Mashadipati: Washington Edition: Law and order

This is Washington Edition, the newsletter about money, power and politics in the nation's capital. Every Friday, White House correspondent Hadriana Lowenkron delivers a roundup of the key news and events in politics, policy and economics that you need to know.

Lower Key

As the war in Iran continues to rattle financial markets and spike gasoline prices, Donald Trump is leaning in on a safer domestic — and retooled — Republican talking point: law and order.

The president is headed to Memphis, Tennessee Monday after a weekend at his Palm Beach estate to participate in a round table where he is expected to tout the work of the Memphis Safe Task Force, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said in a post on X.

The Memphis initiative, established last fall through a presidential memorandum, has National Guard troops patrolling the city along with agents from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration, among other agencies, to stem violent crime.

US President Donald Trump arrives for the Commander in Chiefs trophy presentation in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, March 20, 2026. Trump again lashed out at military allies for not joining the war on Iran or helping to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, expressing frustration as the Islamic Republic kept up attacks on Gulf energy assets. Photographer: Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg — President Donald Trump.

Unlike the controversial surge of federal forces in cities in Democratic states, like Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, the Memphis effort was less focused on immigration and more on crime prevention. It also appears to have drawn less local pushback.

Generally, a majority of Americans haven't approved of Trump deploying the National Guard to US cities. And his approval ratings have declined in the aftermath of protests against the administration's immigration enforcement tactics, particularly after federal agents killed two US citizens during demonstrations in Minneapolis.

As a result, Trump reportedly has backed away from calling for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and now is prioritizing rounding up those accused of crimes.

That makes Memphis a good platform to highlight Trump's overhauled message.

The Tennessee city, which has historically had high crime rates, has seen significant reductions in crime over the past year, including a 26% decrease in murders, according to city police data.

Memphis Mayor Paul Young, a Democrat, said at a news conference after Trump announced the deployment, that he didn't ask for the National Guard and doesn't think it's the way to decrease crime. But he said he would work to make sure the effort would benefit the community, in what could represent a blueprint for Democratic cities in the Trump era.

"We know that there are a few individuals that drive most of the crime in our communities and that's similar across this country," Young said in a recent interview with Newsweek. "We tried to be more intentional, using data to identify who were the ones that were really driving the crime, and then going after them."

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War With Iran

The US is sending hundreds of Marines to the Middle East as it weighs a plan to seize Iran's Kharg Island oil export hub. Deploying even a small number of troops on the ground in Iran carries huge risks for Trump.

Explainer: A US attack on Kharg Island's energy facilities could disrupt most of Iran's oil exports, worsen the country's economic crisis, and send global crude prices even higher, stoking inflation in industrialized nations.

Iranian officials have become reluctant to even discuss reopening the Strait of Hormuz as they focus on surviving the US-Israeli onslaught, according to a person involved in direct, high-level contacts with Tehran.

The Iranian regime isn't close to falling and officials are coalescing around the remaining leaders, according to western intelligence assessments and people familiar with the matter.

Turmoil in the Middle East sparked fresh losses in stocks and bonds, with fears about an escalation of the war in Iran boosting oil prices as anxiety builds around the potential economic fallout of the conflict.

Trump denounced NATO as "COWARDS," ratcheting up his rhetoric against the military alliance over its refusal to help the US reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway blocked since the start of the Iran war.

The US president confronts a vise grip of his own making in the Middle East, forced to reconcile increasingly contradictory goals: total victory against Iran, and avoiding extreme, lasting damage to energy infrastructure.

Don't Miss

Trump released a national framework for regulating artificial intelligence, laying the groundwork for Congress to create a federal standard for the rapidly growing technology.

Federal prosecutors working on drug trafficking investigations have examined the activities of Colombia President Gustavo Petro as part of their ongoing probes.

The Justice Department sued Harvard University for allegedly violating Jewish students' civil rights by failing to protect them from antisemitism in the Trump administration's latest attack on the university.

Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi announced a nuclear power project in the southern US, the latest initiative stemming from an investment fund the countries established as part of a trade pact.

SoftBank is working to build a massive AI data center on federally owned land in Ohio that it's planning to power with roughly $33 billion worth of natural gas-fired electricity to be installed by the end of the decade.

Residents exiting Massachusetts took a net of $4.2 billion in adjusted gross income with them in 2023, one of the largest totals in the country, after a tax on millionaires took effect.

The Trump administration is reorganizing foreign aid at a fraction of its former size after dismantling USAID, a move critics say has cost millions of lives.

Watch & Listen

Today on Bloomberg Television's Balance of Power early edition at 1 p.m., host Joe Mathieu interviewed Christopher Smart, founder and managing partner of Arbroath Group and former Obama administration economic adviser, about the impact of the war with Iran on markets.

On the program at 5 p.m., he talks with Kevin Book, an energy expert with Clearview Energy Partners, and Aaron David Miller of Carnegie Endowment about the road ahead in the war and for oil and gas supplies.

On the Odd Lots podcast, Bloomberg's Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal talk with Gregory Brew, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group who specializes in energy and Iran about why the Trump administration may have walked into a "strategic trap" with no easy way to declare victory and get out. Listen on iHeart, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Chart of the Day

Last year, the Trump administration canceled a legally required annual survey of federal employees to gauge their job satisfaction. So the Partnership for Public Service did its own survey — and found that federal workers are demoralized, disengaged and distrustful of the political appointees who lead their agencies. Among agencies getting the lowest marks was the Department of Health and Human Services, where fewer than 1 in 20 employees said that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team motivated the workforce and maintained high standards of integrity. Administration officials questioned the survey's relatively small sample — 11,083 of more than 2 million federal employees — and said government workers remain committed to their mission of serving the public. — Gregory Korte

What's Next

Construction spending in the US for January will be reported on Monday

The Supreme Court hears arguments on asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border on Tuesday.

Import and export prices in February will be released Wednesday.

G-7 foreign ministers meet Thursday in Paris for two days.

The University of Michigan's index of consumer sentiment in March will be published March 27.

Seen Elsewhere

Trump has become convinced that some of his administration's deportation policies went too far and directing advisers to adopt a new approach on one of his key campaign promises, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A federal commission approved the design for a 24-karat gold commemorative coin bearing Trump's image, circumventing a law that says no living president can appear on US currency, the Associated Press reports.

Washington Edition: Law and order