t sign on. She called the order “unwarranted and unwise” and accused the majority of an “appearance of bias.” That last bit set Alito off.
In a concurrence joined by Thomas and Gorsuch, Alito called Jackson’s argument “trivial at best, and the other is baseless and insulting.” He pointed out the obvious: Jackson’s preferred outcome would force Louisiana “to hold the 2026 congressional elections under a map that has been held to be unconstitutional.” Even her own bench-mates wouldn’t ride for that. Sotomayor and Kagan, two of the most reliable liberal votes on the Court, took a pass on signing onto the dissent.
Jackson’s been carving out a lane as the Court’s loudest dissenter since she got there. This time her own coalition let her go solo. That’s an institutional message.
Shootout Near the White House. The Suspect Came From Texas.
While President Trump was hosting a business event in the East Room on Monday, plainclothes Secret Service agents along the National Mall spotted the visible print of a firearm on a man near 15th Street and Independence Avenue. They moved in. He ran, turned, drew, and fired first. Agents returned fire and hit him.
A juvenile bystander was struck, reportedly grazed by a round believed to have come from the suspect’s own weapon. Both are alive. No agents were hurt.
The man has now been identified as Michael Marx, 45, of Texas. Motive is officially unknown. The lockdown also came days after accused White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter Cole Allen was indicted on four counts including attempted assassination of the President. JD Vance’s motorcade had passed through the same blocks shortly before agents engaged.
Vance’s motorcade was nearby. The President was inside. A second armed man got within four blocks of the White House in two weeks. Senate Republicans are responding with a $1 billion Secret Service infusion tucked into the immigration package.
Quiet story for now.
On My Feed
Press Secretary Rubio
Shake Up Coming to FDA?
The Presidential Fitness Test is Back
California Governor Debate
RFK Jr. Wants Doctors Paid to Take Kids Off Psych Meds
At a Make America Healthy Again summit Monday, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a federal initiative aimed at “our nation’s mental health crisis by addressing the overuse of psychiatric medications, especially among children.”
The numbers he put on the table:
Over 16% of American adults are on antidepressants.
10% of children carry a psychiatric prescription.
Roughly 30% of college students used a psychiatric drug in the past year.
More than half of nursing home residents are on antidepressants.
Kennedy’s prescription: a Dear Colleague letter to providers, new CMS guidance reimbursing physicians who help patients safely taper off, SAMHSA training on deprescribing protocols, and a hard pivot toward therapy, family support, diet, and movement. Informed consent. Reassessment.
Even Kamala Harris stepdaughter is rethinking 15 years of SSRI’s after listening to the WSJ podcast.
If you’re a mom who’s been told your eight-year-old needs a stimulant to sit still in third grade, this could be for you. The pediatric pill pipeline has been a one-way street for two decades. Kennedy is the first HHS Secretary in memory to say out loud that the off-ramp matters as much as the on-ramp.
The institutional pushback will be loud. The doctors getting paid to write the scripts have a business model. The doctors who’ll get paid to unwind them are about to have one too.
Will they claim it “kooky” becaue it’s RFK Jr. proposal? Probably.
The Abortion Pill Is Back in the Mail. For Now.
Justice Alito on Monday paused a Fifth Circuit order that would have forced doctors to dispense mifepristone in person, restoring mail-and-telehealth access to the abortion pill until 5 p.m. Monday, May 11.
The administrative stay buys the Court time to decide whether to leave the Fifth Circuit’s restrictions in place while litigation runs its course. Louisiana AG Liz Murrill responded on X with the line of the day: “Big abortion pharma claims they need an emergency stay because they will lose massive amounts of money if they can’t kill more babies quickly and efficiently by mail without medical oversight.”
Mifepristone-by-mail is the post-Dobbs workaround that’s swallowed about half the chemical-abortion market. Whatever the Court does next Monday tells you whether Dobbs has a real enforcement floor or whether the FDA’s 2021 telehealth rule effectively neutralizes red-state law.
Quick Rundown
The EEOC just sued the New York Times. The complaint alleges the Times discriminated against a longtime white male editor when then-real-estate editor Nikita Stewart “deviated from normal hiring protocol” to promote a white woman with no real-estate experience as her deputy. Civil rights law applies to everyone. Wild concept.
The GOP keeps flirting with Fetterman. Trump told Sean Hannity to pass along that the party would back him with “more money than he ever dreamed of.” Fetterman told Politico he’d “be a shitty Republican” and isn’t switching. He’s voted with Democrats 93% of the time anyway, per his own number.
Cole Allen indicted on four charges. The accused White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter was indicted Tuesday on attempted assassination of the President, two firearm counts, and assault on a federal officer. He had a Mossberg shotgun, a .38 pistol, multiple knives, and a small armory’s worth of holsters and tools at the Hilton.
The “privately funded” ballroom isn’t, fully. Senate Republicans tucked $1 billion into a reconciliation package for Secret Service security upgrades “relating to the East Wing Modernization Project.” Trump originally said donors would cover the $400M build.
Trump pulled back the Hormuz operation. The President suspended the Strait of Hormuz naval operation citing progress on Iran nuclear talks.
Let’s Talk About It
The D.C. police were quietly classifying serious offenses down a tier so the dashboard looked nicer. If you’ve live somewhere where you were told “crime is down” but headlines didn’t match what you actually saw on your block, where are you?
Did you see the WH press breifing yesterday? Does anyone know how many jobs Rubio has now?
Drop your takes in the comments. See you Friday. Stay nosy.
The Brief publishes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Forward to someone who needs to understand what’s actually happening.