RSN: FOCUS: James Risen | Donald Trump Is an Autocrat. It's Up to All of Us to Stop Him.

04 June 20

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

---

FOCUS: James Risen | Donald Trump Is an Autocrat. It's Up to All of Us to Stop Him.

James Risen, The Intercept
Risen writes: "I have a question for American leftists: Do you finally see the difference between the Democrats and Donald Trump?"

I have a question for American right-wingers: Do you finally see that it is Trump who will take your guns?

I have a question for American evangelicals: Do you finally see that Trump is the one who will close your churches?

I have a question for Republican members of Congress: Do you finally see that you will be in the camps too?

Dictatorships are built on denial. Dictators take over gradually; each incremental step that erodes civil liberties and the rule of law can be justified and explained away. Sometimes a would-be dictator is laughed off as a political buffoon who shouldn’t be taken seriously. While it is happening, no one can quite believe that they are on the road to serfdom.

Autocrats often enjoy broad public support for their crackdowns. Initially, they target the “others,” while the majority cheers. The public doesn’t recognize the threat until it is too late. The supporters who cheered the loudest are often caught up in ideological purges and become some of the regime’s earliest victims.

After nearly four years in office, it is impossible to miss what Trump truly is. He is a psychopath who lusts for dictatorial powers. He has jettisoned everyone from the government who might get in his way. He is now surrounded by enablers in jackboots like Attorney General William Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Gen. Mark Milley, a lickspittle who claims to be an American military officer, strolled through the streets of Washington, D.C. on Monday night with Trump and Barr while U.S. military personnel were illegally being used to attack protesters and shove them out of the way so that Trump could pose for a photo holding a Bible in front of graffiti-covered St. John’s Episcopal Church. The men had the look of coup plotters bent on seizing the government in the dark of night.

That same evening, military helicopters hovered low over Washington, just over the heads of demonstrators who were protesting the May 25 murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police. The noise and downward air blasts from the helicopters were used to disperse crowds. (Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said that the Pentagon asked Maryland and Virginia for troops without the knowledge of the D.C. government.) It was one of the most shameful episodes involving the use of the U.S. military in the nation’s capital since 1932, when the Army infamously used tanks and tear gas to attack protesters known as the “Bonus Army,” World War I veterans camped out to demand long-promised bonuses.

Trump gave away his game Monday night. A scheming man of no moral convictions, he figured that holding a Bible would be enough to rally his white evangelical base.

He said nothing as he stood, Bible in hand, for the photographers in front of the church, but it was easy to guess what he was thinking. He was probably thinking that evangelicals are chumps, morons who always fall for his cheap tricks. It’s not hard to discern that Trump looks down on evangelicals, resents them for how easy it is to manipulate them, and will turn on them as soon as he no longer needs them.

Washington Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde readily saw through Trump after his photo-op in front at St. John’s. “The president just used the Bible, our sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus,” she said.

The next day, Trump stood for photos at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, doubling down on his shabby game of exploiting religious iconography. This time, he was going for conservative Catholics, rather than evangelicals, but the act was the same. The Catholic archbishop of Washington quickly attacked Trump’s visit to the shrine, just as Budde had attacked his photo-op in front of St. John’s the day before.

Meanwhile, in the White House Rose Garden on Monday, the president vowed to protect “Second Amendment rights.” Once again, Trump proved that he thinks his supporters are idiots who can be exploited with simple, coded phrases. The gun rights activists who rave enthusiastically about giving Trump expansive powers may soon have troops knocking at their doors as helicopters hover overhead. When that happens, they may feel, too late, an unexpected kinship with the protesters they now disparage.

Trump bared his authoritarian intentions in a conference call with state governors Monday, in which he berated them for being weak in the face of protests, demanding that they “dominate” the demonstrators, while threatening to send troops to their states if they didn’t accede to his demands. Trump also talked that day by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin; maybe he was getting pointers on how to crush dissent.

Trump is speeding down the path toward dictatorship because what remains of the Republican Party is eager for him to grab power. It is now a white identity party, filled with aging white people who fear the demographic trends of increasing diversity. They don’t like America as it now exists, and they want Trump to destroy the rules and laws that protect minorities, the poor, and the disadvantaged.

On Monday, Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican and Trump acolyte, offered a typical Republican response to the protests when he called for all the lethal tools of the global war on terror to be brought home and turned on American protesters. “Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?” Gaetz tweeted Monday. Twitter restricted access to the Gaetz tweet, labeling it a glorification of violence.

By advocating for an end to the rule of law, Republicans like Gaetz will find themselves surviving at the whim of Trump. That’s when the jokes about drones and Gitmo won’t seem so funny to them.

Finally, for American leftists who don’t see any difference between the Democrats and Trump — and who might even prefer Trump because he is destroying the centrist status quo, thus creating an opening for the left — it is time to face the cold facts of history.

Consider the case of Ernst Thälmann.

Thälmann was the leader of the German Communist Party in the late 1920s and early 1930s and saw the center-left German Social Democratic Party, rather than Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, as his main political enemy. Thälmann did everything he could to undermine the Social Democrats, who he called “social fascists,” in order to destroy the liberal status quo in the Weimar Republic and set the conditions for a communist revolution. The deep political divide between the center-left and the left in Germany in the early 1930s helped enable Hitler’s rise.

After Hitler came to power, Thälmann was arrested and imprisoned. He was later transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was shot by the SS on Hitler’s orders.

READ MORE

---

Contribute to RSN 

Update My Monthly Donation

Let's talk about the generals....

Liz Theoharis, You Only Get What You're Organized to Take

Tomgram: Liz Theoharis, You Only Get What You're Organized to Take

Posted by Liz Theoharis at 7:36am, June 4, 2020.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch.

 Print

Is there an American problem that hasn’t been made far worse by the spread of Covid-19 and a “leadership” in Washington that couldn’t lead itself out of anywhere whatsoever? Any places that were previously crowded, underfunded, and undertended -- prisons, nursing homes, assisted living centers, homeless shelters, poor hospitals, the poorest neighborhoods (disproportionately filled with Latinos and blacks) -- have found themselves under a coronaviral siege of the first order and without an empathetic Trump tweet in sight. Jobs have gone down the drain; government aid has been siphoned in a striking fashion to large corporations (laying off staggering numbers of people); poor children, no longer even getting their lunches at school, are suffering from a fierce new round of hunger (without significant government aid); and that’s just to start down such a list in what still passes (though you’d never know it) for the wealthiest, most powerful nation on the planet.
Meanwhile the president, in a pandemic moment, has decided that it’s crucial to withdraw from the World Health Organization and attack Twitter for tagging a couple of his bizarre tweets. The man who's had his knee on the American neck for months now has dealt with a racist police killing in Minneapolis and the reaction to it by tweeting out “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a phrase created by a racist Miami police chief in 1967 and probably last mouthed by George Wallace, the infamous segregationist candidate for president, in 1968.
We're watching the “birth” (as in birtherism) of a new (which means old) version of America. Under siege and facing a brutal pandemic, in the midst of protests and rioting over George Floyd's killing, this country’s forever wars have truly come home in grotesque ways. In that context, anyone capable of imagining a future in which a new and better America might be born is a champ and TomDispatch regular Liz Theoharis qualifies big time. Co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and author of Always With Us? What Jesus Really Said About the Poor in a country that has, in this century, become ever more of the rich, for the rich, and by the rich, she offers us a glimpse of what a future organized by those experiencing the worst of this moment might look like. Tom

Organizing the Rich or the Poor?
Which America Will Be Ours After the Pandemic?
By Liz Theoharis
In the summer of 1995, when I was 18, I started visiting Tent City, a temporary encampment in an abandoned lot in northeast Philadelphia. About 40 families had taken up residence in tents, shacks, and other makeshift structures. Among them were people of various races, ages, and sexual orientations, all homeless and fighting for the right to live.
Tent City was set up by the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), a grassroots organization of poor and homeless people and a chapter of the National Welfare Rights Union. As in so many other areas of the country, homelessness in Philadelphia, a city battered by decades of deindustrialization, job loss, and affordable housing cuts, had become endemic. Although they were still living in what had once been the center of the northeast industrial corridor, many in Philly, especially the residents of Kensington, had been reduced to two main sources of income: welfare and drugs. A teenager might have stood better odds of going to jail or being shot than graduating from Kensington High. More than 40% of the population in the area had to break the law simply to survive. Police brutality was rampant.

Federal and municipal welfare systems were being stripped of funds being funneled into the private sector. City officials assured those of us who protested that there was simply too much need and not enough resources. Even the local paper accused us of engaging in “homeless hype” -- being too disruptive in our public demonstrations and acts of mutual solidarity -- when the people of Kensington really needed peace and quiet, law and order. At that time, however, there were an estimated 27,000 homeless people in the city and 39,000 abandoned houses.
In that small Tent City lot, poor people were exposing the city’s claim of scarcity as a myth. Families who moved there with close to nothing were quick to discover American abundance. Residents shared their food stamps, while individuals, community groups, and religious congregations all made donations. Soon, the abundance was such that hundreds of hungry families started turning out every week to be fed with the surplus food.
Tent City became more than another encampment on the margins of American life. It was a center of political life for Philadelphia’s poor, as well as a strategic organizing base for sustenance and protest. In the winter, as rats the size of cats arrived, the encampment moved to an abandoned Catholic church, a project the KWRU labeled “the new Underground Railroad.” Just as enslaved people once had to break the law to bust out of the system of slavery, poor and homeless people needed a growing civil disobedience movement to survive.
I think about Tent City often in these pandemic days of spiraling poverty and inequality, as protesters in cities across the country question the legitimacy of a system that devalues life, especially black lives, native lives, immigrant lives, and the lives of the poor. Unemployment is now at 41 million and so at Great Depression levels; the shantytowns that spread across the country in the worst years of the 1930s should remind us that mass homelessness exists just on the other side of mass unemployment.
Last week, for instance, Covid-19 moratoriums on eviction began to expire and, in my childhood hometown, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, upward of 40,000 eviction notices are poised to be sent out. Meanwhile, the government has blundered through a string of “relief” packages that have injected trillions of dollars into Wall Street while excluding millions of people from even the most basic stop-gap protections. In the midst of federal incompetence and outright abandonment, staggering numbers of Americans, children included, are desperate for support and real relief.
This society has long suffered from a kind of Stockholm syndrome: we look to the rich for answers to the very problems they are often responsible for creating and from which they benefit. The wreckage of this pandemic moment is a bitter reminder of this affliction, as well as a signpost suggesting how we must emerge from this crisis a just and more equitable nation. With a possible depression ahead and more social unrest on the rise, isn’t it time to stop vindicating the wealthiest people in this country and look instead to leadership from those who were living in a depression before Covid-19 even hit and already organizing and protesting?
The Poor Organizing the Poor
Here’s a story from a long-ago moment that's still relevant. Two months before his assassination in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., travelled to Chicago, to enlist the women of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) -- the predecessor to the National Union of my day -- into the Poor People’s Campaign. As he walked into a conference room at a downtown Chicago YMCA, Dr. King encountered more than 30 welfare rights leaders seated strategically on the other side of an exceedingly large table. One of his advisers later noted that the women’s reception of the southern civil rights leader was a “grand piece of psychological warfare.”
Representing more than 30,000 welfare-receiving, dues-paying members, they had not come to passively listen to the famed leader. They wanted to know his position on the recent passage of anti-welfare legislation and quickly made that clear, pelting him with questions. Dr. King felt out of his element. Eventually, Johnnie Tillmon, the national chairwoman of the NWRO, stepped in. “You know, Dr. King,” she said, “if you don’t know about these questions, you should just say you don’t know and then we could go on with this meeting.”
To this, Dr. King replied, “We don’t know anything about welfare. We are here to learn.”
That day, Dr. King would learn much about the long struggle those women had waged for dignity in the workplace and the home. They taught him that programs of social uplift should be a permanent right and that the welfare system of the mid-twentieth century, much like our own, was structured as a public charity that callously differentiated between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. They introduced him to policy proposals that were generations ahead of their time, including a demand for a Guaranteed Adequate Annual Income, or what many now call a Universal Basic Income (UBI).
Four months into the Covid-19 crisis, with this country already afloat on a sea of inequality that would have been unimaginable even to those women in 1968, a sea change in public opinion may be underway when it comes to what’s necessary and possible. Ideas that only a few years ago would have been considered unimaginable like universal healthcare, guaranteed affordable housing, and debt relief are now breaking into the mainstream. Don’t think, however, that such policy positions, like the idea of a UBI, have materialized on Capitol Hill and in beltway think tanks out of thin air. They are, at least in part, the result of long-term agitating, educating, and organizing led by the poor themselves.
Those of us in the welfare rights movement always saw our work as the kindling for a wildfire of organizing by the poor and dispossessed. Our projects of survival, like Tent City, were not just about housing and feeding people. They were also about securing the lives of those committed to building the kind of movement necessary to transform society. Projects organized around immediate needs also became bases of operation for policy analysis and future plans.
Such projects, however, were beachheads meant to rally the larger society, as the ranks of the poor grew around us, to create lasting change for them. Perhaps it should be no surprise, then, that this novel pandemic has already galvanized bold collective action on the part of the poor and the precarious. For every sparsely attended reopen protest at a state capital by armed members of Donald Trump’s base, hundreds of new mutual-aid networks, ad-hoc tenant associations, and wildcat strike funds have been organized for those at the base of this society. Meanwhile, thousands of protestors have taken over streets in cities all across the country resisting racism and inequality.
Entire communities that are out of work and losing income are taking life-saving action that is also at times, and by necessity, in contradiction to the law. Despite recent media images of vandalism, today's protest movement features countless acts that add up to projects for survival.
In April and May, millions did not pay rent, echoing that most basic of economic principles: those who can’t pay won’t pay. Indeed, such rent strikes and other protests speak to an essential demand for temporary relief in the midst of a crisis of unparalleled proportions, but they also signal potential new directions for millions of people who, if offered a political home that articulates their desperate needs and demands, might, against great odds, begin to find common cause.
The Rich Organizing the Rich
If this crisis is opening up new possibilities for organizing among the poor, however, the same is true for the rich. Since mid-March, the fortunes of the 600-plus billionaires in the United States have jumped by $434 billion, or 15%. In the CARES Act that Congress passed, legislators slipped in a tax break of $135 billion for 43,000 of the country’s wealthiest business owners. (And, of course, you need to add this to the unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the poor to the very rich that happened via the $1.5 trillion Trump tax cut of 2017.)
This pandemic has already been very profitable for a very few. It should be seen as one benefit from a long-term organizing campaign of the rich that has included crushing the labor movement, consolidating industry, financializing the economy, and what one historian has dubbed a decades-long “tax strike.” By now, of course, the story of widening inequality in this country has become a familiar one, but that doesn’t make it any less shocking. In 1983, median household wealth in the United States was $84,000. Thirty-seven years of growing inequality later, it sits at $82,000. Meanwhile, as a point of comparison, the total wealth of the Forbes 400 was $92 billion in 1982. Now, it’s $2.89 trillion.
Behind this staggering and rapid accumulation of wealth rests a deep and abiding belief in recent decades that the rich are the engine of the American economy and so the deepest source of societal wellbeing. In this Covid-19 crisis, evidence abounds that such a faith, which emerged fullblown during the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, remains, for now, bipartisan and largely unshaken. The CARES Act caught its spirit exactly, managing to direct most of its money to Wall Street and hundreds of millions more to the police, while leaving millions of workers lacking paid sick leave and the uninsured, the homeless, undocumented immigrants, and many more in the lurch.
While the HEROES Act, recently passed by the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, offers improvements on this, many of which are guaranteed not to make it through the Senate, there are once again striking windfalls for the rich embedded in the bill. Within its 2,000 pages is funding for lobbyists, mortgage servicers, and private insurance companies. It does nothing to prohibit the corporate mergers that have produced bigger and more powerful monopolies in other moments of crisis in the recent past. It extends COBRA, a federal program that enables workers to temporarily keep health coverage on their own dime after their employment ends, and again directs vast sums of money to the private insurance industry, instead of expanding Medicaid and guaranteeing healthcare during the most devastating public health crisis in a century.
Meanwhile, at the state and local level, politicians on both sides of the aisle have refused to touch the wealth of the rich, even as they have decried their budget shortfalls, while managing this crisis largely via the playbook of austerity and readying themselves for social unrest. New York State, for instance, passed a budget that will cut $300 million from public hospitals but increase funding for the police. Likewise, the Washington State legislature has been lauded for the bipartisanship it demonstrated recently in putting through deep budget cuts. In no case have legislators chosen to tax their wealthiest residents, nor let up on policing and other forms of control. And Washington is home to Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, at present the two richest people on the face of the Earth.
Of course, the workers who are actually keeping the nation afloat will suffer the most from such cuts. They may now be called “essential,” but they continue, as ever, to be treated as expendable appendages of the economy.
How to Revive American Society
I recently wrote a piece with the subtitle “How to Destroy American Society from the Top Down.” The answer remains painfully simple: this country courts destruction as long as the rich are allowed to organize society around their lives and needs.
From my first moments working at Tent City through my 25 years of grassroots organizing, I’ve come to see that inverting that subtitle in a positive fashion is crucial to our survival as a nation. Any true revival of American society depends on collective action by those most impacted by injustice and by the willingness of the rest of society to follow their lead. From the abolitionism of the pre-Civil War era to the labor movement of the 1930s and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and beyond, people on the receiving end of injustice have done best when they didn’t wait to be saved but, born out of necessity, took heroic action themselves.
When the Kensington Welfare Rights Union declared that we were building a “new Underground Railroad” in Philadelphia in the 1990s, we were doing more than just invoking a powerful chapter in the history of the abolition of slavery. We were implicitly challenging the dominant notion of who the agents of change in our society should be. We recognized, even then, that in the lessons Americans were taught about that history, enslaved people were often conspicuously missing in action from the story of abolition. We saw in that Underground Railroad a way for slaves to escape the grips of the system that was oppressing them, something far larger than just a physical pathway to freedom. We imagined it as a significant political project of the past exactly because it was one way the poor and enslaved of another era struck the first blows against a brutal and inhumane system.
Today, there is a freedom railroad rumbling underground, all around us. It has stops in the Amazon warehouses and the fast-food restaurants where low-wage workers are organizing for better wages and conditions; in immigrant communities that are protecting themselves against ICE raids in the midst of stay-at-home orders; in cities where people are winning moratoriums on water and utility shut-offs; in housing developments and hospitals where thousands are insisting that housing and healthcare are human rights.
You can hear it in the recent slogan -- “stay in place, stay alive, organize, and don’t believe the lies” -- of the Poor People’s Campaign that I co-chair, which has called for noncooperation with decisions to recklessly reopen states for business, putting the poor and sick most directly in harm’s way. You can see it in the tens of thousands of people protesting across the country, refusing to be subdued by years of racism and police violence, people who are demanding full justice and the right for all of us, but especially repressed black lives, to survive and thrive.
In a moment from hell, there is only one meaningful way to revive American society: from the bottom up.

Liz Theoharis, a TomDispatch regular, is a theologian, ordained minister, and anti-poverty activist. Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, she is the author of Always With Us? What Jesus Really Said About the Poor. She teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Copyright 2020 Liz Theoharis

POLITICO Massachusetts Playbook: PROTESTS continue in Boston — ROLLINS clashes with POLICE union — POLL: Race to replace KENNEDY is wide open

By Stephanie Murray

Presented by Biogen and the Lemelson-MIT Program

GOOD MORNING, MASSACHUSETTS. FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: POLL: 4TH DISTRICT RACE IS WIDE OPEN — A new poll in the Democratic primary race to replace Rep. Joe Kennedy III shows a wide-open contest, with 60 percent of voters saying they're undecided on who to vote for. But among voters who have a preference, Newton City Councilor Becky Grossman leads the crowded field, according to a poll commissioned by her campaign. It's still early — there are 89 days until the Sept. 1 primary — but the survey provides a glimpse at where things stand in the race. The poll numbers will be released by Grossman's campaign today. The survey was conducted by Beacon Research. Grossman leads the poll with 13 percent of support, followed by former Gov. Deval Patrick aide Jesse Mermell and Newton City Councilor Jake Auchincloss, who each have 7 percent of support, according to Grossman's campaign. The poll surveyed 501 likely Democratic primary voters in the 4th Congressional District between May 26 and May 30, and the margin of error is 4 percent. There are officially nine Democrats on the ballot, and the Grossman campaign released polling data on seven of the candidates. Attorney Ben Sigel and City Year co-founder Alan Khazei each have 4 percent of support from voters, according to the poll. Two percent of those surveyed support former White House aide Dave Cavell, and 1 percent back tech entrepreneur Chris Zannetos. In a crowded race like this one, the winning candidate may get a relatively small slice of the vote. Rep. Lori Trahan won her crowded primary race with about 22 percent in 2018, for example, and beat runner-up Dan Koh by fewer than 150 votes. Grossman has the highest favorability rating of any candidate in the field at 20 percent according to her campaign, though it did not disclose favorability numbers for other candidates. Grossman's favorability is 35 percent among voters who follow politics "very closely," her campaign says. “Becky’s message of taking the fight to Washington with the fierce urgency of a mom is clearly resonating with voters across the district,” Grossman campaign manager Alex Vuskovic said in a statement. Have a tip, story, suggestion, birthday, anniversary, new job, or any other nugget for the Playbook? Get in touch: smurray@politico.com. TODAY — Gov. Deval Patrick speaks at a town hall on race and justice with Monica Cannon-Grant and Rev. Willie Bodrick, II, moderated by WBUR’s Kimberly Atkins. Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins is a guest on WGBH’s “Greater Boston.” Black Lives Matter demonstrations are planned for Roslindale and Jamaica Plain. Activists hold a Black Lives Matter stand-in in Framingham. The Mira Coalition holds a virtual gala.

A message from Biogen MIT: The link between biotech and health outcomes is undeniable. We need to overcome educational barriers and inspire young people to learn science. That’s why Biogen and MIT teamed up to bring Virtual Science Learning Lab. For more information, visit: biogen.com/communitylab.

FOR NEWS AND CONTEXT YOU NEED IN 15 MINUTES OR LESS, LISTEN IN: The coronavirus death count passed a grim milestone in the U.S. as a growing number of regions reopen parts of their economies. Unemployment claims continue to pile up as the virus continues to spread. POLITICO Dispatch is a short, daily podcast that keeps you up to date on the most important news affecting your life. Subscribe and listen today.

THE LATEST NUMBERS

– “Massachusetts coronavirus deaths increase by 68, but many trends show improvement,” by Alexi Cohan, Boston Herald: “Massachusetts health officials reported 429 new coronavirus cases and 68 more deaths on Wednesday, and many indicators such as testing capacity and positive test rates are showing improvement as the state continues to flatten the curve. The three-day average of coronavirus daily deaths has dropped from 137 at the start of May to 53 now, a decrease of 66%.”

DATELINE BEACON HILL

– “Surrounded By National Guardsmen, Protesters Speak Out: 'The System Is Working, But Not For Us,'” by Tori Bedford, WGBH News: “Standing before a crowd of more than 1,000 protesters spilling out into the Boston Common Wednesday, organizer Matthew Burchfield noted a few significant absences. ‘Where are the Democrats? Where is [Senator] Elizabeth Warren? I haven’t seen Liz Warren at a protest, have you? Where is [Mayor] Marty Walsh?’ Burchfield asked.” – “Mass. to continue forging ahead with reopening; Baker to lay out more information about Phase 2 on Saturday,” by Tim Logan, Travis Andersen and Jaclyn Reiss, Boston Globe: “With progress continuing in the fight against coronavirus, Massachusetts is on the verge of opening up more of its economy and society, Governor Charlie Baker said Wednesday. Baker told reporters that on Saturday he’ll announce a date to start Phase Two of the reopening plan, a landmark that would allow more retailers and restaurants, child care centers and summer camps to open their doors again. Under the state’s plan, the earliest Phase Two can begin is Monday.” – “Charlie Baker says despite conflicts law enforcement have shown ‘discipline and restraint’ to keep people safe during protests,” by Ainslie Cromar, Boston.com: “During the protests, law enforcement have often donned riot gear to interact with demonstrators, which some politicians have said only incites violence. At his Wednesday afternoon briefing, Gov. Charlie Baker said he thinks ‘attitude has a lot more to do with’ the violence, than what police officers, state troopers, and National Guard troops wear.” – “State tax revenues continued to crater in May,” by Matt Stout, Boston Globe: “Another month, another dip in state revenue. The Department of Revenue reported Wednesday that it collected nearly $1.74 billion in taxes during May, more than 15 percent below what state officials had projected and 13 percent off from the $2 billion it collected in May 2019. Tax receipts are now $2.25 billion below what the state had projected to have at this point in the fiscal year, which wraps up at the end of this month.” – “An Effort to Curtail the Use of Tear Gas on Protesters Is Underway in Massachusetts,” by Spencer Buell, Boston Magazine: “Images of gas canisters raining down on demonstrators protesting American police brutality, and acrid smoke filling the air, have been shared from Massachusetts and around the country. Now, a Massachusetts state rep is pushing to crack down on the use of the chemical agents, and sharing fears that continued use of the tactic will only make tensions worse in Boston and beyond.”

FROM THE HUB

– “Rollins, Boston police union clash,” by Michael Jonas, CommonWealth Magazine: “Protests over the police killing of George Floyd have exposed a deep divide in the country on race issues. That schism is now playing out within Boston’s law enforcement community. Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins, who took office a year and a half ago with a vow that it would not be business as usual, has made good on her pledge.” – “Retailers hit by thefts and damage are supporting protests against racism, violence,” by Janelle Nanos, Boston Globe: “At 6 on Monday morning, Hadley Douglas awoke to a text from a friend. It was the news that she’d been dreading: Urban Grape, the South End storefront that Douglas owns with her husband, TJ, had had its window smashed in as thieves took advantage of the chaos that erupted after Sunday’s peaceful protest. The hours and days that followed tested the Douglases emotionally and were yet another significant setback after months of financial strain.” – “Marty Walsh adding $5M to Boston coronavirus rental relief fund,” by Sean Philip Cotter, Boston Herald: “The city of Boston is putting $5 million more into a rental relief fund as the massive economic hit of the coronavirus pandemic drags on. Mayor Martin Walsh announced the new influx — nearly double the original $3 million chunk of money set aside for the fund — in a news release, saying applications will open Friday for Boston residents.” – “Emerson president calls George Floyd’s killing ‘a legalized lynching’ in letter to campus, reflects on own experiences of racism,” by Ainslie Cromar, Boston.com: “Emerson College’s president penned a poignant and deeply personal letter to the campus community Sunday, referring to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis as a ‘legalized lynching’ and detailing how racism has painfully impacted his own life.” – “BU president apologizes for initial letter on racism, sends a second,” by Laura Krantz and Deirdre Fernandes, Boston Globe: “After Boston University president Robert Brown suffered sharp criticism for a mild e-mail he sent on Monday in response to the recent police killings of Black people and subsequent protests, Brown issued a second, strongly worded letter that apologized for the first and condemned racism and police brutality.” – “Boston Police commissioner, clergy say ‘black lives matter’ – and so does the ‘rule of law,’” by Sean Philip Cotter, Boston Herald: “Boston’s Police Commissioner and several local clergy members spoke side-by-side on Wednesday, flanked by other cops and clergy as they sent out a dual message: Black lives matter — and so does keeping law and order in the city of Boston. ‘The rule of law is a core philosophical defense against a society’s descent into dystopian chaos and madness,’ the Rev. Eugene Rivers said, slamming the ‘trust-fund anarchists’ who stuck around after a peaceful Boston protest Sunday to start fires and hit stores with smash-and-grab looting.” – “A new name for Dudley library,” by Kenneal Patterson, Bay State Banner: “Boston Public Library trustees have voted to change the Dudley branch’s name to the ‘Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library.’ Not everyone is in favor of the name change, which passed in a 7-4 vote. ‘Folks are stunned and upset,’ said Sadiki Kambon, chair of the Nubian Square Coalition. ‘We intend to contest this whole process,’ he told the Banner. Kambon led the movement to rename Dudley Square to Nubian Square.” – “Councillors mull plan to have city buy back liquor licenses and lease them to proprietors,” by Katie Trojano, Dorchester Reporter: “City leaders discussed the idea of purchasing liquor licenses back from restaurateurs during a lengthy council hearing online last week. Councillor Lydia Edwards, who proposed the buyback plan, said it could help small businesses during and after the pandemic and allow the city to reset its antiquated licensing system.She outlined her idea as a ‘leasing’ effort.”

PRIMARY SOURCES

– “9 Dems, 2 in GOP make ballot to seek Kennedy’s US House seat,” by Ted Nesi, WPRI: “The field is set for the Sept. 1 primary to succeed Congressman Joe Kennedy III in Massachusetts’ 4th Congressional District. Nine Democrats — Newton residents Jake Auchincloss and Becky Grossman; Brookline residents Dave Cavell, Alan Khazei, Ihssane Leckey, Natalia Linos, Jesse Mermell and Ben Sigel; and Wellesley resident Christopher Zannetos — qualified for the primary ballot by Tuesday’s deadline, according to the secretary of state’s office.”     PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES – “The T again shut stations near protest sites, drawing ire of riders,” by Adam Vaccaro, Boston Globe: “The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority again shut down transit stations near the sites of demonstrations against police brutality and racism, drawing anger from some riders and advocates who say the agency is creating a public safety hazard by making it more difficult for protesters to leave the area. On three of the last four nights, the MBTA has closed subway stations in parts of downtown Boston amid rallies over the killing of George Floyd.” DAY IN COURT – “Federal immigration office reopens,” by Sarah Betancourt, CommonWealth Magazine: “The Boston office of the federal immigration agency that deals with the country’s naturalization process reopened today, 11 weeks after shutting down most in-person services due to the coronavirus pandemic. A spokesperson said that USCIS is following the Trump administration’s three-phase guidelines for reopening the country as well as Department of Homeland Security and health officials’ policies and social distancing safety guidelines.” – “'There Is Nothing Easy About Any Of This': Mass. Justices Urge Lawyers, Judges To Root Out Racial Bias In Court,” Deborah Becker, WBUR: “Amid the nationwide protests against racism and police brutality, seven Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justices say judges and lawyers must do more to root out bias in the state's criminal justice system. In a letter to the state's judiciary and the Massachusetts Bar Association, the justices say that expressing sadness and anger is not enough.” – “Vincent Eovacious, accused of bringing Molotov cocktails to Worcester after peaceful protest over the death of George Floyd ended, now facing federal charges,” by Melissa Hanson, MassLive.com: “Federal officials say an 18-year-old Worcester man is facing charges after making Molotov cocktails and bringing them out after thousands of people peacefully protested police brutality following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Vincent Eovacious was arrested Wednesday and has been charged with civil disorder.” – “Man allegedly admitted firing shots near Boston police officers during looting in Back Bay, prosecutor says,” by John R. Ellement, Boston Globe: “A Dorchester man charged with the attempted murder of 21 Boston police officers allegedly admitted opening fire early Monday as police responded to looting in the Back Bay, an action he took because he was angry police hit the windshield of his car as they tried to stop him from backing into another vehicle a short time before, a prosecutor said Wednesday.” MARKEYCHUSETTS – “Markey seeks end to immunity for police officers in civil suits,” by Milton J. Valencia, Boston Globe: “US Senator Edward J. Markey joined local Black community leaders Wednesday calling for an end to qualified immunity, the concept that a police officer can be protected from liability for most job-related conduct. Markey, a Democrat, said he is cosponsoring a Senate resolution condemning qualified immunity.” ABOVE THE FOLD — Herald: “WE’RE LIVING IN ABSURD TIMES,” — Globe: “Despite damage, retailers back protests," "Mass. readies for next steps on reopening.” TRUMPACHUSETTS – “Fall River man beat up Trump supporter, 82, over political sign, cops say,” by Sean Philip Cotter, Boston Herald: “A Fall River man ripped up an 82-year-old Air Force veteran’s Trump sign and beat him up, kicking the man repeatedly, police say. Aiden Courtright, 24, of Fall River, was arraigned Wednesday and is being held for a dangerousness hearing that will take place Thursday, according to the Bristol County District Attorney’s office.” FROM THE 413 – “Food insecurity rising in western Mass. amid pandemic,” by Scott Merzbach, Daily Hampshire Gazette: “Up to a quarter of all children in western Massachusetts may not know where their next meal will come from, or may not easily be able to get fresh and healthy food, as hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic continue, according to a new study.” – “No arrests, no violence after thousands of Black Lives Matter demonstrators march through Springfield,” by Stephanie Barry, Springfield Republican: “As they crested a hill on State Street, an estimated 3,000 Black Lives Matter demonstrators’ collective voices could be heard nearly all the way to their destination in front of the Springfield Police Department a half-mile away.” – “Michael Wilk removed from position as Chicopee Police Department spokesperson following controversial social media posts,” by Benjamin Kail, MassLive.com: “Michael Wilk, the longtime public information officer for the Chicopee Police Department, has been removed from his position as a spokesperson after coming under fire for controversial social media posts.” – Greater Springfield NAACP criticizes Mayor Domenic Sarno for rescinding plans to participate in ‘town meeting’ that was called in response to George Floyd death,” by Peter Goonan, Springfield Republican: “The Greater Springfield chapter of the NAACP and a grassroots group have criticized Mayor Domenic J. Sarno and Police Commissioner Cheryl Clapprood for a “last minute cancellation” of participating in a digital ‘Town Hall’ discussion regarding police accountability.” THE LOCAL ANGLE – “Salem Police Captain Suspended For Inappropriate Tweet Criticizing Protests,” The Associated Press: “A Massachusetts police captain has been suspended after posting a tweet criticizing Boston Mayor Marty Walsh for permitting demonstrations during the coronavirus pandemic. Capt. Kate Stephens tweeted ‘(S)o you issued a permit for 10 of thousands of people to protest but I can’t go to a restaurant? You are ridiculous. You and Too Tall Deval are killing this State,’ from the Salem Police account on Monday.” – “Brockton ‘mayhem’ after George Floyd protest was unacceptable: Mayor,” by Rick Sobey, Boston Herald: “The violence and ‘mayhem’ in Brockton Tuesday night after a George Floyd peaceful protest was unacceptable, the city’s mayor said a day after police officers were injured and buildings were damaged, including a Dunkin’ Donuts that was set on fire. ‘Last night the people that came here to create mayhem was in no manner what Brockton is about,’ Mayor Robert Sullivan said at a Wednesday press conference with U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch and other officials.” – “Cape Codders of color ‘taking a stand,’” by Cynthia McCormick, Cape Cod Times: ““With the COVID-19 pandemic threatening the Cape, Tameeka Reid, of Yarmouth, stayed mostly at home, donning a mask to run to the grocery store for essential items. But the death of George Floyd while in custody of Minneapolis police officers had her joining protesters Saturday on Hyannis Village Green.” – “Wrentham police head off caravan at outlet following Boston riots,” by David Linton, Sun Chronicle: “Local police headed off a caravan of cars at the Wrentham Village Premium Outlets after receiving a tip that people in the vehicles ‘were coming to loot,’ Chief Bill McGrath said Wednesday. Officers blocked off the mall Monday, the day after rioting roiled the city of Boston, and when drivers in the caravan of 20 or so cars saw the police presence they drove off without incident, McGrath said.” MAZEL! to Jon Carvalho, spokesperson for New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, who was promoted to deputy chief of staff. HAPPY BIRTHDAY – to Lance Lambros, May Davis, associate White House counsel; Robert Schulte and André de Haes. NEW EPISODE: PROTESTS AND PATHS FORWARD – On this week’s Horse Race podcast, host Jennifer Smith speaks with Boston City Councilor Andrea Campbell about protests against systemic racism and police brutality that have broken out in cities all over the world, including Boston, in response to the death of George Floyd, who was killed by police. Subscribe and listen on iTunes and Sound Cloud. Want to make an impact? POLITICO Massachusetts has a variety of solutions available for partners looking to reach and activate the most influential people in the Bay State. Have a petition you want signed? A cause you’re promoting? Seeking to increase brand awareness among this key audience? Share your message with our influential readers to foster engagement and drive action. Contact Jesse Shapiro to find out how: jshapiro@politico.com.   A message from Biogen and the Lemelson-MIT Program: Teachers and parents are struggling to deliver educational continuity during this public health crisis. At the same time, creative solutions abound, including bringing science education and lab experiences to life outside of physical settings. Inspiring young people to learn science, particularly at a time when health innovation is one of the world’s most pressing challenges, requires creative thinking and collaboration. For students historically underrepresented in science, access to education and hand-on exposure to the world of biotechnology can open a lifetime of opportunity. That’s why Biogen and the Lemelson-MIT program teamed up to bring a new Virtual Science Learning Lab to students in Massachusetts and North Carolina. Biogen is working with the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus to engage students in learning directly from, and being mentored by, leading scientists at Biogen and MIT. For more information, visit: biogen.com/communitylab.     POLITICO Magazine Justice Reform: The Decarceration Issue, presented by Verizon : Over the past decade, the longstanding challenge of criminal-justice reform has emerged into the spotlight with a new twist: Both Republicans and Democrats are on board with reform. But if both parties want to lower the incarceration rate, why are U.S. jail and prison populations still so high? The latest series from POLITICO Magazine searches for answers to this important question and takes a deeper look into what it will take to make progress toward real justice reform. READ THE FULL ISSUE.       Follow us on Twitter Stephanie Murray @StephMurr_Jour   Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook  |  Playbook PM  |  California Playbook  |  Florida Playbook  |  Illinois Playbook  |  Massachusetts Playbook  |  New Jersey Playbook  |  New York Playbook  |  Brussels Playbook  |  London Playbook View all our politics and policy newsletters

POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA