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RSN: FOCUS: Nothing Can Justify the Attack on Portland

23 July 20

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22 July 20

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FOCUS: Nothing Can Justify the Attack on Portland

Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes, The Atlantic
Excerpt: "The question of whether these arrests are appropriate has a clear answer - at least in a nation that purports to live under the rule of law." 

he Trump administration has faced outrage since reports first surfaced of federal agents in unmarked vehicles picking up and detaining protesters in Portland, Oregon. Rather than backing down, though, President Trump appears to have decided to go all in: In a July 20 interview, he threatened to send “more federal law enforcement” to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, and Oakland—cities run by “liberal Democrats,” he asserted. The question of whether or not the administration has the legal authority to take such action will be fought out in legal challenges. But the question of whether or not these arrests are appropriate has a clear answer—at least in a nation that purports to live under the rule of law.  

Asked on July 17 by an NPR reporter whether the reporting was true, Ken Cuccinelli, a senior Department of Homeland Security official, didn't seem troubled by the department's activities. Yes, he said, at least one person had been arrested in this fashion in Portland—though he wouldn’t say whether others had been as well, and if so how many. Cuccinelli added that this was how the Trump administration planned to respond to demonstrations at federal buildings and monuments elsewhere, too. “This is a posture we intend to continue not just in Portland, but in any of the facilities that we’re responsible for around the country,” he declared. And days later, he doubled down on CNN, insisting that the government had “intelligence about planned attacks on federal facilities” in Portland: “If we get the same kind of intelligence in other places … we would respond the same way.”

Reports of unidentified federal law-enforcement officials patrolling areas of Portland—and conducting arrests by scooping suspects up into vans—have generated a lot of anxiety. The Atlantic writer Anne Applebaum argued that the government’s actions amount to “performative authoritarianism.” Mary McCord, a lawyer who previously oversaw national-security issues at the Justice Department, warned The New York Times that manhandling Portland residents in this way “sends the message that these people are terrorists and need to be treated like terrorists.” And Oregon’s congressional delegation wrote a letter to the U.S. attorney general stating that the Portland arrests “are more reflective of tactics of a government led by a dictator, not from the government of our constitutional democratic republic.” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Ron Wyden, the senior senator from Oregon, both decried the arrests as unconstitutional.

There will be time to sort out the legalities of the federal government’s actions. The attorney general of Oregon has filed suit against various federal agencies and officers involved in one arrest, arguing, “Ordinarily, a person ... who is confronted by anonymous men in military-type fatigues and ordered into an unmarked van can reasonably assume that he is being kidnapped and is the victim of a crime.” The American Civil Liberties Union has also sued the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Marshals Service. The chairs of three House committees have requested an internal DHS investigation of the matter. Between these varied proceedings, the Trump administration will have to answer legal questions like whether it’s really okay for unidentified federal officers and agents to patrol streets, and whether an agency whose mission is to patrol the border is properly used without training for crowd control. The administration will also have to justify the propriety of the individual arrests both in any prosecutions of those detained and in any civil suits filed.

But let’s leave the legalities aside for now. Because whether the Trump administration has the technical legal authority to deploy this show of force in this particular matter does not answer the question of whether it should do so. The use of federal officers in this manner is corrosive of democratic culture, it makes for bad and ineffective law enforcement, and it’s likely physically dangerous both for the law-enforcement officers and for the protesters in question.

According to The New York Times, Homeland Security officers were deployed under the department’s authority to protect federal property—including, in this case, the Portland federal courthouse. The deployment of armed forces comes along with increased domestic intelligence operations. Yesterday, Lawfare reported that the Department of Homeland Security’s little-known intelligence arm had authorized intelligence collection on people connected to threats to monuments and statues, having designated the protection of such monuments a homeland-security mission following President Trump’s monument-protection executive order last month.

The existence of the department’s authority to protect federal property is uncontroversial. The federal government has the power to defend federal buildings and facilities from civil unrest, and a variety of federal laws protect federal property from attack and vandalism and federal officials from interference with their discharge of the government’s business.

While this authority certainly extends to the power to investigate federal crimes and arrest those suspected of them, it is not some general authority to patrol the downtowns of major cities and pick up and detain protesters merely because a federal building may be in the neighborhood.

Likewise, federal law-enforcement officers should conceal their identities only under highly specific circumstances—none of which involves crowd control at a protest or policing a public area. Officers might reasonably go undercover in an effort to infiltrate a criminal organization, for example. Federal air marshals are generally unidentified so they can blend in with passengers on commercial flights—preventing would-be hijackers from knowing which flights are patrolled. But it should be quite unthinkable for armed officers exercising coercive arrest powers in the streets of an American city to not identify themselves by name and affiliation.

A similar situation to the one in Portland arose in Washington, D.C., last month, when the president deployed National Guard units and a smorgasbord of federal law-enforcement agencies, including officers from the Department of Homeland Security, during protests over the killing of George Floyd. The deployment of anonymized federal muscle in various locations in the district angered many people, and rightly so. These recent actions in Portland are more jarring still.

For better or worse, residents of D.C. are used to a significant federal law-enforcement presence in their daily lives—albeit one that’s quite open and overt. A significant area of the city is patrolled by the United States Capitol Police, for example; uniformed Secret Service officers protect embassies; the United States Park Police has jurisdiction over national parkland, which is abundant in the city. And one or more unmarked dark SUVs accompanying some official-looking car is a pretty normal affair. But even a certain baseline comfort with a heavy federal presence didn’t prepare D.C. for an invasion of little green men. How much more shocking it must be for people in Portland, who lack that general familiarity, to suddenly have unidentified officers snatching people off the street and hustling them into unmarked vehicles.

There are additional concerns. The tactical divisions of the Homeland Security Department from which the officers in Portland appear to hail—Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—are not typically deployed at protests, but charged with enforcing immigration law and guarding the U.S. border. And as an internal department memo obtained by The New York Times shows, the officers sent into Portland’s streets were not trained to handle crowds. “If this type of response is going to be the norm,” the memo cautions, “specialized training and standardized equipment should be deployed to responding agencies.”

All of which brings us to the dangers—for everyone involved—of protecting federal buildings in this particular fashion. Sending out officers untrained for demonstrations risks violence if the agents end up in situations they don’t know how to handle. Recall that some of the protests in the wake of Floyd’s death swung out of control in large part because of ill-considered police actions. This anonymized deployment risks compounding that problem. Because if, as Oregon’s attorney general hypothesizes, a protester ”confronted by anonymous men in military-type fatigues and ordered into an unmarked van” were to “reasonably assume that he is being kidnapped and is the victim of a crime,” he might plausibly resort to violence in self-defense. This may be a particular risk if the person in question happens to be suspicious of police authority in the first place. And the risk may be further heightened by the fact that various militia groups have been known to organize armed groups in defense of supposed law-enforcement interests. Ambiguity about an officer’s identity or power to make an arrest serves the interests of neither law enforcement nor protesters.

So why is the Trump administration sending into American cities officers who aren’t appropriately trained for the mission, are acting on legal authority that will require litigation to defend, and are being deployed to address a problem that the federal government could address by means far less provocative and in a fashion far less likely to escalate disorder?

The answer is unfortunately obvious. Having given up on controlling the pandemic that has now killed more than 140,000 Americans, and faced with dimming reelection prospects, Trump is doing his best to substantiate the tough-guy vision of the presidency that has always appealed to him. During earlier stages of his administration, he played out this fantasy along the southern border of the United States by deploying troops to the American Southwest and warning about “caravans” of travelers illegally entering the country. Now, as officers typically tasked with enforcing the border have been deployed into Portland, Trump’s apocalyptic warnings about the need for a brutal response to any perceived threat have also moved from the edge of the country into American cities.

The message is as simple as it is ugly: The caravan isn’t just coming north through Mexico. It is already here—in the efforts to take down statues, in the protests, in the pockets of disorder in American urban areas and in the gatherings of people exercising their First Amendment rights to object to police misconduct. The caravan, in fact, is the city. And only Trump can protect you from it—whether it is what you see when you look south or what you see when you look downtown.

Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to be working. Last night in Portland, as happened last month in Washington, D.C., peaceful protests only grew in response to the federal show of force. If Trump follows through on his promise to export the federal muscle to other cities, the anonymous agents may be met with more large crowds defying Trump’s efforts at vilification and coercion.

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RSN: Elizabeth Warren | To Fight the Pandemic, Here's My Must-Do List

22 July 20

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22 July 20 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News Will RSN Have a Budget to Continue Its Work? When an organization does not have a corporate sugar daddy or mommy every fund-raising drive is the one the determines what the budget will be going forward. Take a moment to support truly independent information. Thank you all in advance. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Elizabeth Warren | To Fight the Pandemic, Here's My Must-Do List Elizabeth Warren, The New York Times Warren writes: "Americans stayed at home and sacrificed for months to flatten the curve and prevent the spread of the coronavirus. That gave us time to take the steps needed to address the pandemic - but President Trump squandered it....."  ....refusing to issue national stay-at-home guidelines, failing to set up a national testing operation and fumbling production of personal protective equipment. Now, Congress must again act as this continues to spiral out of control. Those who frame the debate as one of health versus economics are missing the point. It is not possible to fix the economy without first containing the virus. We need a bold, ambitious legislative response that does four things: brings the virus under control; gets our schools, child care centers, businesses, and state and local governments the resources they need; addresses the burdens on communities of color; and supports struggling families who don’t know when the next paycheck will come. Here’s what the next federal response must include: Start with funding the robust public health measures we know will work to address this crisis: ramped-up testing, a national contact-tracing program and supply-chain investments to resolve medical supply shortages. Without these measures, we will not be able to adequately reopen safely, more people will die and there will be no economic recovery. READ MORE Portland. (photo: Getty Images) ALSO SEE: Trump Threatens to Deploy Federal Agents to Chicago and Other US Cities Led by Democrats As Trump Threatens Secret Police Deployment Nationwide, Democrats Debate Expanding Surveillance Powers and New Money for DHS Ryan Grim, The Intercept Grim writes: "The rogue deployment of secret federal police forces in Portland, Oregon, has added a new complication to negotiations over reauthorizing the Trump administration's vast surveillance powers and appropriating new money for the Department of Homeland Security."   In March, a sweeping set of government authorities to monitor people in the United States expired, and Congress continues to debate what limits should be put on such powers before reauthorizing them. And the House is debating its next DHS funding bill, with the Congressional Progressive Caucus pushing leadership not to bring it up for a vote given Trump’s abuse of power and DHS agents’ role in a Portland arrest.  House Democratic leaders, however, are considering lumping in DHS funding with appropriations for the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services, making it more difficult for progressive Democrats to oppose. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said that the CPC is urging leadership either to not bring up the bill at all or to break it off from Labor-HHS and allow for a separate vote. “What you’re seeing is this giant Trump administration machine deputize every arm of government to engage in their agenda at the expense of democracy and the Constitution, so there aren’t traditional boundaries anymore for any of those pieces of legislation,” Jayapal said. “Every argument is about, do you want to give more tools to the Trump administration to destroy our Constitution?” But the debate over the government’s surveillance power is happening in a shroud of confusion, as lawmakers are unclear precisely what the intelligence community currently considers legal, given the classified nature of the operations. Leaked Republican talking points suggest the intelligence community is pushing for legal blessing of dragnet surveillance, and the ability to use the data caught up in those dragnets — not to buttress existing investigations with a warrant but to begin new ones. The GOP talking points, first obtained by Gizmodo and passed out by the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggest that investigators could use “Internet data as a starting point” in launching an investigation. That’s a radical departure from what is understood to be legal and would allow the Department of Homeland Security to collect data on, for instance, every person who visited a website sympathetic to protests in Portland, then begin to surveil each of those people, hunting for a crime that could justify an arrest — an arrest that could then be carried out by unidentified federal troops driving unmarked vans.  The talking point most concerning to civil liberties advocates was built around a hypothetical case involving a bomb builder: “Without this other information to build a probable cause case, this amendment hamstrings the Government from pursuing the bomb-builder with the Internet data as a starting point.” On Tuesday, Sens. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe demanding assurance that the government is no longer conducting surveillance under the expired authorities, and asking whether the government believes it has authority to conduct such surveillance absent the legislation. The letter includes a reference to an extra-legal mass data collection project Barr himself authorized within the Drug Enforcement Administration when he was serving as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush. Because so much of the intelligence activity implicated by the legislation lies behind a veil of classification, lawmakers are left to rewrite the rules by piecing together clues. This leaked point is perhaps the most significant clue that the intelligence services are pursuing the ability to perform warrantless, dragnet searches — or are already doing so. Combined with the Trump administration’s willingness to deploy unmarked federal police forces against the will of state and local authorities, the push for expanded surveillance authority is alarming to civil liberties activists. “Secret surveillance cannot coexist with secret police in a free society. Both are inherently problematic and dangerous, but together the threat is immeasurable. It’s hard to escape that conclusion,” said Sean Vitka, senior policy counsel with the group Demand Progress, which is pushing to narrow the scope of the authorities.  The debate has played out in public between Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and an ally of the intel community, and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, who is a critic of mass surveillance and the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.  In the Senate, Wyden pushed an amendment, co-sponsored by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., that would bar federal authorities from using a dragnet to collect search and browsing history. The amendment fell one vote short of the 60 needed to advance, but the fight for it isn’t over. Two senators who missed the vote, Patty Murray of Washington and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have said they’re supportive, and Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., may also be gettable on a new vote, as he said he voted no on the measure because he was told by Democratic House leaders that the amendment effectively did away with FISA, which is not true. In any event, a companion amendment was introduced in the House, led by Reps. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Warren Davidson, R-Ohio. Ahead of a vote in the Judiciary Committee in May, Chair Jerry Nadler abruptly canceled the hearing, amid concerns among backers of the bill that Lofgren may have had the votes to pass her amendments.   House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered Schiff and Lofgren to negotiate a way forward, and they reached a short-lived compromise that would bar such dragnet searches “of U.S. persons.” Lofgren told the New York Times that such language barred dragnet searches, as it is impossible to guarantee that such a search won’t gather intelligence on Americans. Based on that interpretation, Wyden endorsed the measure. But then Schiff told the New York Times that he interpreted the language differently, saying that as long as agents didn’t intentionally target Americans, incidental collection was OK. Following Schiff’s statement, Wyden took the unusual step of withdrawing his support. “It is now clear that there is no agreement with the House Intelligence Committee to enact true protections for Americans’ rights against dragnet collection of online activity, which is why I must oppose this amendment, along with the underlying bill, and urge the House to vote on the original Wyden-Daines amendment,” Wyden said. Critical to understanding the legislation is the definition of a “U.S. person.” The National Security Agency is clear that the term does not apply to all people in the United States, but only to citizens and “an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence.” Recipients of DACA — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — are not considered lawfully admitted, but rather are able to remain in the country with their deportation proceedings indefinitely deferred. Undocumented immigrants, too, would fall outside those protections, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only ones vulnerable. Intelligence agencies, under Schiff’s interpretation of the language, could legally target DACA recipients for warrantless dragnet surveillance, which would then make whatever data they also collected on American citizens the legal result of incidental collection. That secret data could be turned over to secret federal police, who could make arrests from unmarked vehicles.  Instead of resolving the conflict, the House voted to go to a conference committee to negotiate with the Senate, but the Senate has yet to do the same, as reformers believe their leverage increases each day the authorities continue to be expired.  On the funding side, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is pushing House leadership to vote on the DHS appropriations bill, having secured a reduction in the number of beds available for immigrant detention. But others in the caucus argued that the win is less than it appears, as authorities need fewer beds than before, having successfully deported so many from detention. The internal CHC vote was close and contentious, according to two members of Congress familiar with the drawn out deliberations, meaning that the caucus’ push for a vote is less than unified.  Either way, Congress is nearly certain to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government rather than independent appropriations bills, so the debate over funding is largely symbolic. Jayapal said that approving new money now for DHS is “adding insult to injury for immigrants across the country but also peaceful protesters against white supremacy.” READ MORE Mike Pompeo. (photo: Getty Images) US Orders China to Close Houston Consulate, Beijing Vows Retaliation Marty Johnson, The Hill Johnson writes: "The U.S. has ordered that the Chinese government shut down its consulate in Houston, citing the need to protect American intellectual property." READ MORE Photojournalists Nicole Hester, Matthew Hatcher and Seth Herald (who took this photo) were shot with rubber pellets by Detroit Police Cpl. Daniel Debono in an 'unprovoked' attack, according to prosecutors. Debono faces three counts of felonious assault. (photo: Nicole Hester/Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images) Detroit Officer Charged Over Journalists Being Shot With Rubber Pellets Jason Slotkin, NPR Slotkin writes: "A Detroit police officer is facing charges over accusations that he fired rubber pellets at three photojournalists who were covering anti-racism protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd." Cpl. Daniel Debono, 32, is charged with three counts of felonious assault for allegedly firing the nonlethal ordnance at MLive photographer Nicole Hester and independent photojournalists Seth Herald and Matthew Hatcher in the early morning hours of May 31.  A statement on Monday by Wayne County prosecutors said the photojournalists, who covered the protests and wore their press credentials, encountered Debono and two other officers after protests had largely died down for the night. The three photographers were walking when they met Debono, who was dressed in riot gear and carrying his department-issued firearm and a weapon that fired the rubber pellets, prosecutors said. The three identified themselves as members of the press and held their hands up when he approached and they asked to cross the street. It was when they began to cross the street, prosecutors say, that Debono fired the rubber pellets in an "unprovoked" shooting. All three photographers sustained multiple injuries, with Hester sustaining the most. "The evidence shows that these three journalists were leaving the protest area and that there was almost no one else on the street where they were. They were a threat to no one. There are simply no explicable reasons why the alleged actions of this officer were taken," Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in the statement.  The felonious assault charge carries a maximum penalty of four years, prosecutors note. Claims and reports of excessive police violence have been frequent during protests that began with the police killing of George Floyd in May in Minneapolis. Alongside protester accounts, multiple journalists have also come forward saying they too had been targeted or arrested by police while covering protests.  Several journalists told NPR in June that they had been fired upon with rubber rounds, tear gas and pepper spray. In May, freelance photojournalist Linda Tirado said she had been blinded in her left eye likely by a rubber bullet that struck her face. And in perhaps one of the more surreal moments captured recently on live TV, CNN reporter Omar Jimenez and his crew were arrested on the air, while covering protests in Minneapolis. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which monitors aggressive actions against journalists in the U.S., has recorded some 241 attacks on journalists during protests, most of which were by law enforcement. At least 72 journalists have been arrested, the organization reports. During an unrelated press conference on Monday, Detroit Police Chief James Craig said he had been alerted to the alleged attack by a news outlet that employed one of the photojournalists. Craig said the department launched an investigation and suspended Debono over the incident.  Craig said the investigation had been given to prosecutors for their review.  Craig added that "by and large," his department performed in a "spectacular manner" even as protests sometimes turned violent. "Our officers have responded very appropriately, so this should not reflect, as an agency, that this one incident defines how we manage our protests," Craig said on Monday.  READ MORE The first patient enrolled in Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine trial receiving an injection at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore in May. (photo: University of Maryland School of Medicine/AP) ALSO SEE: 5 Key Takeaways From Tuesday's Big Coronavirus Vaccine Hearing Pfizer Gets $1.95 Billion to Produce Coronavirus Vaccine by Year's End Noah Weiland, The New York Times Excerpt: "The Trump administration on Wednesday announced a nearly $2 billion contract with the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and a smaller German biotechnology company for up to 600 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine." Two pharmaceutical companies announced a nearly $2 billion contract for 600 million doses of a vaccine, with the first 100 million promised before the end of the year. If the vaccine proves to be safe and effective in clinical trials, the companies say they could manufacture the first 100 million doses by December. Under the arrangement, the federal government would obtain the first 100 million doses for $1.95 billion, with the rights to acquire up to 500 million more. Americans would receive the vaccine for free. Before it could be distributed, it would first need at least emergency approval by the Food and Drug Administration. READ MORE Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Isarael arrives to chair the weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem, June 30. (photo: Getty Images) Israel's Annexation Plan Is the Latest Stage in a Long History of Violent Dispossession Greg Shupak, Jacobin Shupak writes: "Annexation would see Israel claim sovereignty over roughly 30 percent of the West Bank, including most of the Jordan Valley and more than 230 illegal Israeli settlements." READ MORE A tree in a deforested area in the middle of the Amazon. Scientists are discovering a strong correlation between deforestation and disease outbreaks. (photo: Raphael Alves/AFP/Getty Images) The Link Between Deforestation and Disease Nathan Rott, NPR Rott writes: "Deforestation has gotten worse under the pandemic." With the coronavirus occupying global attention, there's less regulation of logging and mining operations. It's worrisome news, because scientists are discovering a strong correlation between deforestation and disease outbreaks.  A 2017 paper linked recent forest loss to 25 Ebola outbreaks that have occurred since 1976. NPR national correspondent Nathan Rott speaks with Short Wave reporter Emily Kwong about the challenges faced by tropical forests — environments rich in biodiversity. Human activity is fragmenting those habitats. How does that result in an increased risk of animals-borne diseases transmitting to humans? And what can be done to protect those forests? You can read Nathan Rott's reporting on the link between deforestation and disease here.  READ MORE Contribute to RSN Update My Monthly Donation

RSN: Juan Cole | Trump's Secret Police Whisk Portland Protesters Into Unmarked Cars, but Allowed Right Wing Armed Militiamen to Invade Michigan State House

20 July 20

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Juan Cole | Trump's Secret Police Whisk Portland Protesters Into Unmarked Cars, but Allowed Right Wing Armed Militiamen to Invade Michigan State House

Juan Cole, Informed Comment

Cole writes: "The video does not show a violent mob, and a democracy cannot be having anonymous agents of the state bundling people into unmarked vehicles without probable cause (or even with probable cause)."

PB maintains that the individual was suspected of criminal activity and had to be removed from the area abruptly for fear of a violent mob. Its officials also defended the lack of name tags on the grounds that agents have been targeted by doxing campaigns (the publication of their home addresses and personal details on the internet).

The video does not show a violent mob, and a democracy cannot be having anonymous agents of the state bundling people into unmarked vehicles without probable cause (or even with probable cause).

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the Federal agents in Portland, alleging, according to Skanner, that

• “These agents, which have been deployed over the widespread objections of local leaders and community members, have been indiscriminately using tear gas, rubber bullets, and acoustic weapons against protesters, journalists, and legal observers. Federal officers also shot a protester in the head Sunday with a rubber bullet fracturing the person’s face and skull. Today’s lawsuit seeks to block federal law enforcement from dispersing, arresting, threatening to arrest, or using physical force against journalists or legal observers.”

These are the actions of a secret police. Secret police are a common institution in authoritarian states. They target dissidents and protesters, focusing on thought crimes rather than dealing with what you might call actual crimes. They report directly to the executive. They run secret prisons and camps.

The right of peaceable assembly is enshrined in the First Amendment to the US constitution, though it is a right often not de facto recognized by government.

Moreover, the US constitution, Article 1, Section 9, requires the preservation of habeas corpus except in times of foreign or civil war. Only Congress can suspend it. Habeas corpus is the principle that a judge may require law enforcement to produce an arrestee in court and specify the charges against the person or release him or her.

This constitutional principle cannot be upheld if the state agents who arrested the person are unknown and he or she has been whisked away in an unmarked vehicle. To whom would the judge apply for habeas corpus? That is, what the CPB did in Portland profoundly undermines the constitution.

CPB agents, Federal Marshals and agents of the Department of Homeland security were detailed to Portland, ostensibly to protect the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse and other Federal property during the past six weeks of demonstrations in Portland. The courthouse has often been painted with graffiti. The Feds say they have defended the building from charges at it by demonstrators.

It is not clear to me why the defense of the courthouse in Portland is not the responsibility of the civil police in Portland. The Trump administration, as we saw in Washington DC at Lafayette Park, likes having shadowy goons at its service.

U.S. Attorney Billy Williams concurs that an investigation of the arrests is warranted.

That these arrests were a Gestapo sort of politics rather than law enforcement is easily demonstrated.

On May 1, armed protesters entered the State House in Michigan. Some broke into the legislative chamber and stood, with guns, over the state representatives, one of whom put on a bullet proof vest. The militias and right wing agitators came again two weeks later and the legislative session was canceled. These were a right wing mob protesting the shut down of some economic activities by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as a mitigation measure against the coronavirus. As a result of Whitmer’s measures, Michigan is in a substantially better place than the slavishly pro-Trump Deep South this July.

Trump had encouraged such lawlessness, tweeting, “Liberate Michigan.”

You will notice that no CPB agents were flown out to Lansing to defend the State House from this potentially violent armed mob. None were hustled into unmarked vehicles by nameless Federal agents.

The difference in response to the the two protests demonstrates conclusively that the CPB agents in Portland were functioning as Trump’s secret police, since they were only concerned with suppressing dissent when it was dissent against the policies favored by the president. It is not about a neutral rule of law for all. The infiltration of US security agencies by far right wing conspiracy theorists such as QAnon makes these infractions against the Constitution even more frightening.

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People wait in line in June to vote at the Kentucky Exposition Center. (photo: Michael Blackshire/For The Washington Post)

The Data Proves Mail-In Voting Is Safe From Fraud and COVID-19
Edie Goldenberg, The Conversation
Goldenberg writes: "As millions of Americans prepare to vote in November-and in many cases, primaries and state and local elections through the summer as well-lots of people are talking about voting by mail. It is a way to protect the integrity of the country's voting system and to limit potential exposure to the coronavirus, which continues to spread widely in the U.S."
READ MORE

Eviction Filings Are Already Rising
Jordan Weissmann, Slate
Weissmann writes: "Here is some bad news on top of even more bad news about how America's renters are faring as the coronavirus crisis wares on."
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(image:Spencer Platt/Getty Images/Slate)

It's Perfectly Fine to Call It "Defunding" the Police
John McWhorter, Slate
McWhorter writes: "So for example, Black Lives Matter. It's common for some people to say, 'No, all lives matter.' They're missing the point. Black Lives Matter doesn't mean black lives matter more. It means black lives matter, too. Black lives matter as well."
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Transgender people and their supporters gather in Parliament Square to protest against potential changes to the Gender Recognition Act on July 4, 2020 in London. (photo: WIktor Szymanowicz/NurPhoto/Getty Images)

A Proposed Anti-Trans Rule Would Let Homeless Shelters Judge Who's a Woman

Katelyn Burns, Vox

Burns writes: "A proposed Housing and Urban Development rule would allow federally funded homeless shelters to judge a person's physical characteristics, such as height and facial hair, in determining whether they belong in a women's or men's shelter, according to a copy of the rule's text obtained by Vox."

EXCERPTS:

Dylan Waguespack, a spokesperson for True Colors United, an advocacy group that focuses on supporting LGBTQ homeless youth, told Vox in early June that HUD Secretary Ben Carson is “talking out of both sides of his mouth.”

Waguespack told Vox Friday that Carson is showing a “willful disregard for the survival of transgender people” and risks putting trans people in harm’s way. “He’s on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of the law,” he said. “It’s critical that trans people across the US hear the message loud and clear that they are legally entitled to gender-appropriate homelessness services under the law.”

Even though it has yet to be released, the HUD rule has already received congressional pushback. In a letter to HUD Secretary Ben Carson dated June 29, Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) urged the agency to reconsider the release of the HUD rule because of the Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County on June 15, which held that discrimination against trans people is considered sex discrimination.

Carson responded to the lawmakers with a letter of his own on July 13, which was obtained by Vox, rejecting the premise that Bostock would apply to the proposed rule. “[A]n individual’s sex is relevant in the specific category of cases covered by the Department’s proposed rule, which is concerned with single-sex temporary or emergency shelters,” read the letter. “These facilities, by virtue of their temporary nature, are not deemed ‘housing’, do not fall within the purview of the Fair Housing Act. Therefore they may lawfully elect to serve only one sex. We note that the Bostock decision assumed that ‘sex’ referred ‘only to biological distinctions between male and female.’”

Carson goes on to claim that the existing rule, which requires shelters to house trans people according to their gender identity, “permits any man, simply by asserting that his gender is female, to obtain access to women’s shelters.”

Associating vulnerable trans women with predatory men is a classic anti-trans dog whistle. In truth, there’s no evidence of wide-scale instances of men posing as trans women just to enter women’s spaces. Instead, advocates say the opposite is true — that putting trans women in men’s shelters is a recipe for harassment and potential assault.

Carson and Wexton have had a lengthy — and public — back and forth on trans issues, stemming back to a May 2019 hearing of the House Committee on Financial Services in which the lawmaker asked Carson whether the agency had any plans to change the Equal Access rule, which currently requires homeless shelters to house trans people according to their gender identity. At the hearing, Carson said there were no plans to do so, but the very next day the agency announced its intention to change the rule. 

Wexton immediately called the move out on Twitter.

In an October 2019 HFSC hearing, Wexton challenged Carson over comments in which he called trans women “big, hairy men” at an internal meeting with HUD staff in San Francisco a month earlier. Carson refused to apologize, instead decrying “political correctness.”

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At Least 8 Farmers Killed by Armed Group in Columbia, 120 Forced to Flee
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Colombia's Peasant Association of Catatumbo (ASCAMCAT) Saturday denounced the murder of at least eight of its members by the narco-paramilitary group 'Los Rastrojos.'"

The massacre occurred in the village of Totumito Carboneras, Catatumbo, in the department of Norte de Santande.

"We urge the Regional Ombudsman's Office of Cúcuta and the municipal authorities of Tibú to initiate an investigation into this violent act," the organization said in a statement.

This massacre has deepened the existing humanitarian crisis in the country and has forced at least 120 people from the municipality of Cucuta to leave their communities.

The displaced people fear a possible incursion by armed groups against the community.

"Ivan Duque's government must guarantee the life and safety of our communities and our stay in the territory," the organization added.

Colombia's House of Representatives legislator for the Revolutionary Alternative Force of the Common (FARC) party Sergio Marin also rejected the massacre.

The peace agreement signed in 2016 is very weak now. Is this the Colombia they wanted us to come back to?" Marin tweeted.

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Andrew Cuomo. (photo: Grist/Scott Heins/Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images)

One Year Later, What Has New York's Landmark Climate Law Accomplished?
Rachel Ramirez, Grist
Ramirez writes: "One year ago today, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) into law, committing the state to net-zero emissions by 2050. It was New York Renews, a statewide coalition of nearly 200 advocacy groups, who fought to bring what is now the Empire State's landmark climate law to fruition."

Despite a bumpy ride, both the CLCPA and a companion environmental justice bill finally went into effect in January. For the one-year anniversary of the CLCPA’s passage, New York Renews is keeping tabs on the law’s progress: On Thursday, the coalition called for a public audit of statewide agency spending to ensure that New York is complying with the law’s mandate that at least 35 percent of state energy and climate spending is invested in pollution-burdened communities.

“Goals are no good unless you meet them,” Timothy Kennedy, a state senator who co-sponsored the CLCPA, said during a virtual town hall on Friday. “We need to make sure that we take the CLCPA and enforce environmental standards that protect the very communities that are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.”

The CLCPA has recently helped remove obstacles that prevent low-income New York residents from accessing clean energy resources. Last month, the state announced a slate of grants totaling more than $10.6 million to help underserved New Yorkers access affordable solar energy. The grants, administered by New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, will help offset predevelopment costs to address resource barriers that typically prevent low-income residents — particularly communities of color — from installing clean energy or energy storage in their homes.

PUSH Buffalo — a community-led organization in Buffalo, New York, that focuses on advancing economic and environmental justice — has long promoted a just transition away from fossil fuel dependence, and its particular focus is retrofitting old buildings to meet sustainability standards. Rahwa Ghirmatzion, the organization’s executive director, said that PUSH is already taking steps to implement these grants with a multi-site, 53-unit net-zero emissions housing project that would contain a rooftop solar power installation and geothermal heat pumps. PUSH, which is also one of the founding groups behind New York Renews, also seeks to provide unemployed people or youth who can’t attend college with training opportunities to participate in the green development project.

“We don’t want to just think about legislation — we also want to work on an implementation strategy to make sure the law has teeth,” Ghirmatzion told Grist. “Oftentimes as organizers, we pass a lot of bills and then they become weak and watered down and not actualized.”

Environmental advocates say that New York’s climate targets can’t be met without certain major reforms that need to be executed. Replacing so-called peaker plants — power plants that typically only run during peak periods of high demand in electricity, especially during scorching summer heat waves — is a major demand that environmental justice groups are calling for under the CLCPA’s climate targets. A recent report found that New Yorkers over the last decade have shouldered more than $4.5 billion in electricity bills to pay the private owners of these polluting power plants, just to keep those plants online in case they’re needed — even though they only operate between 90 and 500 hours a year.

“Billions of dollars invested in fossil fuel infrastructure is definitely not part of the equation to get us to our targets fast and equitably,” Summer Sandoval, energy democracy coordinator with UPROSE, a grassroots organization focusing on sustainability and environmental justice, told Grist. “It’s not just about reducing emissions, but also taking a hard look at the different aspects tied to emission reductions, like environmental health risks.”

There have been some victories on this front: Environmental justice groups have been using the CLCPA as a powerful tool to oppose fossil fuel construction and expansion. So far, the biggest victory this year has been putting an end to the controversial Northeast Supply Enhancement project, also known as the Williams Pipeline. National Grid, the gas utility that operates in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island, would have been the sole customer of the pipeline’s gas. At one point, the fate of New York’s climate targets was hanging in the balance because the project was still moving forward. But in May, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) officially killed the pipeline by rejecting a key permit for the project, because it wouldn’t meet the state’s water quality standards. While the CLCPA was not the basis for the decision to deny permits, a DEC letter to the company leading the project proves that the climate law clearly weighed heavily in the ultimate outcome, when the project’s qualitative impacts were assessed.

To keep state agencies on track to achieve its goals, the CLCPA created two significant decision-making bodies. The first is the Climate Action Council, which is in charge of writing the entire scoping plan for New York’s economy to transition off of fossil fuels. The second is the Climate Justice Working Group, which is meant to guide the state in carrying out its ambitious climate targets by ensuring that the environmental justice provisions of the CLCPA —such as clean energy spending, green jobs, and affordable resources — are enforced and distributed equitably to low-income communities of color. Its appointees were announced last month, and they include some of New York’s most prominent environmental justice advocates, including Ghirmatzion.

The CLCPA was a long time coming. The Republican-controlled state senate blocked the bill for three consecutive years until Democrats took control in 2018. Then, before penning his signature on the bill, Governor Cuomo not only changed the name by adding the word “leadership” at the last minute, but he also slashed some major provisions that advocates from marginalized communities had pushed for, such as a crucial labor section that advocated for displaced fossil fuel workers and promoted fair wages for workers building the renewable energy sector. Cuomo’s version of the bill also included vague language that made it unclear how much cash would actually flow to “disadvantaged communities.”

With climate change still accelerating against the backdrop of a global pandemic that has disproportionately impacted Black and brown communities, New York Renews says that the state is still moving too slowly and isn’t taking the CLCPA’s social justice provisions seriously. The Climate Action Council has only met twice since it formed in March, while the Climate Justice Working Group has yet to have its first meeting, which is scheduled for later this month.

“We have to work together in an intersectional way,” Ghirmatzion told Grist. “We have to address the root causes, which means focusing on the most impacted in our communities, if we’re ever really going to create the world we want to live in.”

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