RSN: An Open Letter to Judge Amy Coney Barrett From Your Notre Dame Colleagues

 

 

14 October 20

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FOCUS: An Open Letter to Judge Amy Coney Barrett From Your Notre Dame Colleagues


Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett gives her opening statement during the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on October 12, 2020, in Washington, DC. (photo: Erin Schaff/Getty)

University of Notre Dame Faculty Members
Excerpt: "It is vital that you issue a public statement calling for a halt to your nomination process until after the November presidential election."

ear Judge Barrett,

We write to you as fellow faculty members at the University of Notre Dame.

We congratulate you on your nomination to the United States Supreme Court. An appointment to the Court is the crowning achievement of a legal career and speaks to the commitments you have made throughout your life. And while we are not pundits, from what we read your confirmation is all but assured.

That is why it is vital that you issue a public statement calling for a halt to your nomination process until after the November presidential election.

We ask that you take this unprecedented step for three reasons.

First, voting for the next president is already underway. According to the United States Election Project (https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html), more than seven million people have already cast their ballots, and millions more are likely to vote before election day. The rushed nature of your nomination process, which you certainly recognize as an exercise in raw power politics, may effectively deprive the American people of a voice in selecting the next Supreme Court justice. You are not, of course, responsible for the anti-democratic machinations driving your nomination. Nor are you complicit in the Republican hypocrisy of fast-tracking your nomination weeks before a presidential election when many of the same senators refused to grant Merrick Garland so much as a hearing a full year before the last election. However, you can refuse to be party to such maneuvers. We ask that you honor the democratic process and insist the hearings be put on hold until after the voters have made their choice. Following the election, your nomination would proceed, or not, in accordance with the wishes of the winning candidate.

Next, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish was that her seat on the court remain open until a new president was installed. At your nomination ceremony at the White House, you praised Justice Ginsburg as “a woman of enormous talent and consequence, whose life of public service serves as an example to us all.” Your nomination just days after Ginsburg’s death was unseemly and a repudiation of her legacy. Given your admiration for Justice Ginsburg, we ask that you repair the injury to her memory by calling for a pause in the nomination until the next president is seated.

Finally, your nomination comes at a treacherous moment in the United States. Our politics are consumed by polarization, mistrust, and fevered conspiracy theories. Our country is shaken by pandemic and economic suffering. There is violence in the streets of American cities. The politics of your nomination, as you surely understand, will further inflame our civic wounds, undermine confidence in the court, and deepen the divide among ordinary citizens, especially if you are seated by a Republican Senate weeks before the election of a Democratic president and congress. You have the opportunity to offer an alternative to all that by demanding that your nomination be suspended until after the election. We implore you to take that step.

We’re asking a lot, we know. Should Vice-President Biden be elected, your seat on the court will almost certainly be lost. That would be painful, surely. Yet there is much to be gained in risking your seat. You would earn the respect of fair-minded people everywhere. You would provide a model of civic selflessness. And you might well inspire Americans of different beliefs toward a renewed commitment to the common good.

We wish you well and trust you will make the right decision for our nation.

Yours in Notre Dame,

John Duffy, English

Douglass Cassel, Emeritus, Law School

Barbara J, Fick, Emerita, Law School

Fernand N. Dutile, Professor of Law Emeritus

Joseph Bauer, Emeritus, Law School

Jimmy Gurulé, Professor of Law.

Thomas Kselman, Emeritus, History

Catherine E. Bolten, Anthropology and Peace Studies

Karen Graubart, History and Gender Studies

Margaret Dobrowolska, Physics

Aedín Clements, Hesburgh Libraries

Cheri Smith, Hesburgh Libraries

Antonio Delgado, Physics

Atalia Omer, Peace Studies

Eileen Hunt Botting, Political Science

Jason A. Springs, Peace Studies

David Hachen, Sociology

Manoel Couder, Physics

Jacek Furdyna, Physics

Carmen Helena Tellez, Music

Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Biological Sciences, Philosophy

John T. Fitzgerald, Theology

Debra Javeline, Political Science

Philippe Collon, Physics

Cara Ocobock, Anthropology

Amy Mulligan, Irish, Medieval Studies and Gender Studies

Stephen M. Fallon, Program of Liberal Studies and Dept of English

Jessica Shumake, University Writing Program and Gender Studies

Mandy L. Havert, Hesburgh Libraries

Dana Villa, Political Science

Stephen M. Hayes, Emeritus, Hesburgh Libraries

Catherine Perry, Emerita, Romance Languages & Literatures

Olivier Morel, Film, Television, and Theatre.

Darlene Catello, Music

Encarnación Juárez-Almendros, Emerita, Romance Languages & Literatures

James Sterba, Philosophy

Laura Bayard, Emerita, Hesburgh Libraries

Susan Sheridan, Anthropology

Mary E. Frandsen, Music

Mark Golitko, Anthropology

Christopher Ball, Anthropology

Gail Bederman, History

G. Margaret Porter, Emerita, Hesburgh Libraries

Cecilia Lucero, Center for University Advising

Peri E. Arnold, Emeritus, Political Science

Amitava Krishna Dutt, Political Science

Julia Marvin, Program of Liberal Studies

Julia Adeney Thomas, History

Michael C. Brownstein, East Asian Languages & Cultures

Christopher Liebtag Miller, Medieval Institute

Maxwell Johnson, Theology

John Sitter, Emeritus, English

Robert Norton, German

Hye-jin Juhn, Hesburgh Libraries

Denise M. Della Rossa, German

Sotirios A. Barber, Political Science

Pamela Robertson Wojcik, Film, TV and Theatre

Jeff Diller, Mathematics

Ann Mische, Sociology and Peace Studies

Zygmunt Baranski, Romance Languages & Literatures

Robert R. Coleman, Emeritus, Art History

William Collins Donahue, German, FTT, & Keough

Sarah McKibben, Irish Language and Literature

George A. Lopez, emeritus, Kroc Institute

Mark Roche, German

Nelson Mark, Economics

Vittorio Hosle, German, Philosophy and Political Science

Tobias Boes, German

A. Nilesh Fernando, Economics

Fred Dallmayr, Emeritus, Philosophy and Political Science

Greg Kucich, English

Kate Marshall, English

Mark A. Sanders, English

Christopher Hamlin, History

Meredith S. Chesson, Anthropology

Ricardo Ramirez, Political Science

Stephen Fredman, Emeritus, English

Dan Graff, History and the Higgins Labor Program

Henry Weinfield, Program of Liberal Studies (Emeritus)

Mary R. D’Angelo, Theology (Emerita)

Asher Kaufman, Kroc Institute, History

Stephen J. Miller, Music

Janet A. Kourany, Philosophy and Gender Studies

Michelle Karnes, English

Jill Godmilow, Emerita, Film, Television & Theatre

Mary Beckman, Emerita, Center for Social Concerns

Clark Power, Program of Liberal Studies

Richard Williams, Sociology

Benedict Giamo, Emeritus, American Studies

Ernesto Verdeja, Political Science and Peace Studies

Catherine Schlegel, Classics

Margaret A. Doody, English, Professor Emerita

Marie Collins Donahue, Eck Institute of Global Health

David C. Leege, Emeritus, Political Science

POLITICO NIGHTLY: Trump is about to interrupt Biden, again

 

BY MICHAEL KRUSE With help from Renuka Rayasam and Myah Ward THE ID VS. THE LID — This morning, 20 days from Election Day, the Biden campaign called a lid and the Trump campaign called foul. President Donald Trump seemed to have settled on the Joe Biden “lid” as a line of attack in rallies in the run-up to his coming down with Covid. “They have a thing called the lid,” Trump told a crowd in Pennsylvania late last month. “A lid is when you put out word you’re not going to be campaigning today,” he explained two days later in Florida. “It’s an expression,” he said the day after that in Virginia. “Means he’s not working.” On the eve of Thursday night’s dueling town halls in the place of the nixed second debate, the contrast in this campaign has never been more clear. It’s The Id vs. The Lid. Biden isn’t the “basement”- or “bunker”-bound hermit Trump and his campaign have tried to make him out to be. But it’s true that he’s campaigning cautiously — in essence, it seems, to avoid attracting attention. And it’s working. The preponderance of polling says it is. On most days, Biden’s not calling a.m. lids. On Tuesday he was in Florida, on Monday he was in Ohio, and so on. But today, less than three weeks out, all he did was hold a virtual fundraiser in the afternoon, and then in the evening pre-taped remarks played at an event honoring American Muslims. Trump, on the other hand, is “Mr. Id,” as the biographer Tim O’Brien once wrote , referring to the part of the Freudian psyche that dictates a person’s most primitive urges and wants. “He just plows forward into any situation in which he can get attention.” The president couldn’t even convalesce with the coronavirus without insisting on busting out of Walter Reed to get his hit from his fans outside. Now he’s in the midst of a rally spree. Given Trump’s worrisome standing in the polls, in national tallies, in states he needs to win, in crosstabs of groups he can’t lose, and also how closely he is said to monitor all this, one might think he’d at least consider tweaking his homestretch strategy. And dropping out of Thursday’s debate in theory could have been a seemingly rash and calamitous decision that then paid unexpected dividends — by giving folks a break … from him. Plot twist! For months, after all, Trump and his aides have been attempting to goad Biden out of “hiding,” to make him more accessible, to have voters pay more attention to him. That moment was set up: 90 minutes of Biden, not counterprogrammed, not interrupted: “Sleepy Joe,” in the crude parlance of the Trump campaign, solo in the spotlight. “It’s not clear that seeing more of the president is necessarily a help to his campaign,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres said this week. And on Thursday night, the nation was going to be with Biden, and Biden alone. That, though, was something The Id could not abide. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out at mkruse@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @michaelkruse and @renurayasam.   COMING SOON - POLITICO’S GLOBAL PULSE NEWSLETTER: At a high-stakes moment when global health has become a household concern, keeping up with the politics and policy driving change is pivotal. Global Pulse is a new weekly newsletter that connects leaders, policymakers, and advocates to the people and politics driving the global health agenda. We’ll track the conversation between Washington and multilateral organizations such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations, international NGOs and foundations, private funders and multinational corporations — zeroing in on the key players and key agendas. Join the conversation and subscribe today.     STATES OF THE RACE THE SWING-STATE PANDEMIC — After months of simmering Covid infection rates, the virus is surging in many states, Nightly’s Renuka Rayasam and Myah Ward write. The country’s daily death rate from Covid never fell below 500, a bottom hit during a late June lull. Now it’s hovering around 700 and set to grow to about 950 daily deaths by Nov. 3, according to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Those rising rates so close to Election Day could have an unpredictable effect on the presidential election and other races. A growing number of voters have fallen ill, or know someone who has. “The virus has moved from big cities to smaller towns to a large extent,” said Eric Toner, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Isolated rural communities, many lacking adequate health care facilities, are now being overtaken with new cases. “Nothing compares to New York City, but for a small town it can be just as impactful,” he said. POLITICO says there are eight states that will decide the election. Renu and Myah broke down the virus trajectory in those states using 7-day averages from the Covid Tracking Project. Arizona — Deaths are down more than tenfold from a mid-July spike, but case counts and hospitalizations have been creeping upward over the last couple weeks. Cases: 686 daily cases Deaths: 7.71 daily deaths Hospitalizations: 686 currently hospitalized Florida — Cases are down from mid-July and have remained steady since September, with new cases hovering between 2,000 and 3,000 a day. Deaths are down from an August peak. Cases: 2,661 daily cases Deaths: 111 daily deaths Hospitalizations: 2,134 currently hospitalized Georgia — Cases are down from mid-July, deaths are down from mid-August and hospitalizations also continue to fall. Cases: 1,236 daily cases Deaths: 32.14 daily deaths Hospitalizations: 1,702 currently hospitalized Michigan — Cases are on the rise, with a 7-day average of new daily cases that is double the mid-July numbers. Hospitalizations are starting to catch up, though for now, deaths have dropped and remain steady. Cases: 1,283 daily cases Deaths: 13.4 daily deaths Hospitalizations: 848 currently hospitalized Minnesota — Cases in Minnesota are growing out of control. New daily cases are more than double the July numbers. Hospitalizations and deaths are also spiking. Cases: 1,262 daily cases Deaths: 9.14 daily deaths Hospitalizations: 452 currently hospitalized North Carolina — New daily infections have ebbed and flowed in North Carolina, but remained fairly steady until this fall. Deaths are hitting a peak this month and hospitalizations have been increasing after a dip last month. Cases: 1,889 daily cases Deaths: 20.86 daily deaths Hospitalizations: 1,062 currently hospitalized Pennsylvania — Cases are spiking again. Deaths have fluctuated between 10 and 20 a day. Hospitalizations have been growing since the end of September. Cases: 1,343 daily cases Deaths: 20 daily deaths Hospitalizations: 716 currently hospitalized Wisconsin — The state is seeing some of the worst infection rates since the start of the pandemic, with deaths and hospitalizations steeply rising since September. Cases: 2,861 daily cases Deaths: 15.43 daily deaths Hospitalizations: 901 currently hospitalized FIRST IN NIGHTLY Illustration by Ryan Inzana DEMS LOOK FOR UNITY ON POLICE UNIONS — Earlier this year, House Democrats were close to pushing through a bill that would have cemented the power of police unions across the country, national political reporter Laura Barrón-López writes. The bill would have granted the federal right to form a union and bargain contracts to firefighters, emergency medical personnel and police, including in states that currently prohibit some in public safety from negotiating collectively for wages and working conditions. As talk of moving the bill increased in March, Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro was a rare voice raising alarms. He warned his colleagues on the Education and Labor Committee that the bill would formalize the authority of police unions to determine misconduct standards in their contracts, which are increasingly viewed as a barrier to holding police accountable for wrongdoing. But labor organizations weren’t pleased with the idea of singling out police affiliates by restricting their ability to bargain over disciplinary standards in the bill. Then the coronavirus pandemic exploded, and negotiations stalled. Today, that bill is dead, and not because of the pandemic. This fight has created a political squeeze for Democrats, especially in the progressive wing of the party, whose historic support for unions is in direct conflict with their new mandate to wring the racial unfairness out of American policing. ON THE HILL PLAN ACB — With Trump’s reelection prospects looking slimmer by the day, Republican groups and lawmakers are betting on Amy Coney Barrett as the future of conservatism. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, White House reporter Gabby Orr breaks down what this week’s confirmation hearings have revealed about Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court — and how she became the GOP’s Plan B. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast PALACE INTRIGUE COVID IN THE RESIDENCE — Barron Trump, the president’s teenage son, contracted coronavirus along with his father and mother earlier this month, first lady Melania Trump revealed today. In a blog post about her experience recovering from Covid-19, the first lady said that her first thought when she received her diagnosis was her son. “To our great relief he tested negative, but again, as so many parents have thought over the past several months, I couldn’t help but think ‘what about tomorrow or the next day?’” she wrote on the White House website. “My fear came true when he was tested again and it came up positive.” The first lady wrote that Barron, 14, exhibited no symptoms. ASK THE AUDIENCE Nightly asks you: What’s the one question you would ask President Trump and the one question you would ask Joe Biden? You only get one each. Send us your answers via our form, and we’ll include select responses in Friday’s edition. AROUND THE NATION TROUBLE FOR THE TIDE — Alabama coach Nick Saban and athletic director Greg Byrne have tested positive for Covid-19, four days before the Southeastern Conference’s biggest regular-season showdown. Both said their tests this morning came back positive. Saban said he didn’t have any symptoms by late afternoon. The second-ranked Crimson Tide is set to face the No. 3 Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday, and may be without their 68-year-old coach. “I immediately left work and isolated at home,” Saban said. Saban said he informed the team via a Zoom session at 2 p.m. today and that offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian will oversee game preparations while he works from home. Voters fill out their ballots during early voting at the KFC YUM! Center in Louisville, Ky. | Getty Images COVID-2020 MONEY MONEY — Campaign finance nerds have two very important filing deadlines on the horizon: Thursday is the deadline for congressional candidates to report their third quarter finances to the Federal Election Commission, while presidential campaigns open their books for the month of September a few days later, on Tuesday. Besides the obvious question — how much money did Joe Biden and Donald Trump raise? — here’s what Morning Score author Zach Montellaro is looking out for. He emails us: The Democratic Senate candidates are raising absolutely bonkers amounts of money, and many are expected to outraise the Republican they’re challenging. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) announced today that he raised $28 million, which his campaign said was an all-time record for Republican Senate candidates. But it was less than half of Democrat Jaime Harrison’s $57 million. But what, exactly, are the Democrats doing with it? There’s been some grumbling that Democrats cannot spend that much money effectively (there’s plenty of digital strategists happy to disagree). We’ll get our first look at how they’re putting it to work tomorrow. Another thing we’re watching is where big donors — the folks who can cut six (or seven) figure checks — are directing their dough. Super PACs will report either Thursday or next Tuesday, depending on their filing schedule. Where deep-pocketed donors are giving can be a good indication for what races are thought to be most competitive. Will Senate-focused super PACs see a rush of cash, as the battle over the upper chamber intensifies, or will donors keep spending their dollars on Biden and Trump? HOW MAIL VOTING WENT PARTISAN — In the latest 2020 Check In, Eugene Daniels talks to Zach about mail-in balloting’s long bipartisan tradition, Trump’s constant attacks on increased postal voting and how the big bump in mail voting will affect the election. THE GLOBAL FIGHT ERIN GO BIDEN — Laurita Blewitt knows how deep Biden’s Irish roots run. When the White House contacted her to help put together a family lunch ahead of the then-vice president’s 2016 visit to Ireland, she struggled to limit the crowd. “He’s loads of cousins living here, in and around Ballina, and that’s just one side of his Irish family,” said Blewitt, 37, a fourth cousin who lives near the County Mayo tourist town along the River Moy. Today, a pop-art mural of a beaming Biden greets visitors to Ballina, one sign of growing excitement here that the U.S. might soon get its most Irish-American president since John F. Kennedy. Declaring ties to Ireland has often been a vote-winner in an America where, according to the last census, one in 10 people — 33 million — claims Irish descent. Ever since Kennedy’s landmark visit here in 1963, a succession of U.S. presidents have crossed the Atlantic to highlight the Irish branch of their family tree. And while Trump’s only apparent tie to Ireland is his ownership of an oceanside golf resort in County Clare, Biden for decades has tied his identity to Ireland. Shawn Pogatchnik has more on the history of U.S. politicians’ Irish links, and the ties that bind the fifth-eighths-Irish Biden to the Emerald Isle. NIGHTLY NUMBER 51 The percentage of the vote for Joe Biden in Georgia, in a new Quinnipiac poll released today. Trump received 44 percent support in a poll, which showed an increased lead for Biden from Sept. 29’s 50-47 result. PARTING WORDS TURNING OFF OOO — Nightly’s Tyler Weyant emails, from (really!) POLITICO Global Headquarters in Rosslyn, Va.: Newsrooms aren’t supposed to be like this. I’m sitting at my desk, here to pick up things I want to take home for the election’s final weeks, and I’m looking out on a dark, empty office. I’ve been in jauntier mausoleums. A colleague’s description of the POLITICO newsroom right now — the physical office, not the virtual mindspace we now call a newsroom — as “bleak” didn’t do it justice. To get here, I thought I might take Metro for the first time since mid-March. I thought better of it, though, after peeking at the weather. I laced up my sneakers and walked here from my Southwest D.C. home. Joggers and bikers, including a man on an adult-size tricycle sporting the flags of Poland, Guinea and the University of Notre Dame, had replaced the capital’s besuited masses. Across the Potomac in Rosslyn, the professional class looked to be dressed to binge the next episode of Great British Baking Show. The POLITICO machine is still humming along, even if the workers aren’t on the factory floor. The usual newsroom sounds have been replaced by the low din of fans. There’s a plant growing in a Snapple bottle on my desk that somehow has stayed alive. To Andrew Beaujon of Washingtonian’s misfortune, there are no snacks. What surprised me most was a feeling of sadness. Since March, I have been in the “Let’s never go back” camp. But sitting amid dead flowers and empty chairs, I felt like I had arrived home after a burglary. Oh, to complain lightly about a colleague spilling a coffee and not cleaning it up. What a luxury.   HELP BUILD SOLUTIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL HEALTH: POLITICO is a proud partner of the ninth annual Meridian Summit, focused on The Rise of Global Health Diplomacy. The virtual Meridian Summit will engage a global audience and the sharpest minds in diplomacy, business, government and beyond to build a more equitable economic recovery and save more lives. Join the conversation to help secure the future of our global health.     Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam   FOLLOW US

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RSN: FOCUS: Greg Palast and Zach D. Roberts | Kidnapping Plans, Nooses and the Boogaloo Militia

 

 

14 October 20

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FOCUS: Greg Palast and Zach D. Roberts | Kidnapping Plans, Nooses and the Boogaloo Militia

Greg Palast and Zach D. Roberts, Greg Palast's Website
Excerpt: "How can Trump steal 2020? Violence is part of the recipe. But, there's another part." 

ote: Zach D. Roberts is either the most courageous member of the Palast Investigations team or the craziest, or both. For the past two years, photojournalist Roberts has been investigating the ultra-Right, traveling–sometimes openly, sometimes under cover–with the Proud Boys and other wannabe storm troopers. It was Roberts who took those horrific photos of neo-Nazis beating a Black school teacher, DeAndre Harris, nearly to death. Filming the perpetrators while a gun was pointed at him, Zach’s photos put five neo-Nazis behind bars.

How can Trump steal 2020? Violence is part of the recipe, Roberts reports… But, there’s another part. As detailed in our new one-minute film PSA, the massive, illegal purge of voters of color, barely reported in the network news, can result in 1.8 million voters blocked at the polling station, as happened in 2016. To prevent another Jim Crow outcome, the Palast Fund has created a website, SaveMyVote2020.org, where voters in Michigan and other states can look up to see if they have been, or are about to be, purged from the voter rolls.

Please: if you know someone in Michigan, make sure they look up to see if they are on the purge list. If so, there’s a link to re-register; it’s not too late.

We had to create the list for Michigan because the prior Administration of the state used Kris Kobach’s racially poisonous Crosscheck list—"aggressively" as these GOP officials told me.

But now that the Democrats have taken control of all statewide offices, why hasn’t Michigan’s new Attorney General returned 152,807 wrongly purged voters to the rolls? In Georgia and Wisconsin, our work has received support and thanks from Stacey Abrams and Mandela Barnes, Lt. Governor of Wisconsin. I can’t help but notice that both these officials are African-American. By contrast, the Democratic Party of Michigan, as I said in the chapter Michigan Mishagass of my book How Trump Stole 2020 , has ignored the GOP attacks on Black, Arabic and Hispanic voters. Why? Fear of a Black Party that would scare away whites? Ignorance? I just don’t know.

I bring up this uncomfortable fact because, in my decades of work on vote suppression, I’ve found that racist attacks on voters are often instigated by Boogaloo bigots and partisan pols like Kris Kobach. But, to be blunt, Jim Crow anti-voter tactics are only sustained by the silent complicity of white politicians who should know better.

Nine months ago, I sat across the table sharing a pizza and a beer with a man who almost certainly was armed.

I asked him, “How do you think tomorrow is going to go?”

He replied, “Either nothing’s going to happen or we’re going to lynch the Governor.”

I awkwardly chuckled, the man across the table did not join me in the laugh. A couple of minutes later he excused himself, grabbing his keys that were sitting on the table which was attached to a U.S. ARMY lanyard.

The next morning, the militiaman, Boogaloo Boys, Proud Boys and thousands of others descended on Virginia’s capital for a rally against the governor’s proposed gun ownership restrictions. No lynching. Not yet.

I thought of that conversation when I heard the news about the thwarted plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan riled by Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s ‘lockdown’ of the state to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

If you know anything about militias, you probably know about the Michigan militia. But the media portrayed them as a benign curiosity. Back in 1995, the Chicago Tribune described its founder, Norm Olson, as merely “feisty”. This was just two months after one of their associates,Timothy McVeigh, working with members of the militia, murdered 168 men, women, and children at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

The vast threat of the militia movement wasn’t taken seriously then (they were feisty, not dangerous, remember?), and its potential for violence and unrest hasn’t been taken seriously until (hopefully at least) now.

Today, the arrests of the six men facing federal charges around a conspiracy to commit kidnapping of the Governor of Michigan should come as no surprise. Just last month, a Dallas field office FBI internal report, obtained by Ken Klippenstein of The Nation, discussed the threat of “Boogaloo Adherents Likely Increasing Anti-Government Violent Rhetoric and Activities, Increasing Domestic Violent Extremist Threat in the FBI Dallas Area of Responsibility.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray earlier this year noted that the greatest domestic threat to America are these right-wing gangs. However, Wray’s attempt to protect us from these gangsters is frustrated in part by Donald Trump’s restructuring of the Department of Homeland Security’s domestic terror operations and by a far too friendly relationship between these groups and law enforcement.

Now we are dealing with a militia movement that is emboldened by the President’s rhetoric to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and accelerated by disinformation on the internet. No better example of that was seen in Gettysburg over the July 4th holiday where hundreds of militia members and other ‘concerned citizens’ descended on the historic town carrying enough firearms to restart the Civil War.
Which may have been their point.

The men connected to the conspiracy to kidnap the Governor of Michigan, blow up a bridge and potentially murder law enforcement are not quite the militia of Commander Norm Olson’s days. While they train in the woods, wear tactical gear and give themselves fake military rankings, they’re closer to the ‘Boogaloo Movement.’

The Boogaloo Movement is anarchist in philosophy—true anarchists dreaming of a stateless society, an extreme libertarian community of “preppers” —prepared for civil war. Which is why they are armed to the teeth and training with whatever established groups they can.

The Boogaloos take their name from the cult film “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.” The movie (not a good one) has nothing to do with a civil war but like so much of our current internet meme culture has evolved from an inside joke to a racist meme to violence in the streets.

Boogaloo Boys are not fascist-leaning like the Proud Boys or the Patriot Front groups. But, in the confusing Venn diagram of far-right extremist movements, will often work together at the same events.

They have no official hierarchy. People who might call themselves Boogaloo in Cleveland, Ohio, could easily disagree with everything that some “Boog” in Lansing, Michigan might believe. Like most groups led by an internet meme, it’s an ever-moving target. Some even attended a Black Lives Matter rally to protect protesters from police! Yet, in the next town, they were seen protecting a Hobby Lobby.

The arrested members of the Wolverine Watchmen, the would-be kidnappers, also adopted Q-Anon and “Three Percenter” memes about child-trafficking. The Watchmen also defended Kyle Rittenhouse who was arrested for killing two progressive protesters in Wisconsin.

One of the accused, Pete Musico, is a fan of both Infowars and prominent Proud Boy, Joey Biggs.

Much like how the Michigan Militia distanced themselves from Timothy McVeigh after the Oklahoma City Bombing but were vital to his plot to murder Federal employees, there’s no doubt that the groups that these Wolverines followed will deny any connection to the plot.

This keeps Bill Fulton, a researcher on domestic terrorism, up at night. The author of The Blood of Patriots, told me, “They’ve always worked together. You’ve always had that, the Venn diagram becomes a circle when it comes to the sovereigns [citizens] and the militias and the hate groups and some of these, more radical evangelical groups, they share massive amounts of membership.”

The question now is, how do these troops read their “Commander’s” signal to, “Stand back and stand by”?

Stand by…for what?

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