RATHER than address the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic the fascist drumpf / trump-pence administration committed time and taxpayer dollars to the sturmabteilung / department of homeland security. Following orders from (NOT MY) pres drumpf / trump acting oberster sa-fuhrer chad wolf with his sa oberfuhrer ken cuccinelli are committed to carrying out attacks on the American people, violating civil and human rights in Washington, D.C., Portland, OR, and sending members of the sturmabteilung to Seattle, WA, Kansas City, MO, Chicago, IL and Albuquerque, NM to carry out the same violations of the American constitution against the American people. With these actions and the misinformation, lies and propaganda spewing from the White House and being spread by Faux fox news drumpf / trump-pence expect their "law and order" policies and actions will turn the 2020 presidential election in their favor. UNFORTUNATELY there is a very good possibility drumpf / trump-pence will be reelected and so we can not give up, we must remain vigilant, remain engaged and remain committed, in the words of the late Rep John Lewis, “We must go out and vote like we’ve never, ever voted before.” 18JUL20".
From DemocracyNow! and the ACLU
U.S. Cities Need Masks and Tests, Mr. President, Not Shock Troops
ColumnJULY 23, 2020
By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
Camouflage-clad paramilitary vigilantes have been terrorizing Portland, Oregon, grabbing people protesting racism and police brutality, pulling them into unmarked minivans and driving off. These roving shock troops, with no insignia or badges, proved to be federal agents from a slew of agencies, ordered to Portland after President Donald Trump issued an executive order on June 26th, a month and a day after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police. Trump’s order, “Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence,” was a rambling diatribe against the massive, diverse protest movement that has swept the country in the wake of Floyd’s murder and the police killings of Ahmaud Aubrey, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and so many more.
Juxtapose these fallen innocents with the statues Trump is desperately trying to protect: Confederate President Jefferson Davis; General Robert E. Lee; John C. Calhoun, the 7th vice president of the U.S. and a strident defender of slavery, and Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision denying citizenship to African Americans. Add to these the Southern military bases named after Confederate officers, which Trump has declared will not be renamed under his watch: Benning, Bragg, Hood and others.
As more Confederate statues and shrines to slavery and genocide have fallen, so too have Trump’s poll numbers. In response, he is putting into practice his frightening penchant for authoritarianism, unleashing a clandestine shadow army on the citizenry, criminalizing protest as he struggles to inflame white supremacy. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic surges through the country, and Trump is utterly failing to provide essential federal resources, from personal protective equipment (PPE) to testing and contact tracing, all the basic elements needed to contain this deadly virus. Democratic Washington Governor Jay Inslee recently summed up the situation, saying, “I wish he cared more about living Americans instead of dead Confederates.”
On March 16th, early in the pandemic, Trump told U.S. governors, “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves.” This pitted fifty governors against each other and the federal government in the open market for masks, gloves, testing swabs, reagents and other supplies, driving up prices and causing lethal shortages. Tens of thousands of people died unnecessarily as a result of Trump’s dereliction of duty. “We saw healthcare workers in garbage bag gowns and reusing the same N95 masks for days on end while they risked their lives to save others,” Senators Leahy, Durbin, Murray and Tester wrote to Trump this week, demanding to know why an estimated $8 billion of taxpayer money appropriated for the COVID-19 response, specifically for masks, testing and other supplies, remains unspent.
Reports in recents days, based on unnamed White House sources, suggest Trump wants to completely cut funding to the CDC and NIH for COVID-19 testing and contact tracing, angering even Senate Republicans.
The U.S. has a quarter of the global COVID-19 infections and deaths, but less than five percent of the world’s population. Nationwide, 60,000 people are now hospitalized with COVID-19 and 1,000 people dying from the disease every day. Shortages of masks, ICU beds, and space for the dead in morgues are mounting. Currently, on a per capita basis, the hardest hit states are Florida, Louisiana, Arizona, Mississippi, Alabama, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas, Idaho, Tennessee, and Georgia — a list that includes all seven of the original Confederate states. Despite the worsening catastrophe, the Republican governors of Florida, Georgia and Arizona, all staunch Trump allies, refuse to issue state-wide mask mandates.
They are only following their leader, President Trump, who also won’t issue a national mask mandate, claiming to respect state and local authority. In almost the same breath, though, Trump threatens to send a “surge” of armed federal agents to major cities across the country, against the wishes of those very cities and states. President Trump’s job is to protect public safety. That includes protecting the public health, especially in this time of the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and police brutality.
The response in Oregon to Trump’s outrageous and likely unconstitutional deployment of federal agents has been resoundingly critical. Governor Kate Brown denounced “secret police abducting people,” and Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum has sued several of the federal agencies involved. In the streets, a contingent of women has grown nightly, protecting protesters by forming a “wall of moms.” Senator Ron Wyden, describing the federal agents as “essentially fascist,” warned, “if the line is not drawn in the sand right now, America may be staring down the barrel of martial law in the middle of a presidential election.”
More Military Deployment and Terrorism Investigations are an Outrageous Response to Black Pain, Grief, and Anger
The government should not escalate the tension, fear, and pain we’re seeing and feeling across the country.
Across the country, people are protesting police brutality and systemic racism. They are relentlessly demanding justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the countless other Black people killed by police. In response, President Trump, supported by belligerent enablers in Congress and his administration, has threatened to deploy federal troops into states, and federal agencies are investigating protestors for domestic terrorism. These presidential threats and actions are authoritarian, irresponsible, dangerous, and wrong.
Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 was extraordinary — over the last 50 years, presidents have rarely used this extreme authority, and rightly so. In this country, we have a strong norm against deploying the military on domestic soil, recognizing the threat it poses to liberty and individual civil rights. This norm is reflected in law — Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878 to prohibit the use of federal military forces “to execute the law” unless the Constitution or Congress authorize it. That means the federal military can’t, for example, search, seize, arrest, apprehend, stop and frisk, surveil, pursue, interrogate, or investigate civilians.
But Congress also passed exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, the most expansive and potentially dangerous of which is the Insurrection Act of 1807. In the Insurrection Act, Congress gave presidents the authority to deploy active-duty federal troops and National Guard members under federal control — to suppress insurrection, acts of massive or widespread violence that “make it impracticable” to enforce federal law, or similar violence that obstructs federal law or the course of justice. Historically, presidents have invoked this authority to deploy troops at the request of a state, but also sometimes over a state’s objections — for example, to enforce civil rights protections and court-ordered desegregation. That is the opposite of what Trump would do.
Much as Trump loves the rhetoric of “war” and sees Black and Brown protest as a threat, the reality is that we are not at war in this country. Nor is it impracticable for civilian authorities to respond calmly and responsibly to unrest, especially when it is over their own abuses. Protestors are demanding that law enforcement end decades of unjust, unequal, and racist treatment of Black communities.
What Trump doesn’t seem to understand when he threatens to unleash “unlimited” military power domestically is that there are limits. Even if he were to wrongly and unnecessarily invoke the Insurrection Act, federal troops would still be subject to all of the safeguards and restrictions the Constitution imposes. Even so, the escalation would carry obvious dangers of excessive government surveillance and use of force, in violation of the Constitution. Civilian police, National Guard forces in D.C., and some National Guard forces in states are already engaging in serious abuses and violence.
An even more militarized response to civilian dissent would escalate the tension, fear, and pain we’re seeing and feeling across the country, especially in communities already traumatized by police violence. It would worsen the over-policing of Black lives — the very reason why people around the country are protesting.
Current and former military leaders are rightly warning against calling out more troops, and reminding troops of the fundamentals of the Constitution. Still, the fact that military leaders are being hailed as calming influences is a stark marker of how broken our politics, norms, and country are. It was not so long ago that military leaders had to reaffirm the prohibition against torture when it was systematically used against Brown and Black men abroad.
We have not come a long way, America. Perhaps policymakers will finally wake up to the harms of decades of rights-violating, war-based foreign policy — and its connections to militarized policing and racism at home. Every politician who is quick to laud Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. needs to remember his radical call to action against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.” There is so much to fundamentally reform, and the people in the streets are demonstrating their urgent will for change. Yet much like during Dr. King’s time, federal agencies are viewing civil rights protests and protestors as domestic terrorists — enemies of the state.
Public attention has mostly focused on Trump blaming Antifa for violence and asserting that he would designate it as a domestic terrorist organization, even though he does not have that legal authority. That the same day, the FBI’s Washington Field Office reported it “has no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement/presence” in violence, and a later Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment reportedly found the violence that has occurred is opportunistic.
Focusing on the threat against Antifa alone, though, misses the broader harms and consequences. Attorney General Barr this week enthusiastically announced that the Justice Department is using its broad and abusive domestic terrorism investigative powers in response to civil unrest.
Terrorism is an inherently political label, easily abused and misused. Communities of color already know this from 20 years of experience being targeted for discriminatory surveillance and investigation under the Patriot Act’s broad and vague definition of domestic terrorism. Black communities have long been in federal law enforcement’s cross-hairs: in 2017, the FBI concocted the label “black identity extremists,” opening the door to bias-based profiling of Black people and Black-led organizations who use their voices to demand racial justice. The agency appears to have conducted similar investigations of indigenous activists and protest. Civil rights leaders and groups have long demanded reform of national security and criminal authorities that discriminatorily suppress and punish Black and Brown people, and raise significant equal protection, due process, and First Amendment concerns. But Congress has stubbornly refused to act.
Now, Trump and Barr appear willing to bring the massive weight of the federal government’s expanded post-9/11 investigative powers and agencies down on new generations of racial justice and civil rights activists crying out for the right of Black people to live, and a more equal and just America.
These are some of the real threats we face right now — and reject.
Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 was extraordinary — over the last 50 years, presidents have rarely used this extreme authority, and rightly so. In this country, we have a strong norm against deploying the military on domestic soil, recognizing the threat it poses to liberty and individual civil rights. This norm is reflected in law — Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878 to prohibit the use of federal military forces “to execute the law” unless the Constitution or Congress authorize it. That means the federal military can’t, for example, search, seize, arrest, apprehend, stop and frisk, surveil, pursue, interrogate, or investigate civilians.
But Congress also passed exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, the most expansive and potentially dangerous of which is the Insurrection Act of 1807. In the Insurrection Act, Congress gave presidents the authority to deploy active-duty federal troops and National Guard members under federal control — to suppress insurrection, acts of massive or widespread violence that “make it impracticable” to enforce federal law, or similar violence that obstructs federal law or the course of justice. Historically, presidents have invoked this authority to deploy troops at the request of a state, but also sometimes over a state’s objections — for example, to enforce civil rights protections and court-ordered desegregation. That is the opposite of what Trump would do.
Much as Trump loves the rhetoric of “war” and sees Black and Brown protest as a threat, the reality is that we are not at war in this country. Nor is it impracticable for civilian authorities to respond calmly and responsibly to unrest, especially when it is over their own abuses. Protestors are demanding that law enforcement end decades of unjust, unequal, and racist treatment of Black communities.
What Trump doesn’t seem to understand when he threatens to unleash “unlimited” military power domestically is that there are limits. Even if he were to wrongly and unnecessarily invoke the Insurrection Act, federal troops would still be subject to all of the safeguards and restrictions the Constitution imposes. Even so, the escalation would carry obvious dangers of excessive government surveillance and use of force, in violation of the Constitution. Civilian police, National Guard forces in D.C., and some National Guard forces in states are already engaging in serious abuses and violence.
An even more militarized response to civilian dissent would escalate the tension, fear, and pain we’re seeing and feeling across the country, especially in communities already traumatized by police violence. It would worsen the over-policing of Black lives — the very reason why people around the country are protesting.
Current and former military leaders are rightly warning against calling out more troops, and reminding troops of the fundamentals of the Constitution. Still, the fact that military leaders are being hailed as calming influences is a stark marker of how broken our politics, norms, and country are. It was not so long ago that military leaders had to reaffirm the prohibition against torture when it was systematically used against Brown and Black men abroad.
We have not come a long way, America. Perhaps policymakers will finally wake up to the harms of decades of rights-violating, war-based foreign policy — and its connections to militarized policing and racism at home. Every politician who is quick to laud Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. needs to remember his radical call to action against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.” There is so much to fundamentally reform, and the people in the streets are demonstrating their urgent will for change. Yet much like during Dr. King’s time, federal agencies are viewing civil rights protests and protestors as domestic terrorists — enemies of the state.
Public attention has mostly focused on Trump blaming Antifa for violence and asserting that he would designate it as a domestic terrorist organization, even though he does not have that legal authority. That the same day, the FBI’s Washington Field Office reported it “has no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement/presence” in violence, and a later Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment reportedly found the violence that has occurred is opportunistic.
Focusing on the threat against Antifa alone, though, misses the broader harms and consequences. Attorney General Barr this week enthusiastically announced that the Justice Department is using its broad and abusive domestic terrorism investigative powers in response to civil unrest.
Terrorism is an inherently political label, easily abused and misused. Communities of color already know this from 20 years of experience being targeted for discriminatory surveillance and investigation under the Patriot Act’s broad and vague definition of domestic terrorism. Black communities have long been in federal law enforcement’s cross-hairs: in 2017, the FBI concocted the label “black identity extremists,” opening the door to bias-based profiling of Black people and Black-led organizations who use their voices to demand racial justice. The agency appears to have conducted similar investigations of indigenous activists and protest. Civil rights leaders and groups have long demanded reform of national security and criminal authorities that discriminatorily suppress and punish Black and Brown people, and raise significant equal protection, due process, and First Amendment concerns. But Congress has stubbornly refused to act.
Now, Trump and Barr appear willing to bring the massive weight of the federal government’s expanded post-9/11 investigative powers and agencies down on new generations of racial justice and civil rights activists crying out for the right of Black people to live, and a more equal and just America.
These are some of the real threats we face right now — and reject.
No comments:
Post a Comment