Uh they are literally murderous ghouls who have lost their humanity?
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I would love it if, the next time this happens, the reporters just walk out once the rambling begins.
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I wonder if HCR really watched the whole thing
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I presume there’s a transcript.
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I just happened to have CNN on and Jim Acosta was reporting on this specific press conference, and he actually referred to the presser as a bait and switch. He was not happy.
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So much projection!
It’s quite difficult to stop a new virus at the source. However, when you have months of warning, it is much easier to prevent it from spreading to a new population - if you listen to epidemiologists, which he didn’t.
This is weirdly specific, which makes me wonder which of Trump’s offspring was given $1.5 B by China. Probably Ivanka, given the history there.
The way things are headed right now, we will be lucky to get out of this still without losing 2-3 million people. It’s a crime that we have lost more than 2-3 dozen people, which could have been the outcome if orange dipshit had listened to experts and done his job.
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July 15, 2020 (Wednesday)
As the coronavirus continues to ravage the country, the way the government will collect data about Covid-19 cases changed today. On March 29, Vice President Mike Pence asked hospital administrators to report data about coronavirus through three different systems: the network provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC), HHS Protect, and TeleTracking. Last Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that, beginning today, hospitals should report daily information about coronavirus cases not through the CDC system, which has been in place for 15 years, but rather through the other two.
This move has met with widespread condemnation as observers worry that Trump is trying to take control of information about the coronavirus in order to conceal it. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has hidden information this way, and Trump has made it clear he believes that if only he downplays the numbers, he can convince people to go back to work and resurrect the economy.
But there is another angle to this change that seems to me likely to be at least as attractive to the president as control over data information. That primary issue is money.
HHS Protect is developed by Palantir Technologies, a data-mining firm that works with the Pentagon and law enforcement agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Peter Thiel, a billionaire Trump supporter, co-founded the company, which last week confidentially filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. An initial public offering (IPO) would have made bucketloads of money in any case, but a federal contract to compile coronavirus information is a sweet addition to its portfolio.
The TeleTracking system also raises suspicions of a financial deal. On June 3, Chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) wrote to the director of the CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield and the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Robert P. Kadlec, to ask why HHS had awarded a $10 million no-bid contract to create this data system that duplicated the one the CDC already had. Why indeed?
There is, in the letter shifting data collection, a peculiarly nasty stick. Underlined on the first page of the instructions is that “We will no longer be sending out one-time requests for data to aid in the distribution of Remdesivir or any other treatments or supplies. This daily reporting is the only mechanism used for the distribution calculations, and the daily [sic] is needed daily to ensure accurate calculations.”
Remdesivir is one of the two drugs proven effective at combatting Covid-19. Two weeks ago, the Trump administration bought up almost all of the world’s supply of the drug for the next three months.
The rest of the world was outraged at this purchase, but at the time HHS Secretary Alex Azar defended the move by saying “To the extent possible, we want to ensure that any American patient who needs remdesivir can get it. The Trump administration is doing everything in our power to learn more about life-saving therapeutics for Covid-19 and secure access to these options for the American people.”
Now, it appears, in order to get access to it, hospitals will need to use the private data systems the administration supports.
There were two other big stories today.
First, Trump announced tonight he is replacing his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, less than four months before the election. A replacement at this stage of the game indicates trouble for the campaign. Parscale has borne the brunt of Trump’s anger at his dropping polls, which today showed Trump behind the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden by double digits. The debacle of the Tulsa rally, in which Tik Tok users and K-pop fans so badly polluted the data the campaign was harvesting from the event it almost certainly could not be used, appeared to seal his fate. This is a tad awkward for the campaign, since Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump, Jr.’s girlfriend, and Lara Trump, Eric Trump’s wife, have been receiving $15,000 a month through Parscale’s company to avoid disclosure on Federal Elections Commission reports.
Parscale will stay on the campaign as an adviser for data and digital operations.
Bill Stepien, a political operative who worked for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, will replace Parscale. Stepien got embroiled in the 2013 Fort Lee Lane Closure scandal that snarled traffic on the George Washington Bridge for four days. Intended to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee for opposing Christie, the scandal instead hurt Christie’s national ambitions. Emails and texts show that Stepien knew of the scheme before it happened. Christie fired him when the communications came to light, but Stepien was never indicted in the case.
Second, this afternoon, Twitter was hacked. Some of the nation’s most prominent politicians and entertainers lost control of their accounts, which mysteriously posted messages sounding like a giveaway. They told readers that if they sent Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, the Twitter user attacked would double the money. Eventually, Twitter was forced to shut down all verified accounts for two hours, silencing official voices on the platform Americans increasingly use to stay on top of breaking news. The attack interrupted tweets from the National Weather Service about a tornado in Illinois, for example, when the verified account providing information was shut down.
The attack was a dramatic illustration of how vulnerable our communications systems are to hackers. Casey Newton, who writes about social media and democracy at The Interface, noted that this hack was a sign of what could come: the incitement of “real-world chaos through impersonation and fraud.” Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and the former chief security officer at Facebook, told the New York Times: “This demonstrates a real risk for the elections. Twitter has become the most important platform when it comes to discussion among political elites, and it has real vulnerabilities.”
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Ah, the sweet, sweet smell of corruption…
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Wasn’t there a rumor going around not too long ago that Thiel had backed way from his support of trump? Maybe he was looking for reciprocation for his previous support? 
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July 16, 2020 (Thursday)
Today two leading Republican politicians attempted to stake out turf for the 2024 (that’s not a typo) presidential race, as Trump tried to strengthen his hand for the 2020 election.
This morning, Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican who has won high marks for his response to the coronavirus crisis in his state, published an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Still Standing. The excerpt tells the story of how Hogan’s Korean-born wife, Yumi Hogan, made the connections to get 500,000 coronavirus testing kits from South Korea when Trump—whom he eviscerates-- refused to help. (The excerpt does not mention that the kits themselves did not have swabs or reagents, and thus could not be used immediately, prompting critics to accuse Hogan of wasting the $9 million cost of the kits for a publicity stunt. The kits are now functional, and Maryland Deputy Health Secretary Fran Phillips said they would be put to use in the fall.)
Hogan is clearly trying to emerge from this crisis as the voice of the anti-Trump Republicans. The description of the book explains what readers will find inside: “In his own words and unique, plain-spoken style, Larry Hogan tells the feel-good story of a fresh American leader being touted as the ‘anti-Trump Republican.’ A lifelong uniter at a time of sharp divisions. A politician with practical solutions that take the best from all sides. An open-hearted man who has learned important lessons from his own struggles in life.”
Even before the 2020 election, Hogan is staking out turf for the election after that. The description says: “Still Standing reveals how an unlikely governor is sparking a whole new kind of politics—and introduces the exciting possibilities that lie ahead.”
Hogan is not the only one eying the future. Today Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote a Washington Post op-ed and gave a fiery speech in Philadelphia to launch the draft report of the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, a committee he organized a year ago to reexamine “the nation’s founding principles.” To chair the committee, he tapped conservative legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon, who is staunchly and vocally opposed to abortion.
The commission’s report looks laughably like a campaign document, and, of course, Pompeo has been in hot water for throwing official dinners clearly designed to build his own political base. In the report’s 60 pages are large images of America’s most famous leaders—the Framers, Abraham Lincoln, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Ronald Reagan—and at pride of place, on its second page, is a big color photo of Pompeo himself. Trump is nowhere to be seen.
The report lays out a version of American history and human rights designed to appeal to the evangelicals who count Pompeo as their own. It begins by stating that the primary tradition “that formed the American spirit” was “Protestant Christianity… infused with the beautiful Biblical teachings that every human being is imbued with dignity and bears responsibilities toward fellow human beings, because each is made in the image of God.”
Then, as it begins a strange meander through its version of American history, it seems to urge hard-core Republicans to rebel against a government that they perceive as infringing on their religious rights as Christians and on their property rights by regulating business and levying taxes. The commission’s report highlights the statement in the Declaration of Independence that if “any Form of Government becomes destructive of” unalienable rights, the people have the right “to alter or abolish” their government and to build a new one.
The report hits again and again on the words “unalienable rights,” which refers to rights that cannot be “alienated” from someone, that is, they cannot be given away or taken away. In the Declaration of Independence, the Founders identified the key unalienable rights of individuals as the right to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Although it claims to speak “from the founders’ point of view,” Pompeo’s commission disagrees. “Foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure,” it writes, “are property rights and religious liberty. A political society that destroys the possibility of either loses its legitimacy.”
The commission goes on to limit support for human rights to those issues that are covered in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are “widely recognized and accepted by the American people, through their democratically elected political representatives,” and are accepted by most peoples around the world as legitimate. This leaves out LGBTQ individuals, of course, as well as many women and girls. It also puts the definition of human rights in the hands of whichever party controls Congress, indicating that Pompeo expects Republicans to do so for a long time.
Pompeo’s op-ed was more extreme, even, than the report. In the Washington Post, Pompeo insisted “never before have America’s founding principles been under such relentless assault,” and he singled out the New York Times and its 1619 project–which highlighted the role of human enslavement in the founding of America-- as well as the removal of Confederate statues, as an example of “outrageous efforts to erase American history.”
His Philadelphia speech went even further. “Today, the very core of what it means to be an American, indeed the American way of life itself, is under attack,” he said. “Instead of seeking to improve America, leading voices promulgate hatred of our founding principles.” He continued: “They want you to believe the Marxist ideology that America is only the oppressors and the oppressed…. The Chinese Communist Party must be gleeful when they see the New York Times spout their ideology.”
It seems Hogan is bargaining that Republicans will reject Trumpism and move left; Pompeo is bargaining that he can pull the party even further rightward to a theocracy. That the two men felt comfortable tipping their hands less than four months before the next election suggests they have decided that Trump is no longer a real threat to their future.
For his part, Trump is doubling down on the idea that “LAW & ORDER” as he tweets it, will win him reelection, or, more ominously, fire up his base enough that they will contest a Democratic win long enough to throw it into the Supreme Court, or even the House of Representatives, where he might be able to pull off a win.
Under Trump’s executive order to protect monuments and federal property, in early July, the administration sent Homeland Security officers to Portland, Oregon, ostensibly to protect federal property after protesters defaced the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse with graffiti, shattered a glass door, and threw fireworks inside.
The people who broke the door and threw the fireworks were arrested immediately, but Trump maintains that Oregon’s Democratic leaders are unwilling to stop the protests, which were sparked by George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police in May. The Fox News Channel has repeatedly claimed that the protesters have done $23 million in property damage, and that claim has gotten national attention, although in fact independent analysts attribute that number almost entirely to lost sales from Pioneer Place mall due to coronavirus.
Last weekend, federal officers in Portland shot a “less-than-lethal” munition at a protester standing peacefully across the street from them, fracturing his skull and face. The outcry over that attack has not stopped the police violence. For at least two days, federal law enforcement officials without identification have been cruising downtown Portland, Oregon and detaining protesters.
Today, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf went to Portland to see the courthouse. He claimed in a letter that “Portland has been under siege for 47 straight days by a violent mob while local political leaders refuse to restore order to protect their city.” But Portland leaders say they did not ask for federal troops, and do not want them.
Oregon Governor Kate Brown (D) accused Trump of trying to drum up a confrontation to win voters. “This political theater from President Trump has nothing to do with public safety,” she said in a statement. “The President is failing to lead this nation. Now he is deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland in a blatant abuse of power by the federal government.”
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Pompeo: You cannot get the stink of Turmp off, no matter how hard you scrub.
Portland: Mayor Ted Wheeler is partly to blame for the situation, as he could have and should have ordered PPB to stand down, which would have de-escalated the protests. Now, he and Governor Brown have a responsibility to protect Oregonians from the Feds who have illegally invaded the city.
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July 17, 2020 (Friday)
Tonight, just before midnight, we heard the news that 80-year-old Georgia Representative John Lewis has passed away from pancreatic cancer.
As a young adult, Lewis was a “troublemaker,” breaking the laws of his state: he broke the laws upholding racial segregation. He organized voting registration drives and in 1960 was one of the thirteen original Freedom Riders, white and black students traveling together from Washington D.C. to New Orleans to challenge segregation. “It was very violent. I thought I was going to die. I was left lying at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery unconscious,” Lewis later recalled.
An adherent of the philosophy of non-violence, Lewis was beaten by mobs and arrested 24 times. As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC—pronounced “snick”) he helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington where the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., told more than 200,000 people gathered at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial that he had a dream. Just 23 years old, Lewis spoke at the event. Two years later, as Lewis and 600 marchers hoping to register African American voters in Alabama stopped to pray at the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, mounted police troopers charged the marchers, beating them with clubs and bullwhips. They fractured Lewis’s skull.
To observers in 1965 reading the newspapers, Lewis was simply one of the lawbreaking protesters who were disrupting the “peace” of the South. But what seemed to be fruitless and dangerous protests were, in fact, changing minds. Shortly after the attack in Selma, President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) honored those changing ideas when he went on TV to support the marchers and call for Congress to pass a national voting rights bill. On August 6, 1965, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act authorizing federal supervision of voter registration in districts where African Americans were historically under-represented.
New black voters helped to elect Lewis to Congress in 1986. He has held the seat ever since, winning reelection 16 times.
Just over a month ago, on June 7, Representative Lewis visited the BLACK LIVES MATTER public art painted on a street in Washington, D.C., with Mayor Muriel E. Bowser. Six days before, the president and Attorney General William Barr had set federal police in riot gear, wielding tear gas and rubber bullets, on the peaceful protesters nearby to clear them out of the way for a presidential photo-op. It must have been a chilling echo for Representative Lewis.
But he told Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart that he felt compelled to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza because he was “inspired” to see the peaceful protests in America and around the world against police violence. “It was so moving and so gratifying to see people from all over America and all over the world saying through their action, ‘I can do something. I can say something’,” Lewis told Capehart. “And they said something by marching and by speaking up and speaking out.”
Lewis said he had a warning for Trump. “Mr. President, the American people are tired and they cannot and will not take it anymore. They have a right to organize the unorganized. They have a right to protest in a peaceful, orderly, nonviolent fashion. You cannot stop the people with all of the forces that you may have at your command. You cannot stop people when they say ‘no.’”
This, of course, is exactly what Trump is afraid of. His polls are slipping as Americans turn away from his handling of the protests in the country and of the coronavirus pandemic. Today, Inside Elections showed 19 shifts in how states are likely to vote in 2020, and all of them were toward presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. “Trump’s job rating has been on a precipitous decline over the last two months, not only putting a second term increasingly out of reach but potentially wreaking havoc on GOP candidates down the ballot,” the site concluded.
Trump planned to win reelection with a strong economy, and bet big that ignoring the coronavirus would make the pandemic go away. He bet wrong. Many states, especially those in the South and West, reopened too early, and cases there are now spiking. Today, more than 70,000 new infections were reported in the U.S., and 18 states have had more than 100 cases per 100,000 people. More than 10,100 new cases were reported in California; more than 11,400 in Florida. We are approaching 140,000 deaths. A majority of Americans disapproves of the way Trump has handled the pandemic.
A report today in the Washington Post says that Trump has lost interest in the pandemic anyway. An adviser said the president is “not really working this anymore. He doesn’t want to be distracted by it. He’s not calling and asking about data. He’s not worried about cases.” Instead, he is worried about reelection, and has apparently concluded that pushing schools to reopen normally in just a few weeks will bring suburban women back to his standard.
According to a CNN article, Trump’s aides concluded that suburban women were stretched by homeschooling and childcare, and would welcome a return to normal. To do that, he has undercut his own medical advisers and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who worry that reopening the schools without gaining control over the virus will create new hotspots. He appears to be trying to get schools to reopen by main force. Today the White House blocked the CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield from testifying before Congress about school reopenings. “The science should not stand in the way of this,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters on Thursday.
This gamble hasn’t paid off, either. Seventy-one percent of Americans, including 53% of Republicans, say reopening the schools is risky.
Now, Trump and his people have gone all-in on dividing the country, both to hold his base and to frighten his opponents with fascist tactics. The administration has sent federal agents in battle gear to Portland, Oregon, in what it says is an attempt to protect federal property.
But the complaints against the protesters are embarrassing. Yesterday Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf released a press release warning the American people just how dangerous the “violent anarchists” in Portland are. His list includes 17 counts of graffitiing a courthouse, damaging fences, “throwing animal seed” (what does this even mean?), vandalizing two security cameras, breaking windows, and throwing fireworks.
For these acts, unidentified officers in unmarked cars are pulling people off the streets. The officers appear to be from Customs and Border Protection, and a memo obtained by The Nation says they are a special task force created by the Department of Homeland Security in response to Trump’s Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence. The task force is called the Protecting American Communities Task Force (PACT), and is supposed to combat civic unrest.
Local authorities have said repeatedly they do not want the federal officers there, and that they are deliberately aggravating the tensions in the city to gin up the Republican base with contrived images of violence. Today both of Oregon’s senator and the U.S. Attorney in Oregon called for an investigation into “constitutionally questionable arrests in Portland” by PACT.
Nonetheless, the administration has made it clear they intend to take these tactics nationwide. When asked about the arrests in Portland, Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli told NPR that “this is a posture we intend to continue not just in Portland but in any of the facilities that we’re responsible for around the country.”
It is worth noting that Wolf and Cuccinelli are both “acting” secretaries—they have not been confirmed by the Senate and thus are beholden to Trump for their jobs. Mark Morgan, who is in charge of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection is also an “acting” commissioner.
The administration’s actions in Portland are a major red flag for democracy. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has called the law enforcement officials “stormtroopers.”
As the administration escalates its attacks on democracy, many of us are weary. In June, reporter Jonathan Capehart asked Representative Lewis “what he would say to people who feel as though they have already been giving it their all but nothing seems to change.” Lewis answered: “You must be able and prepared to give until you cannot give any more. We must use our time and our space on this little planet that we call Earth to make a lasting contribution, to leave it a little better than we found it, and now that need is greater than ever before.”
“Do not get lost in a sea of despair,” Lewis tweeted almost exactly a year before his death. “Do not become bitter or hostile. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. We will find a way to make a way out of no way.”
Thank you, Sir. May you rest in power.
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If this means what I think it means, someone threw something in the direction of the police and claimed it was pig semen. Maybe shouted “go fuck yourselves” at the time.
Ok, I have a vivid imagination, I admit.
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July 18, 2020 (Saturday)
Today was a relatively quiet news day as the nation mourned the loss of Representative John Lewis, so you can ignore this post at will without feeling like you’re going to miss out.
But for those of you who don’t mind a little history, today is an important historical anniversary.
On July 18, 1863, at dusk, the Black soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry of the U.S. Army charged the walls of Fort Wagner, a fortification on Morris Island off Charleston Harbor that covered the southern entrance to the harbor and thus was key to enabling the U.S. government to take the city. The 600 soldiers of the 54th made up the first Black regiment for the Union, organized after the Emancipation Proclamation called for the enlistment of African American soldiers. The 54th’s leader was a Boston abolitionist from a leading family: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.
Shaw and his men had shipped out of Boston at the end of May 1863 for Beaufort, South Carolina, where the Union had gained an early foothold in its war to prevent the Confederates from dismembering the country. The men of the 54th knew they were not like other soldiers; they were symbols of how well Black men would fight for their country. Were they men? Or had enslavement destroyed their ability to take on a man’s responsibilities?
The whole country was watching… and they knew it.
In the dark at Fort Wagner, the Massachusetts 54th proved that Black men were equal to any white men in the field. They fought with the determination that made African American regiments during the Civil War sustain higher losses than those of white regiments. The assault on the fort killed, wounded, or lost more than 250 of the 600 men, and made the formerly enslaved man Sergeant William Harvey Carney the first African American to be awarded a Medal of Honor. Badly wounded, Carney nonetheless defended the United States flag and carried it back to Union lines. Union soldiers did not take the fort that night, but no one could miss that Black men had proved that they were men equal to their white comrades.
The Battle of Fort Wagner left 30 men of the 54th dead on the field-- including Colonel Shaw-- and hurt 24 more so badly they would later die from their wounds. Fifteen were captured; 52 were missing and presumed dead. Another 149 were wounded. Confederates hoped to dishonor Colonel Shaw when they buried him in a mass grave with his men; instead, the family found it fitting.
In 2017, I had the chance to spend an evening in the house where the wounded soldiers of the 54th were taken after the battle.
It is a humbling thing to stand on that street that still looks so much like it did in 1863, and to realize that the men, carried hot and exhausted and bleeding and scared into that house a century and a half before were just people like you and me, who did what they felt they had to in front of Fort Wagner, and then endured the boat ride back to Beaufort, and got carried up these steps, and then lay on their cots in the small, crowded rooms of this house, and hoped that what they had done was worth the horrific cost.
I am not one for ghosts, but I swear you could feel the blood in the floors.
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July 19, 2020 (Sunday)
Trump is shifting his reelection pitch, and it has frightening implications for the country.
Over the weekend, the federal crackdown in Portland, Oregon continued, with people in unmarked camouflage uniforms arresting peaceful protesters and taking them away in unmarked vehicles. And then, they appeared—for now—to let them go. The administration appears to be constructing a scene of violence and disorder for the news media to show to viewers.
It seems clear that the Trump campaign—which got a new director last Wednesday-- is going to make its case for reelection on the idea that there is violence in America’s cities that must be addressed with federal force, and that only Trump is willing to do so.
This is an apparent attempt to overshadow the increasingly alarming news about the coronavirus, which is now burning across the country with renewed vigor. Even as Republican governors are backtracking and asking people to wear masks, Trump continues to insist—falsely-- that our spiking numbers are because of increased testing and that the virus will eventually disappear.
In an interview tonight with Chris Wallace on the Fox News Channel (remember, Wallace is an actual reporter, not an entertainment personality like Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity), Trump claimed—again, falsely—that some of the states are rolling back their reopening not because of the ravages of new coronavirus infections, but because they are trying to hurt his chances of reelection. “Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day. They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test. Many of them – don’t forget, I guess it’s like 99.7 percent, people are going to get better and in many cases they’re going to get better very quickly,” he said.
When Wallace asked him how he would “regard your years as President of the United States,” Trump said: “I think I was very unfairly treated. From before I even won I was under investigation by a bunch of thieves, crooks. It was an illegal investigation.” Wallace tried to steer him back on track: “But what about the good—” Trump interrupted: “Russia, Russia, Russia.”
Wallace: “But what about the good parts, sir?"
Trump: "No, no, I want to do this. I have done more than any president in history in the first three and a half years, and I’ve done it through suffering through investigations where people have been—General Flynn, where people have been so unfairly treated….”
He went on, rehashing his grievances, until Wallace finally bade him goodbye.
From this wreckage, the campaign is trying to find a new, winning issue in law and order.
The footage from Portland shows what looks like a war zone, but the Department of Homeland Security’s own list of the actions of the “violent anarchists” in the city consists of graffiti, torn down fences, and fireworks, all situations the local police insist they can handle. The mayor, both senators, and the governor of Oregon have all asked for the federal troops to be removed, but the administration refuses. Yesterday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said the protests were winding down before the federal troops came in and escalated the situation.
In an interview today on the Fox News Channel, Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said that Trump is working with Attorney General William Barr and Acting Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf to roll out a new plan to “go in” to make sure communities-- like Chicago and Milwaukee—across the country are safe. People are assuming that means more federal troops in those-- and other-- cities, but Meadows did not, in fact, say that explicitly.
The Trump campaign immediately retweeted Meadows’s interview. Trump himself tweeted: “We are trying to help Portland, not hurt it. Their leadership has, for months, lost control of the anarchists and agitators. They are missing in action. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE. These were not merely protesters, these are the real deal!” The argument appears to be that we should not pay attention to the administration’s failure to protect us from coronavirus because it promises now to protect us from “violent anarchists.”
On Friday, The US. Attorney for the District of Oregon, Billy Williams, recognized that the administration’s tactics in Portland had gone too far. He stated: “Based on news accounts circulating that allege federal law enforcement detained two protesters without probable cause, I have requested the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General to open a separate investigation directed specifically at the actions of DHS personnel.”
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum didn’t wait for an investigation. On Friday, she sued the Department of Homeland Security and the Marshals Service in federal court to try to get a court order to stop federal agents from arresting people in Portland. The complaint blames the federal agents for “the current escalation of fear and violence in downtown Portland.”
On Sunday, the chairs of the House Judiciary Committee, the House Homeland Security Committee, and the House Oversight Committee, wrote a letter to the inspectors general of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice asking them to investigate “the Trump Administration’s use of federal law enforcement to violate the rights of our constituents.” They tied the events in Portland to the larger story of the attack on protesters at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., and to the deployment of cold water cannons, pepper spray, and tear gas on those protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline across the Standing Rock Reservation.
But, they noted, they had an even broader concern. “The legal basis for this use of force has never been explained—and, frankly, it is not at all clear that the Attorney General and the Acting Secretary are authorized to deploy federal law enforcement officers in this manner. The Attorney General of the United States does not have unfettered authority to direct thousands of federal law enforcement personnel to arrest and detain American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. The Acting Secretary appears to be relying on an ill-conceived executive order meant to protect historic statues and monuments as justification for arresting American citizens in the dead of night. The Administration’s insistence on deploying these forces over the objections of state and local authorities suggest that these tactics have little to do with public safety, but more to do with political gamesmanship.”
The letter went on: “This is a matter of utmost urgency. Citizens are concerned that the Administration has deployed a secret police force, not to investigate crimes but to intimidate individuals it views as political adversaries, and that the use of these tactics will proliferate throughout the country. Therefore, we ask that you commence your review of these issues immediately.”
It is not just officials who are objecting to the administration’s authoritarian demonstrations. There was a new force on the Portland streets this weekend: moms. Dressed in yellow shirts, wearing helmets and masks, several hundred women are forming chains between the officers and the protesters. They call themselves the Wall of Moms, and are chanting: “I don’t see no riot here; take off your riot gear,” and “Feds stay clear, moms are here!” Officers tear gassed them last night, but they came back tonight in bigger numbers.
Tonight’s protest was one of the largest this month.
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Yes, tongue firmly in cheek, but this is textbook escalation. When the feds kill someone, or asshole militia cosplaying as feds actually start disappearing folks, there will be hell to pay.
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This seems frighteningly relevant today.
tl;dr Some people have said “It can’t happen here.” Some others, a bit less naive say “It could happen here.” In the video, Beau asserts “It is happening here, now, before our very eyes.”
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July 20, 2020 (Monday)
The big news today—and it is indeed big news—is that the Trump administration has announced it will be sending federal officers into Chicago, and perhaps other cities run by Democrats, ostensibly to fight crime there.
The move mirrors what the administration has done in Portland, Oregon, where unidentified officers from Customs and Border Protection operating under Trump’s Executive Order to protect monuments and federal property have clashed with local protesters, sometimes grabbing them off the streets and forcing them into unmarked vans. They have fractured a man’s skull and broken another man’s hand; both men were protesting peacefully. The official Department of Homeland Security’s own list of complaints about what it calls “violent anarchists” runs heavily to graffiti and minor vandalism, which local police say they can handle without federal intervention.
“We’re looking at Chicago, too,” Trump said, “We’re looking at New York. All run by very liberal Democrats. All run, really, by the radical left.” He continued: “This is worse than anything anyone’s ever seen. And you know what? If Biden got in, that would be true for the country. The whole country would go to hell.” (While there has been a recent increase in criminal activity, in fact, most major cities have seen a long-term decrease in crime, especially violent crime.)
“We’re going to have more federal law enforcement, that I can tell you,” Trump said. “In Portland, they’ve done a fantastic job. They’ve been there three days and they really have done a fantastic job in a very short period of time, no problem.”
Chicago, though, has not seen the sustained protests that Portland has, and the administration is using a different justification to send federal law enforcement to the city. The Chicago deployment will be under “Operation Legend” of the Justice Department, announced July 8 by Attorney General William Barr. Operation Legend has authorized federal agents from the FBI, U.S. Marshal Service, DEA and ATF to go into U.S. cities “to help state and local officials fight the surge of violent crime.” The initiative is named for LeGend Taliferro, a four-year-old St. Louis victim of gun violence.
The scope of the deployment is unclear, and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot opposes the move. "We don’t need federal agents without any insignia taking people off the streets and holding them, I think, unlawfully,” she said. If Trump truly wants to help Chicago, she said, he should focus on gun safety reforms and community development.
On Saturday, John Catanzara, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, wrote a public letter to Trump aligning his union with Trump instead of the city’s mayor. “I am certain you are aware of the chaos currently affecting our city on a regular basis now," he wrote. “I am writing to formally ask you for help from the federal government. Mayor Lightfoot has proved to be a complete failure who is either unwilling or unable to maintain law and order here.”
It is interesting that the administration has gone after Chicago, a city with a Black female mayor. While we have focused on the administration’s ginning up of racism, it has also embraced the misogyny of right-wing media.
That connection became tragically clear last night when a self-described “anti-feminist” lawyer apparently shot the husband and son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas in New Jersey, killing her son before shooting himself. The killer echoed talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s rants about “feminazis,” and in 2011 told the New York Times, "The feminists have taken control over every institution in this country – they want to take control over men.” In 2017, he sued media outlets, saying they were publishing “false and misleading reports” about Trump’s 2016 candidacy.
The misogyny of right-wing media was also in the news today as two women filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, claiming that former Fox News Channel chief national correspondent Ed Henry raped one of them and accusing Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and other leading figures of sexual harassment. The Fox News Channel fired Henry on July 1, in anticipation of the lawsuit, and denies the other allegations.
For his part, Acting Director of Homeland Security Chad Wolf today dismissed the objections to federal intervention in Chicago or elsewhere. “I don’t need invitations by the state, state mayors, or state governors to do our job. We’re going to do that, whether they like us there or not.”
This, too, is an interesting angle on the federal deployment, since Wolf is not a confirmed member of the Cabinet. He was appointed as acting director on November 13, 2019, but Trump did not nominate him to become the director, so he has not received Senate confirmation in that position. He seems to be taking on a lot of power for someone who has not been confirmed by the Senate and who holds office under these circumstances.
There is other disturbing news from the Department of Homeland Security. Steve Vladeck and Benjamin Wittes broke the story on Lawfareblog today that DHS has authorized domestic surveillance, expanding intelligence collection “to mitigate the significant threat to homeland security” posed by “elevated threats targeting monuments, memorials, and statues.” That is, DHS is monitoring and collecting information on protesters, including their activities on social media.
The DHS memo does specify that officers cannot monitor activities “protected by the First Amendment or the lawful exercise of other Constitutional or legal rights, or for the purpose of suppressing or burdening criticism or dissent.” Nonetheless, Vladeck and Wittes point out that “it’s a pretty striking position for the federal government to be taking as a matter of both law and policy. Indeed, it’s difficult to understand the federal government’s interest in, or constitutional authority over, minor property damage to non-federal monuments on non-federal property.” It’s hard to see how damage to statues is enough of a threat to national security that it justifies gathering intelligence on Americans engaging in their constitutional right to protest.
The administration’s unprecedented development of a federal police force reflects that the U.S. military has refused to support Trump’s power grab. That refusal was in the news again on Friday, when even as the administration was defending Confederate statues, the Pentagon officially banned all displays of the Confederate flag on U.S. military property, including barracks and common areas. “Flags are powerful symbols, particularly in the military community for whom flags embody common mission, common histories, and the special, timeless bond of warriors,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote in the memo. “The flags we fly must accord with the military imperatives of good order and discipline, treating all our people with dignity and respect, and rejecting divisive symbols.”
The administration’s attacks on Black protesters have actually gained power for the movement. Tonight the official account of Major League Baseball tweeted a photo of members of the San Francisco Giants kneeling during the national anthem along with the hashtag BlackLivesMatter. When users complained about their stance, the account user responded in a defense of the tactics that brought football quarterback Colin Kaepernick such anger from Trump and Pence. The administrator wrote: “It has never been about the military or the flag. The players and coaches are using their platforms to peacefully protest.”
Trump’s attempts to downplay the coronavirus are not getting the traction he wishes, either. The Washington Nationals baseball team has invited “Nats super-fan,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, to throw out the ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day, Thursday, July 23. “Dr. Fauci has been a true champion for our country during the Covid-19 pandemic and throughout his distinguished career, so it is only fitting that we honor him as we kick off the 2020 season and defend our World Series Championship title.” Fauci donned a Nationals face mask when he testified before a House Committee on the coronavirus.
Trump’s attempt to divert attention from the coronavirus and protests against police violence against Black Americans is not working. He is attempting to portray those who oppose him as violent criminals, and promises to bring back LAW & ORDER, as he repeatedly tweets. But it is not working. Only 33% of Americans approve of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and only 31% approve of his handling of race relations. And as for law and order: most people also trust Biden, rather than Trump, on that issue, too, by a margin of 49% to 42%.
And the federal intrusion into the cities appears to be backfiring. The crowds in Portland are increasing dramatically. Tonight the Wall of Moms waved their hands above their heads as they softly sang a new lullaby: “Hands up, please don’t shoot me.”
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I doubt that counts as “backfiring” for Trump. I think he wants protesting crowds to increase.
The more chaos and disorder Trump (and compliant corporate media) can point to, the better. Or so I suspect he and his advisers think.
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I saw this in another thread, but it’s perfectly relevant here…
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