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Today's News (2020/7/28): Fascism and Police Violence Edition
You do get kind of... not numb, but enervated, don't you?
----- 1 -----
Mike Baker
twitter.com/ByMikeBaker
24 July 2020
https://twitter.com/ByMikeBaker/status/1286884473934503936
[THREAD]
Another huge crowd tonight in Portland, including a new "wall" on the front lines: a Wall of Vets.
Here's a look at the line of military veterans getting set up here in front of the federal courthouse. Behind them, the Wall of Moms and the Wall of Dads are arriving.
[EMBEDDED VIDEO AT LINK]
----- 2 -----
Feds Tear Gas Portland Protesters For 10th Straight Night, Hitting Journalists Despite Judge Ruling
Jemima McEvoy
I'm a British-born reporter covering breaking news for Forbes.
Updated Jul 24, 2020, 11:30am EDT
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/07/24/feds-tear-gas-portland-protesters-for-6th-straight-night-hitting-journalists-despite-judge-ruling/
TOPLINE
Trump-ordered federal officers deployed tear gas against protesters in Portland, Oregon, for the tenth night in a row on Thursday, catching journalists in the crossfire with flash bangs and less-lethal munitions despite new legal protections, as local officials continue to insist agents sent to quell Black Lives Matter demonstrations are just making the situation worse.
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Homeland Security Was Destined to Become a Secret Police Force
By Masha Gessen
July 25, 2020
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-dhs-was-destined-to-become-a-secret-police-force
Federal agents standing across from protesters one of which has their arms in the air
Since early July, federal agents in military-style uniforms have waged battle against protesters in Portland, Oregon, using tear gas and nonlethal munitions.Photograph by Mason Trinca / NYT / Redux
In a press conference on Tuesday, Chad Wolf, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, responded to media reports that unidentified federal agents using unmarked vehicles have been arresting protesters in Portland, Oregon. Since early July, men in military-style uniforms have waged battle against protesters there, using tear gas and nonlethal munitions; video and photographs coming out of Portland have shown scenes of urban warfare, with what looks like a regular army moving on unarmed protesters night after night. On behalf of the D.H.S. and its uniformed services, Wolf claimed responsibility for the armed presence in Portland. He asserted that his agency was doing exactly what it was created to do. He was right.
The rationale for the creation of the D.H.S., as laid out by the George W. Bush Administration, was that the knowledge, skills, and capabilities that could have stopped the 9/11 attacks were spread out among many government agencies, with no single body in charge of fighting terrorism. The proposal for creating the department presented hypothetical examples of failures to coördinate among different agencies. When a ship sailed into U.S. waters, for instance, the Coast Guard had the power to stop it for inspection, but it was up to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deal with the people on board, and up to Customs and Border Protection or the Department of Agriculture to stop any dangerous or illegal cargo. The examples made D.H.S. seem like something that should exist. That logic held, though, only if you thought about travel, immigration, and trade primarily as security concerns. There are countries that think like that. I grew up in one—it was called the Soviet Union, and it had an agency, the Committee for State Security (K.G.B.), which had its tentacles in every area of society.
The creation of the D.H.S. marked a shift in the way that Americans think and talk about the country, and about people. Four years ago, in an essay for the Times Magazine, the journalist James Traub traced the appearance and evolution of the word “homeland” in American language. “The rise of ‘homeland’ … tracks the rise of the national sense of vulnerability,” Traub wrote. “As we use it now, ‘homeland’ means ‘the country insofar as it is endangered.’ ” The word had surfaced in 1997, in a Pentagon report warning that the singular threat to U.S. security, which the Soviet Union once posed, had been replaced by a diffuse threat from different sources. By 2001, “homeland” had sudden traction—it was a word that had found its meaning. By the time Traub was writing, in 2016, all of the contenders for the Republican nomination for President—a group in which Donald Trump may have still seemed an outlier—were trafficking in fear for the land. “Homeland” is also a nativist term: it refers to the country where you were born, or else it comes with the qualifier “adopted,” which suggests that your claim to the homeland is contingent. (Sure enough, under Trump, the federal government has moved toward seeing naturalized citizenship as revocable.)
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What is happening in Portland and what does Trump hope to gain?
As protests over police brutality and racism continue, the president is looking for confrontation. It’s all about the election
Chris McGreal in Portland and Martin Pengelly in New York
Sun 26 Jul 2020 08.44 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/26/portland-oregon-protests-what-is-happening-trump-chicago-albuquerque
Confrontations between protesters and federal agents in Portland, Oregon, have become a national flashpoint as Donald Trump’s law-and-order-focused re-election campaign has run up against protests over police brutality and systemic racism. Eager for continued confrontation, the president has now turned his attention to other cities.
Here’s an updated explanation of what’s going on and why:
What is happening in Portland?
Since the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis on 25 May, protesters have been out on the streets every night in the largest city in Oregon, a bastion of progressive politics but with a dark history of police violence towards African Americans.
Why are federal agents involved?
Seeking to focus his re-election campaign on law and order – and, many would argue, to exploit racial tension and division – Trump has sent in officers from agencies under the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to reinforce and in some cases replace local police. The White House has repeated the justification that the agents have been sent to protect federal property.
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Tensions rise as both state, government officials justify federal presence until protests end
Bridget Chavez
Posted on Jul 25, 2020
https://www.kptv.com/news/tensions-rise-as-both-state-government-officials-justify-federal-presence-until-protests-end/article_4d4173a8-ced1-11ea-8b94-c3e19f5e2dbe.html
PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) – The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon and the Department of Homeland Security said in a teleconference call on Saturday, that federal officers’ presence in Portland is dependent on whether protests downtown can remain peaceful.
“If DHS and the US Marshall Service deem that the courthouse can stand and can have integrity and it’s not subject to damage or attack then the officers will go home,” Craig Gabriel, the Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon, said.
So far, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon said that since July 60 people have been arrested or detained by federal law enforcement. Of those, 46 are pending criminal charges that include 30 misdemeanors, eight felonies and eight violations. Fourteen people have been arrested or detained and then released without charges. The crimes range from assaults on officers to arson, creating damage or hazard and disorderly conduct.
People who live and work in the area said they’re tired of the violence but there are differing views on how to make it stop.
Jose Sandoval said he’s lived in Portland for 14 years and thinks the presence of federal officers is making things worse.
“I think things were calming down before the feds came to town and now it just seems like it’s been made worse by their presence,” Sandoval said.
----- 6 -----
An Oregon senator warned of the threat of martial law as he condemned Trump's deployment of federal agents in Portland and other cities
sbaker@businessinsider.com (Sinéad Baker)
25 July 2020
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/an-oregon-senator-warned-of-the-threat-of-martial-law-as-he-condemned-trump-s-deployment-of-federal-agents-in-portland-and-other-cities/ar-BB17blOW
An Oregon senator said the US is facing the threat of martial law while approaching November's presidential election. He slammed US President Donald Trump's deployment of federal agents in Portland and other cities.
Ron Wyden, a Democrat, told The Guardian that "Unless America draws a line in the sand right now, I think we could be staring down the barrel of martial law in the middle of a presidential election."
And he warned that such a situation would mean "trashing the constitution and trashing people's individual rights."
Martial law is when the military takes control of law enforcement and civil rights are suspended.
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Trump predicts 'most corrupt election' in US history while making false claims about mail-in voting
By Maegan Vazquez and Donald Judd, CNN
Updated 9:32 PM ET, Tue June 23, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/politics/donald-trump-mail-voter-fraud-most-corrupt-election/index.html
Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump is predicting that the November election will be "the most corrupt election in the history of our country," while spreading false claims and inaccurate statements about widespread voter fraud.
Speaking to students in Arizona on Tuesday evening, the President took aim at states' efforts to expand voting by mail in order to encourage Americans to continue to social-distance amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 100,000 Americans.
"The Democrats are also trying to rig the election by sending tens of millions of ballots using the China virus as the excuse for allowing people not to go to the polls," Trump claimed, later adding: "This will be, in my opinion, the most corrupt election in the history of our country, and we cannot let this happen."
Trump said ballots could be stolen, forged by foreign powers or excluded from Republican sections in voting districts. He also claimed there is "tremendous evidence of fraud in areas with mail-in ballots."
CNN has repeatedly debunked the President's claims about mail-in voter fraud, and his primary allegation -- that voting by mail leads to "massive fraud" -- is completely untrue. As the coronavirus spread, bipartisan officials across the country expanded postal voting as a pandemic-safe option -- a move endorsed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And this week, CNN spoke with numerous Republican senators, including members of the GOP leadership team. None of them said they agreed with the President's views on mail-in voting, and a number of them said they supported its expansion as a way to deal with the coronavirus.
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Trump Tweets His Disgust at 'Trending' Tweets He Calls 'Illegal' and 'Unfair'
By Daniel Villarreal On 7/27/20 at 8:02 PM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-tweets-his-disgust-trending-tweets-he-calls-illegal-unfair-1520840
On Monday evening, President Donald Trump wrote a tweet complaining about the fact that his name often trends on Twitter, an indication that people are talking about him on the micro-blogging social media platform.
"So disgusting to watch Twitter's so-called 'Trending', where sooo many trends are about me, and never a good one. They look for anything they can find, make it as bad as possible, and blow it up, trying to make it trend. Really ridiculous, illegal, and, of course, very unfair!" Trump wrote.
It's unclear who the "they" in Trump's tweet refers to, or what Trump considers illegal about Twitter's trending section. Newsweek contacted the White House for comment.
...
On May 26, Trump accused Twitter of stifling free speech after it fact-checked a tweet of his that falsely claimed mail-in voting increases voter fraud.
After claiming that mail-in voting increases voter fraud and that California is sending mail-in ballots to "anyone" regardless of residency, Twitter tagged Trump's tweets with the message reading, "Get the facts about mail-in ballots." The message linked to pages debunking his false claims.
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Police: Richmond riots instigated by white supremacists disguised as Black Lives Matter
27 July 2020
https://www.wsls.com/news/virginia/2020/07/27/police-richmond-riots-instigated-by-white-supremacists-disguised-as-black-lives-matter/
RICHMOND, Va. – Riots in downtown Richmond over the weekend were instigated by white supremacists under the guise of Black Lives Matter, according to law enforcement officials.
Protesters tore down police tape and pushed forward toward Richmond police headquarters, where they set a city dump truck on fire.
Police declared the event an “unlawful assembly” and ordered people to leave, later deploying tear gas.
Six people were arrested. The mayor of Richmond thanked the Black Lives Matter protesters he said tried to stop the white supremacists from spearheading the violence.
----- 10 -----
Videos Show How Federal Officers Escalated Violence in Portland
By Ainara Tiefenthäler, Evan Hill, Drew Jordan, Malachy Browne and David Botti
July 24, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007243995/portland-protests-federal-government.html
Peaceful protests were already happening for weeks when federal officers arrived on July 4. Our video shows how President Trump’s deployment ignited chaos.
----- 11 -----
Elite Border Patrol Unit Is Among Federal Agents Deployed to Portland
Bortac, which typically handles immigration intelligence and raids, is protecting federal buildings; ‘This isn’t their expertise’
Footage shows the mayor of Portland in a cloud of tear gas as protests against the presence of federal agents continued. President Trump also announced the deployment of hundreds of law-enforcement officers to Chicago and Albuquerque, N.M., to fight gun violence.
By Alicia A. Caldwell and Michell Hackman
Updated July 25, 2020 12:33 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/elite-border-patrol-unit-is-among-federal-agents-deployed-to-portland-11595689780
Agents from the Border Patrol’s elite unit known as Bortac typically track smugglers, serve high-risk warrants and raid stash houses. For much of the past month, they have been working on the streets of Portland.
Members of the squad of roughly 120, who are trained in the use of weapons from pistols to sniper rifles, are among the most highly trained federal agents who have been sent to Oregon’s largest city and the least frequently deployed to quell unrest within the U.S..
Border Patrol officials have declined to say how many Bortac agents have been deployed. A Trump administration official said 45 agents and officers from Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, are among the approximately 100 federal agents sent to Portland to protect federal buildings from late-night violence that has followed protests over police violence and racism.
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Here’s how to prepare for Trump rejecting the election results in November
Opinion by Brian Klaas
Global Opinions contributor
July 27, 2020 at 8:45 a.m. PDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/27/heres-how-prepare-trump-rejecting-election-results-november/
President Trump is laying the groundwork to do something that no previous president has ever done: falsely claim that an election was fixed against him in order to discredit the vote. Trump has repeatedly — and incorrectly — claimed the election will be “rigged” against him. By promoting a series of wacky, debunked conspiracy theories, he has primed his supporters to wrongly believe he is the victim of some unknown, shadowy “deep state” plot. In an interview that aired last week, he refused to commit to accepting the results in November.
His actions challenge the flagship event of our republic: the peaceful transfer of power after an election, accepted by all candidates. (It’s worth noting that in 2016, Hillary Clinton quickly accepted the results and congratulated her opponent, while also criticizing the election’s integrity based on verified instances of Russian information warfare — a far cry from Trump peddling the debunked myth of widespread voter fraud.) With about 100 days to go, we are careening toward an extraordinarily dangerous crisis of American democracy.
Such crises never happen in other functioning democracies. But they happen all the time in broken countries around the world. In contentious elections from Africa to southeast Asia, incumbents who lose often refuse to accept defeat. Welcome to the club, America!
All the warning lights are blinking red. University of Birmingham professor Nic Cheeseman , an expert on contentious elections and political violence with whom I co-authored the book “How to Rig an Election,” normally worries when contested votes happen in Kenya or Zimbabwe. Now, he’s worried about the United States. “There are five warning I always look for,” he told me. “Organized militias, a leader who is not prepared to lose, distrust of the political system, disinformation, and a potentially close contest. Right now, the U.S. has all five.”
Consider ourselves warned. The question, then, is: What do we do about it? If Trump ends up trying to torch crucial norms of democracy in order to save face, how can we prepare? Other countries offer a series of lessons we should urgently learn from, so that if (or when) the worst happens, Trump’s matches don’t light.
First, we need a bipartisan pact endorsing the results. Incumbents who reject results solely because they lost tend to get more traction when their party backs them uniformly. When cracks show, the self-serving farce falls apart. Democrats and Republicans who believe in democracy should agree to immediately and publicly accept the election results (barring any major irregularities).
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More federal agents dispatched to Portland as protests rise in other cities
By Devlin Barrett, Nick Miroff, Marissa J. Lang and David A. Fahrenthold
July 27, 2020 at 6:48 p.m. PDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/more-federal-agents-dispatched-to-portland-as-protests-rise-in-other-cities/2020/07/27/20a717be-d03c-11ea-8d32-1ebf4e9d8e0d_story.html
The Trump administration is sending more federal agents to Portland, Ore., already the site of aggressive policing tactics that activists and city officials across the country say are inspiring more-violent clashes and re-energizing protests.
The U.S. Marshals Service decided last week to send more deputies to Portland, according to an internal email reviewed by The Washington Post, with personnel beginning to arrive last Thursday night. The Department of Homeland Security is also considering a plan to send an additional 50 U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel to the city, according to senior administration officials involved in the federal response who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.
Such moves would mark a significant expansion of the federal force operating at the Portland federal courthouse — there were 114 federal agents there in mid-July — though it is unclear how many existing personnel could be sent home after the arrival of at least 100 reinforcements, according to internal Marshals emails.
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Police: 'Umbrella Man' was a white supremacist trying to incite George Floyd rioting
Police say the suspect has been identified, but no charges had been filed as of Tuesday afternoon.
By Libor Jany Star Tribune
July 28, 2020
https://www.startribune.com/police-umbrella-man-was-a-white-supremacist-trying-to-incite-floyd-rioting/571932272/
A masked man who was seen in a viral video smashing the windows of a south Minneapolis auto parts store during the George Floyd protests, earning him the moniker "Umbrella Man," is suspected of ties with a white supremacist group and sought to incite racial tension, police said.
A Minneapolis police arson investigator said the act of vandalism at the AutoZone on East Lake Street helped spark a chain reaction that led to days of looting and rioting. The store was among dozens of buildings across the city that burned to the ground in the days that followed.
"This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and looting throughout the precinct and the rest of the city," Sgt. Erika Christensen wrote in a search warrant affidavit filed in court this week. "Until the actions of the person your affiant has been calling 'Umbrella Man,' the protests had been relatively peaceful. The actions of this person created an atmosphere of hostility and tension. Your affiant believes that this individual's sole aim was to incite violence."
Police identified "Umbrella Man" thanks to a tip that came via email last week, Christensen said.
...
Christensen wrote in the affidavit that she watched "innumerable hours" of videos on social media platforms like Tik Tok, Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube to try to identify "Umbrella Man," to no avail. Investigators finally caught a break when a tipster e-mailed the MPD identifying the man as a member of the Hell's Angels biker gang who "wanted to sow discord and racial unrest by breaking out the windows and writing what he did on the double red doors," she wrote.
Police have also connected the 32-year-old man to a widely-publicized incident in Stillwater late last month, in which a Muslim woman was confronted by a group of men wearing white supremacist garb.
A subsequent investigation revealed that the man was also an associate of the Aryan Cowboy Brotherhood, a small white supremacist prison and street gang based primarily in Minnesota and Kentucky. Several of its members were also present at the Stillwater incident.
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Gwen Snyder is uncivil
twitter.com/gwensnyderPHL
28 July 2020
https://twitter.com/gwensnyderPHL/status/1288231462572036097
[THREAD]
People forget that Trump grew up in a "say it until it becomes true" positive thinking cult.
It's always been abundantly clear that he's still a believer, and it's why he detests the acknowledgment of any unpleasant truth.
It's not senility, it's cult programming.
[NEXT]
He doesn't care what's true and what's not because to him, because he doesn't believe in fixed reality.
He believes that you speak reality into being.
That's literally the religion he grew up in.
He very likely believes that HCQ *will* work if people just say it enough.
[NEXT]
That's what makes Trump such an effective propagandist and fascist.
He doesn't just believe that speaking untruth long enough and loudly enough will make people believe it.
He believes that speaking it long enough and loudly enough will *make it true.*
[NEXT]
That's what makes him so dangerous, and it is what is going to happen with this election.
He will never, ever accept an independent external reality of results that aren't in his favor, because doesn't accept the existence of an independent external reality.
[THREAD CONTINUES AT LINK]
----- 16 -----
michelle lh࿊࿊q
twitter.com/MichelleLhooq
28 July 2020
https://twitter.com/MichelleLhooq/status/1288253381883113475
NYC is taking after Portland - a trans femme protestor was pulled into an unmarked van at the Abolition Park protest - this was at 2nd Ave and 25th Street
[EMBEDDED VIDEO OF FEDERAL(?) ABDUCTION]
4:21 PM · Jul 28, 2020 from Manhattan, NY
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Federal Officers Pepper Spray Combat Medic From Vietnam War, Video Shows
By Emily Czachor On 7/26/20
https://www.newsweek.com/federal-officers-pepper-spray-photojournalist-military-veteran-during-portland-protest-video-shows-1520548
Federal agents pepper sprayed a photojournalist during protests in Portland, Oregon, early Sunday morning.
A video of the altercation shows the journalist, identified as Mike Hastie, confronting a group of armed federal officers who have formed a line across one of the city's intersections. Hastie describes himself as an army veteran in the video, saying he served as a combat medic during the Vietnam War.
The video recording begins in the middle of Hastie's comments to law enforcement. After less than 20 seconds, one officer approaches him from somewhere off camera and dispenses pepper spray into Hastie's face. He holds the canister closer than an arm's length from Hastie.
The federal agents, wearing camouflaged military gear, then proceed to leave the area. Upon moving past Hastie, officers tell him to "back up" and "move." One shoves him when the group walks by.
----- 18 -----
Here Are The Current NYPD Officers With The Most Substantiated Misconduct Complaints
By George Joseph, Christopher Robbins and Jake Offenhartz
July 28, 2020
https://gothamist.com/news/here-are-current-nypd-officers-most-substantiated-misconduct-complaints
Approximately four thousand of the NYPD’s 36,000 active officers have at least one substantiated complaint of police misconduct, according to data from the Civilian Complaint Review Board published by ProPublica on Sunday.
Gothamist/WNYC has identified seven officers in the CCRB’s data set with substantiated allegations in at least six separate complaints—the most of all current NYPD officers. All enjoyed high-ranking positions as of last month, according to the dataset. All are white men. Some have been the subject of extensive news coverage.
We have reached out to each officer named here individually and through their unions. Some did not reply and others referred us to the NYPD or their union.
“The NYPD has for many years worked to increase transparency to gain the trust of the communities we serve,” the department said in a statement, when asked specifically about these officers.
A representative for Mayor Bill de Blasio did not respond to a request for comment.
- Another huge crowd tonight in Portland, including a new "wall" on the front lines: a Wall of Vets.
- Feds Tear Gas Portland Protesters For 10th Straight Night, Hitting Journalists Despite Judge Ruling
- Homeland Security Was Destined to Become a Secret Police Force
- What is happening in Portland and what does Trump hope to gain?
- Tensions rise as both state, government officials justify federal presence until protests end
- An Oregon senator warned of the threat of martial law as he condemned Trump's deployment of federal agents in Portland and other cities
- Trump predicts 'most corrupt election' in US history while making false claims about mail-in voting
- Trump Tweets His Disgust at 'Trending' Tweets He Calls 'Illegal' and 'Unfair'
- Police: Richmond riots instigated by white supremacists disguised as Black Lives Matter
- Videos Show How Federal Officers Escalated Violence in Portland
- Elite Border Patrol Unit Is Among Federal Agents Deployed to Portland
- Here’s how to prepare for Trump rejecting the election results in November
- More federal agents dispatched to Portland as protests rise in other cities
- Police: 'Umbrella Man' was a white supremacist trying to incite George Floyd rioting
- Trump and his "say it until it becomes true" positive thinking cult - it's worse than you think.
- NYC is taking after Portland
- Federal Officers Pepper Spray Combat Medic From Vietnam War, Video Shows
- Here Are The Current NYPD Officers With The Most Substantiated Misconduct Complaints
----- 1 -----
Mike Baker
twitter.com/ByMikeBaker
24 July 2020
https://twitter.com/ByMikeBaker/status/1286884473934503936
[THREAD]
Another huge crowd tonight in Portland, including a new "wall" on the front lines: a Wall of Vets.
Here's a look at the line of military veterans getting set up here in front of the federal courthouse. Behind them, the Wall of Moms and the Wall of Dads are arriving.
[EMBEDDED VIDEO AT LINK]
----- 2 -----
Feds Tear Gas Portland Protesters For 10th Straight Night, Hitting Journalists Despite Judge Ruling
Jemima McEvoy
I'm a British-born reporter covering breaking news for Forbes.
Updated Jul 24, 2020, 11:30am EDT
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/07/24/feds-tear-gas-portland-protesters-for-6th-straight-night-hitting-journalists-despite-judge-ruling/
TOPLINE
Trump-ordered federal officers deployed tear gas against protesters in Portland, Oregon, for the tenth night in a row on Thursday, catching journalists in the crossfire with flash bangs and less-lethal munitions despite new legal protections, as local officials continue to insist agents sent to quell Black Lives Matter demonstrations are just making the situation worse.
----- 3 -----
Homeland Security Was Destined to Become a Secret Police Force
By Masha Gessen
July 25, 2020
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-dhs-was-destined-to-become-a-secret-police-force
Federal agents standing across from protesters one of which has their arms in the air
Since early July, federal agents in military-style uniforms have waged battle against protesters in Portland, Oregon, using tear gas and nonlethal munitions.Photograph by Mason Trinca / NYT / Redux
In a press conference on Tuesday, Chad Wolf, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, responded to media reports that unidentified federal agents using unmarked vehicles have been arresting protesters in Portland, Oregon. Since early July, men in military-style uniforms have waged battle against protesters there, using tear gas and nonlethal munitions; video and photographs coming out of Portland have shown scenes of urban warfare, with what looks like a regular army moving on unarmed protesters night after night. On behalf of the D.H.S. and its uniformed services, Wolf claimed responsibility for the armed presence in Portland. He asserted that his agency was doing exactly what it was created to do. He was right.
The rationale for the creation of the D.H.S., as laid out by the George W. Bush Administration, was that the knowledge, skills, and capabilities that could have stopped the 9/11 attacks were spread out among many government agencies, with no single body in charge of fighting terrorism. The proposal for creating the department presented hypothetical examples of failures to coördinate among different agencies. When a ship sailed into U.S. waters, for instance, the Coast Guard had the power to stop it for inspection, but it was up to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deal with the people on board, and up to Customs and Border Protection or the Department of Agriculture to stop any dangerous or illegal cargo. The examples made D.H.S. seem like something that should exist. That logic held, though, only if you thought about travel, immigration, and trade primarily as security concerns. There are countries that think like that. I grew up in one—it was called the Soviet Union, and it had an agency, the Committee for State Security (K.G.B.), which had its tentacles in every area of society.
The creation of the D.H.S. marked a shift in the way that Americans think and talk about the country, and about people. Four years ago, in an essay for the Times Magazine, the journalist James Traub traced the appearance and evolution of the word “homeland” in American language. “The rise of ‘homeland’ … tracks the rise of the national sense of vulnerability,” Traub wrote. “As we use it now, ‘homeland’ means ‘the country insofar as it is endangered.’ ” The word had surfaced in 1997, in a Pentagon report warning that the singular threat to U.S. security, which the Soviet Union once posed, had been replaced by a diffuse threat from different sources. By 2001, “homeland” had sudden traction—it was a word that had found its meaning. By the time Traub was writing, in 2016, all of the contenders for the Republican nomination for President—a group in which Donald Trump may have still seemed an outlier—were trafficking in fear for the land. “Homeland” is also a nativist term: it refers to the country where you were born, or else it comes with the qualifier “adopted,” which suggests that your claim to the homeland is contingent. (Sure enough, under Trump, the federal government has moved toward seeing naturalized citizenship as revocable.)
----- 4 -----
What is happening in Portland and what does Trump hope to gain?
As protests over police brutality and racism continue, the president is looking for confrontation. It’s all about the election
Chris McGreal in Portland and Martin Pengelly in New York
Sun 26 Jul 2020 08.44 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/26/portland-oregon-protests-what-is-happening-trump-chicago-albuquerque
Confrontations between protesters and federal agents in Portland, Oregon, have become a national flashpoint as Donald Trump’s law-and-order-focused re-election campaign has run up against protests over police brutality and systemic racism. Eager for continued confrontation, the president has now turned his attention to other cities.
Here’s an updated explanation of what’s going on and why:
What is happening in Portland?
Since the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis on 25 May, protesters have been out on the streets every night in the largest city in Oregon, a bastion of progressive politics but with a dark history of police violence towards African Americans.
Why are federal agents involved?
Seeking to focus his re-election campaign on law and order – and, many would argue, to exploit racial tension and division – Trump has sent in officers from agencies under the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to reinforce and in some cases replace local police. The White House has repeated the justification that the agents have been sent to protect federal property.
----- 5 -----
Tensions rise as both state, government officials justify federal presence until protests end
Bridget Chavez
Posted on Jul 25, 2020
https://www.kptv.com/news/tensions-rise-as-both-state-government-officials-justify-federal-presence-until-protests-end/article_4d4173a8-ced1-11ea-8b94-c3e19f5e2dbe.html
PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) – The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon and the Department of Homeland Security said in a teleconference call on Saturday, that federal officers’ presence in Portland is dependent on whether protests downtown can remain peaceful.
“If DHS and the US Marshall Service deem that the courthouse can stand and can have integrity and it’s not subject to damage or attack then the officers will go home,” Craig Gabriel, the Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon, said.
So far, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon said that since July 60 people have been arrested or detained by federal law enforcement. Of those, 46 are pending criminal charges that include 30 misdemeanors, eight felonies and eight violations. Fourteen people have been arrested or detained and then released without charges. The crimes range from assaults on officers to arson, creating damage or hazard and disorderly conduct.
People who live and work in the area said they’re tired of the violence but there are differing views on how to make it stop.
Jose Sandoval said he’s lived in Portland for 14 years and thinks the presence of federal officers is making things worse.
“I think things were calming down before the feds came to town and now it just seems like it’s been made worse by their presence,” Sandoval said.
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An Oregon senator warned of the threat of martial law as he condemned Trump's deployment of federal agents in Portland and other cities
sbaker@businessinsider.com (Sinéad Baker)
25 July 2020
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/an-oregon-senator-warned-of-the-threat-of-martial-law-as-he-condemned-trump-s-deployment-of-federal-agents-in-portland-and-other-cities/ar-BB17blOW
An Oregon senator said the US is facing the threat of martial law while approaching November's presidential election. He slammed US President Donald Trump's deployment of federal agents in Portland and other cities.
Ron Wyden, a Democrat, told The Guardian that "Unless America draws a line in the sand right now, I think we could be staring down the barrel of martial law in the middle of a presidential election."
And he warned that such a situation would mean "trashing the constitution and trashing people's individual rights."
Martial law is when the military takes control of law enforcement and civil rights are suspended.
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Trump predicts 'most corrupt election' in US history while making false claims about mail-in voting
By Maegan Vazquez and Donald Judd, CNN
Updated 9:32 PM ET, Tue June 23, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/politics/donald-trump-mail-voter-fraud-most-corrupt-election/index.html
Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump is predicting that the November election will be "the most corrupt election in the history of our country," while spreading false claims and inaccurate statements about widespread voter fraud.
Speaking to students in Arizona on Tuesday evening, the President took aim at states' efforts to expand voting by mail in order to encourage Americans to continue to social-distance amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 100,000 Americans.
"The Democrats are also trying to rig the election by sending tens of millions of ballots using the China virus as the excuse for allowing people not to go to the polls," Trump claimed, later adding: "This will be, in my opinion, the most corrupt election in the history of our country, and we cannot let this happen."
Trump said ballots could be stolen, forged by foreign powers or excluded from Republican sections in voting districts. He also claimed there is "tremendous evidence of fraud in areas with mail-in ballots."
CNN has repeatedly debunked the President's claims about mail-in voter fraud, and his primary allegation -- that voting by mail leads to "massive fraud" -- is completely untrue. As the coronavirus spread, bipartisan officials across the country expanded postal voting as a pandemic-safe option -- a move endorsed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And this week, CNN spoke with numerous Republican senators, including members of the GOP leadership team. None of them said they agreed with the President's views on mail-in voting, and a number of them said they supported its expansion as a way to deal with the coronavirus.
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Trump Tweets His Disgust at 'Trending' Tweets He Calls 'Illegal' and 'Unfair'
By Daniel Villarreal On 7/27/20 at 8:02 PM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-tweets-his-disgust-trending-tweets-he-calls-illegal-unfair-1520840
On Monday evening, President Donald Trump wrote a tweet complaining about the fact that his name often trends on Twitter, an indication that people are talking about him on the micro-blogging social media platform.
"So disgusting to watch Twitter's so-called 'Trending', where sooo many trends are about me, and never a good one. They look for anything they can find, make it as bad as possible, and blow it up, trying to make it trend. Really ridiculous, illegal, and, of course, very unfair!" Trump wrote.
It's unclear who the "they" in Trump's tweet refers to, or what Trump considers illegal about Twitter's trending section. Newsweek contacted the White House for comment.
...
On May 26, Trump accused Twitter of stifling free speech after it fact-checked a tweet of his that falsely claimed mail-in voting increases voter fraud.
After claiming that mail-in voting increases voter fraud and that California is sending mail-in ballots to "anyone" regardless of residency, Twitter tagged Trump's tweets with the message reading, "Get the facts about mail-in ballots." The message linked to pages debunking his false claims.
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Police: Richmond riots instigated by white supremacists disguised as Black Lives Matter
27 July 2020
https://www.wsls.com/news/virginia/2020/07/27/police-richmond-riots-instigated-by-white-supremacists-disguised-as-black-lives-matter/
RICHMOND, Va. – Riots in downtown Richmond over the weekend were instigated by white supremacists under the guise of Black Lives Matter, according to law enforcement officials.
Protesters tore down police tape and pushed forward toward Richmond police headquarters, where they set a city dump truck on fire.
Police declared the event an “unlawful assembly” and ordered people to leave, later deploying tear gas.
Six people were arrested. The mayor of Richmond thanked the Black Lives Matter protesters he said tried to stop the white supremacists from spearheading the violence.
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Videos Show How Federal Officers Escalated Violence in Portland
By Ainara Tiefenthäler, Evan Hill, Drew Jordan, Malachy Browne and David Botti
July 24, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007243995/portland-protests-federal-government.html
Peaceful protests were already happening for weeks when federal officers arrived on July 4. Our video shows how President Trump’s deployment ignited chaos.
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Elite Border Patrol Unit Is Among Federal Agents Deployed to Portland
Bortac, which typically handles immigration intelligence and raids, is protecting federal buildings; ‘This isn’t their expertise’
Footage shows the mayor of Portland in a cloud of tear gas as protests against the presence of federal agents continued. President Trump also announced the deployment of hundreds of law-enforcement officers to Chicago and Albuquerque, N.M., to fight gun violence.
By Alicia A. Caldwell and Michell Hackman
Updated July 25, 2020 12:33 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/elite-border-patrol-unit-is-among-federal-agents-deployed-to-portland-11595689780
Agents from the Border Patrol’s elite unit known as Bortac typically track smugglers, serve high-risk warrants and raid stash houses. For much of the past month, they have been working on the streets of Portland.
Members of the squad of roughly 120, who are trained in the use of weapons from pistols to sniper rifles, are among the most highly trained federal agents who have been sent to Oregon’s largest city and the least frequently deployed to quell unrest within the U.S..
Border Patrol officials have declined to say how many Bortac agents have been deployed. A Trump administration official said 45 agents and officers from Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, are among the approximately 100 federal agents sent to Portland to protect federal buildings from late-night violence that has followed protests over police violence and racism.
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Here’s how to prepare for Trump rejecting the election results in November
Opinion by Brian Klaas
Global Opinions contributor
July 27, 2020 at 8:45 a.m. PDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/27/heres-how-prepare-trump-rejecting-election-results-november/
President Trump is laying the groundwork to do something that no previous president has ever done: falsely claim that an election was fixed against him in order to discredit the vote. Trump has repeatedly — and incorrectly — claimed the election will be “rigged” against him. By promoting a series of wacky, debunked conspiracy theories, he has primed his supporters to wrongly believe he is the victim of some unknown, shadowy “deep state” plot. In an interview that aired last week, he refused to commit to accepting the results in November.
His actions challenge the flagship event of our republic: the peaceful transfer of power after an election, accepted by all candidates. (It’s worth noting that in 2016, Hillary Clinton quickly accepted the results and congratulated her opponent, while also criticizing the election’s integrity based on verified instances of Russian information warfare — a far cry from Trump peddling the debunked myth of widespread voter fraud.) With about 100 days to go, we are careening toward an extraordinarily dangerous crisis of American democracy.
Such crises never happen in other functioning democracies. But they happen all the time in broken countries around the world. In contentious elections from Africa to southeast Asia, incumbents who lose often refuse to accept defeat. Welcome to the club, America!
All the warning lights are blinking red. University of Birmingham professor Nic Cheeseman , an expert on contentious elections and political violence with whom I co-authored the book “How to Rig an Election,” normally worries when contested votes happen in Kenya or Zimbabwe. Now, he’s worried about the United States. “There are five warning I always look for,” he told me. “Organized militias, a leader who is not prepared to lose, distrust of the political system, disinformation, and a potentially close contest. Right now, the U.S. has all five.”
Consider ourselves warned. The question, then, is: What do we do about it? If Trump ends up trying to torch crucial norms of democracy in order to save face, how can we prepare? Other countries offer a series of lessons we should urgently learn from, so that if (or when) the worst happens, Trump’s matches don’t light.
First, we need a bipartisan pact endorsing the results. Incumbents who reject results solely because they lost tend to get more traction when their party backs them uniformly. When cracks show, the self-serving farce falls apart. Democrats and Republicans who believe in democracy should agree to immediately and publicly accept the election results (barring any major irregularities).
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More federal agents dispatched to Portland as protests rise in other cities
By Devlin Barrett, Nick Miroff, Marissa J. Lang and David A. Fahrenthold
July 27, 2020 at 6:48 p.m. PDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/more-federal-agents-dispatched-to-portland-as-protests-rise-in-other-cities/2020/07/27/20a717be-d03c-11ea-8d32-1ebf4e9d8e0d_story.html
The Trump administration is sending more federal agents to Portland, Ore., already the site of aggressive policing tactics that activists and city officials across the country say are inspiring more-violent clashes and re-energizing protests.
The U.S. Marshals Service decided last week to send more deputies to Portland, according to an internal email reviewed by The Washington Post, with personnel beginning to arrive last Thursday night. The Department of Homeland Security is also considering a plan to send an additional 50 U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel to the city, according to senior administration officials involved in the federal response who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.
Such moves would mark a significant expansion of the federal force operating at the Portland federal courthouse — there were 114 federal agents there in mid-July — though it is unclear how many existing personnel could be sent home after the arrival of at least 100 reinforcements, according to internal Marshals emails.
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Police: 'Umbrella Man' was a white supremacist trying to incite George Floyd rioting
Police say the suspect has been identified, but no charges had been filed as of Tuesday afternoon.
By Libor Jany Star Tribune
July 28, 2020
https://www.startribune.com/police-umbrella-man-was-a-white-supremacist-trying-to-incite-floyd-rioting/571932272/
A masked man who was seen in a viral video smashing the windows of a south Minneapolis auto parts store during the George Floyd protests, earning him the moniker "Umbrella Man," is suspected of ties with a white supremacist group and sought to incite racial tension, police said.
A Minneapolis police arson investigator said the act of vandalism at the AutoZone on East Lake Street helped spark a chain reaction that led to days of looting and rioting. The store was among dozens of buildings across the city that burned to the ground in the days that followed.
"This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and looting throughout the precinct and the rest of the city," Sgt. Erika Christensen wrote in a search warrant affidavit filed in court this week. "Until the actions of the person your affiant has been calling 'Umbrella Man,' the protests had been relatively peaceful. The actions of this person created an atmosphere of hostility and tension. Your affiant believes that this individual's sole aim was to incite violence."
Police identified "Umbrella Man" thanks to a tip that came via email last week, Christensen said.
...
Christensen wrote in the affidavit that she watched "innumerable hours" of videos on social media platforms like Tik Tok, Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube to try to identify "Umbrella Man," to no avail. Investigators finally caught a break when a tipster e-mailed the MPD identifying the man as a member of the Hell's Angels biker gang who "wanted to sow discord and racial unrest by breaking out the windows and writing what he did on the double red doors," she wrote.
Police have also connected the 32-year-old man to a widely-publicized incident in Stillwater late last month, in which a Muslim woman was confronted by a group of men wearing white supremacist garb.
A subsequent investigation revealed that the man was also an associate of the Aryan Cowboy Brotherhood, a small white supremacist prison and street gang based primarily in Minnesota and Kentucky. Several of its members were also present at the Stillwater incident.
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Gwen Snyder is uncivil
twitter.com/gwensnyderPHL
28 July 2020
https://twitter.com/gwensnyderPHL/status/1288231462572036097
[THREAD]
People forget that Trump grew up in a "say it until it becomes true" positive thinking cult.
It's always been abundantly clear that he's still a believer, and it's why he detests the acknowledgment of any unpleasant truth.
It's not senility, it's cult programming.
[NEXT]
He doesn't care what's true and what's not because to him, because he doesn't believe in fixed reality.
He believes that you speak reality into being.
That's literally the religion he grew up in.
He very likely believes that HCQ *will* work if people just say it enough.
[NEXT]
That's what makes Trump such an effective propagandist and fascist.
He doesn't just believe that speaking untruth long enough and loudly enough will make people believe it.
He believes that speaking it long enough and loudly enough will *make it true.*
[NEXT]
That's what makes him so dangerous, and it is what is going to happen with this election.
He will never, ever accept an independent external reality of results that aren't in his favor, because doesn't accept the existence of an independent external reality.
[THREAD CONTINUES AT LINK]
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michelle lh࿊࿊q
twitter.com/MichelleLhooq
28 July 2020
https://twitter.com/MichelleLhooq/status/1288253381883113475
NYC is taking after Portland - a trans femme protestor was pulled into an unmarked van at the Abolition Park protest - this was at 2nd Ave and 25th Street
[EMBEDDED VIDEO OF FEDERAL(?) ABDUCTION]
4:21 PM · Jul 28, 2020 from Manhattan, NY
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Federal Officers Pepper Spray Combat Medic From Vietnam War, Video Shows
By Emily Czachor On 7/26/20
https://www.newsweek.com/federal-officers-pepper-spray-photojournalist-military-veteran-during-portland-protest-video-shows-1520548
Federal agents pepper sprayed a photojournalist during protests in Portland, Oregon, early Sunday morning.
A video of the altercation shows the journalist, identified as Mike Hastie, confronting a group of armed federal officers who have formed a line across one of the city's intersections. Hastie describes himself as an army veteran in the video, saying he served as a combat medic during the Vietnam War.
The video recording begins in the middle of Hastie's comments to law enforcement. After less than 20 seconds, one officer approaches him from somewhere off camera and dispenses pepper spray into Hastie's face. He holds the canister closer than an arm's length from Hastie.
The federal agents, wearing camouflaged military gear, then proceed to leave the area. Upon moving past Hastie, officers tell him to "back up" and "move." One shoves him when the group walks by.
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Here Are The Current NYPD Officers With The Most Substantiated Misconduct Complaints
By George Joseph, Christopher Robbins and Jake Offenhartz
July 28, 2020
https://gothamist.com/news/here-are-current-nypd-officers-most-substantiated-misconduct-complaints
Approximately four thousand of the NYPD’s 36,000 active officers have at least one substantiated complaint of police misconduct, according to data from the Civilian Complaint Review Board published by ProPublica on Sunday.
Gothamist/WNYC has identified seven officers in the CCRB’s data set with substantiated allegations in at least six separate complaints—the most of all current NYPD officers. All enjoyed high-ranking positions as of last month, according to the dataset. All are white men. Some have been the subject of extensive news coverage.
We have reached out to each officer named here individually and through their unions. Some did not reply and others referred us to the NYPD or their union.
“The NYPD has for many years worked to increase transparency to gain the trust of the communities we serve,” the department said in a statement, when asked specifically about these officers.
A representative for Mayor Bill de Blasio did not respond to a request for comment.