Trevor Timm on the DHS coup in Portland:

Virtually all of Portland’s local leaders, as well as Oregon’s leading representatives in Congress, have condemned the situation and called for an investigation.

But so far, DHS and the Trump administration do not seem deterred. The acting secretary of DHS, Chad Wolf, released a video statement Friday lamenting that Portland had declined the department’s “offer” of “support”. So DHS went ahead and sent in its thugs anyway. DHS’s list of reasons for invading Portland and implementing its terror operation, amid what it calls “rampant long-lasting violence”, consists mostly of graffiti incidents and minor property damage.

Watch the clip. It’s extraordinary.

“I offered @DHSgov support to help locally address the situation

The Guardian followed Trump’s Fox News interview with Chris Wallace.

The interview was recorded on Friday, however. Wallace said he did ask the president about the pandemic and efforts to tackle it. But they were speaking a day before the Washington Post and then the New York Times reported that as Congress and the Trump White House negotiate the next stimulus and relief package for an economy and a nation hammered by Covid-19, the White House is seeking to block funding for testing and tracing efforts, and other key areas of the pandemic response.

Meanwhile Trump is out playing golf again.

Trump is asked about his top infectious diseases expert, Dr Anthony Fauci. Reports indicate the White House is

Trump couldn’t manage a more polite or serious tribute than “saddened to hear,” and Republican senators don’t even know who Lewis was…beyond “he was one of the black ones.”

Like many of their colleagues, GOP Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Dan Sullivan (Alaska) posted tributes to Rep. John Lewis on Saturday and aimed to include photos of themselves with the civil rights icon who died Friday. Rubio even made the image his Twitter profile picture.

There was just one problem. The photos they each posted were of Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, who died in October.

Well it’s not as if they’re colleagues or anything, not as if they ever had an opportunity to see them in person.

“It was

Oh, that’s interesting – Trump isn’t just looking the other way and trying to bully everyone else into looking the other way, he’s actively trying to help the virus kill us all.

The Trump administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in the upcoming coronavirus relief bill, people involved in the talks said Saturday.

I suppose this is tied to his firm belief that if you don’t test you don’t have as many cases.

The administration is also trying to block billions of dollars that GOP senators want to allocate for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and billions more for the Pentagon and State Department to address the

Trump finally got around to mentioning John Lewis.

That’s pretty much it – he mentioned him.

Saddened to hear the news of civil rights hero John Lewis passing. Melania and I send our prayers to he and his family.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2020

It could hardly be more insultingly perfunctory. I guess he could have said “Sorry to hear about John Lewis. MAGA!” But short of that…… Read the rest

The ACLU explains how Trump and Customs and Border Patrol can get away with this grabbing people off the street thing – how it is actually legal. It’s an eye-opener.

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects Americans from random and arbitrary stops and searches.

According to the government, however, these basic constitutional principles do not apply fully at our borders. For example, at border crossings (also called “ports of entry”), federal authorities do not need a warrant or even suspicion of wrongdoing to justify conducting what courts have called a “routine search,” such as searching luggage or a vehicle.

But here’s the kicker – the “border” is not just the border.

Even in places far removed from the

The Post reports the unsurprising news that Trump’s verbal attacks on scientists are not helping the response to COVID.

This week’s remarkable character assault by some top White House advisers on Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, signified President Trump’s hostility toward medical expertise and has produced a chilling effect among the government scientists and public health professionals laboring to end the pandemic, according to administration officials and health experts.

From Trump’s point of view that means it’s working. He wants them chilled.

Though Trump does not automatically distrust the expertise of public health officials, he is averse to any information or assessment that he considers “bad news,” that compromises his economic cheerleading message or that jeopardizes

Congressman John Lewis spent his life fighting racism and injustice wherever he confronted it, from boycotts, sit-ins, and other protests in the streets, to championing bold, progressive policies in Congress. #ripjohnlewis pic.twitter.com/Sj3joYHWni

— The Black Caucus (@TheBlackCaucus) July 18, 2020

.@RepJohnLewis was a titan of the civil rights movement whose goodness, faith and bravery transformed our nation. Every day of his life was dedicated to bringing freedom and justice to all. pic.twitter.com/xMbfAUhLUv

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) July 18, 2020

Not many of us get to live to see our own legacy play out in such a meaningful, remarkable way. John Lewis did:https://t.co/KbVfYt5CeQ

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) July 18, 2020

I think that photo is from the inauguration. I … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Papito on The beautiful suburbs.

What makes a suburb “successful” is a good ratio of property value to number of children. Property value is maintained by zoning. With high property value, you get rich people living there, and public schools funded by rich people’s property taxes, and a lower rate of public school attendance because rich people don’t have as many kids as poor people and so many rich people send their kids to private schools anyway.

What “abolishes” a suburb is revising the zoning to allow smaller lots, or (god forbid!) apartment buildings, increasing population density and reducing per-unit prices. Cheaper, smaller housing brings a lower ratio of property tax to children. People who … Read the rest

Trump did another publicly funded campaign speech in the Rose Garden yesterday. He promised to Keep America Racist.

The Democrats in D.C. have been and want to, at a much higher level, abolish our beautiful and successful suburbs by placing far-left Washington bureaucrats in charge of local zoning decisions. They are absolutely determined to eliminate single-family zoning, destroy the value of houses and communities already built, just as they have in Minneapolis and other locations that you read about today. Your home will go down in value and crime rates will rapidly rise.

Oh, gee, I wonder what he’s talking about there. Why would zoning make crime rates go up?

Joe Biden and his bosses from the radical left want

The fascist coup is getting closer, is perhaps under way.

.@CBP respects the right to peacefully protest, but violence and civil unrest will not be tolerated. Our agents are in Portland to stop criminals from continuing to destroy federal property and injure federal officers and agents. Statement: pic.twitter.com/cZBDsr2pkG

— CBP Mark Morgan (@CBPMarkMorgan) July 17, 2020

CBP is Customs and Border Patrol – who don’t have jurisdiction over domestic protests. Do they? That’s not how any of this works is it? Deranged fascist presidents can’t just call in bombers and prison guards and heavy artillery and Border Patrol whenever they feel like staging a tantrum, can they?

Our personnel are clearly marked as federal LEOs & have unique identifiers.

Jeet Heer in the Nation:

Protests have been roiling Portland for over six weeks. Even prior to these protests, Portland was a site of a long-running battle between right-wing groups like the Proud Boys and left-wing activists who are usually lumped together under the antifa label. It’s possible that the antifa connection made Portland a spot of particular interest to the Trump administration, which has used the loosely organized anti-fascist groups as a scapegoat for social upheavals in the wake of police brutality.

The deployment of unidentified federal officers is particularly dangerous in a situation like that in Portland and elsewhere in America, because it could easily lead to right-wing militias’ impersonating legal authorities and kidnapping citizens.

That would … Read the rest

Dispatch from Yakima County:

First came the warning: A police officer in the small city of Selah told a group of young people that if they continued drawing “Black Lives Matter” chalk art on the sidewalk in front of City Hall, they would be charged with a crime.

Chalk art on a sidewalk? What “crime” will they be charged with then?

Then someone (the story doesn’t say who) sent in a pressure washer to blast it all away.

The standoff last week was just one of a growing series of conflicts between conservative leaders of Selah, a community with only a few dozen Black residents, and young people from a wide range of backgrounds who believe the city is

Here we see them in action. It’s absolutely dumbfounding.

So is all this fascist grabbing people off the streets in camo and unmarked rental vans legal? Probably not.

Legal scholars questioned whether the detentions pass constitutional muster.

“Arrests require probable cause that a federal crime had been committed, that is, specific information indicating that the person likely committed a federal offense, or a fair probability that the person committed a federal offense,” Orin Kerr, a professor at University of California, Berkeley Law School, told The Post. “If the agents are grabbing people because they may have been involved in protests, that’s not probable cause.”

Well it’s the same city. Isn’t that a fair probability?

Federal officers from the U.S. Marshals Service and Department of Homeland Security have stormed

In Burundi, does child marriage happen to self-identified girls? pic.twitter.com/1gbwwgEuVt

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) July 15, 2020

In Senegal, can a girl identify as a boy and be sent to school? pic.twitter.com/FA8bWe8A10

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) July 15, 2020

In India, how many of the 63m missing women were self-identified? pic.twitter.com/sD8exbo8YV

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) July 15, 2020

In Kenya, how will you ensure that period products get to the right people? pic.twitter.com/lx5zz7vnhn

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) July 15, 2020

In South Africa, are self-identified girls at equivalent risk for HIV and teenage pregnancy? pic.twitter.com/FU0vQOU4ya

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) July 15, 2020

Your entire operation is dedicated to raising up girls and women who are victims of systematic sex discrimination.

Well of course. Trans “woman” gets massive book deal for book about “gender.” Of course he does.

The first book by Munroe Bergdorf, a manifesto on gender by the black transgender activist and model, has been bought for a six-figure sum after a bidding war between 11 publishers.

Bergdorf’s Transitional will be published by Bloomsbury in 2021. Exploring six different facets of human experience – adolescence, sexuality, gender, relationships, identity and race – the book will draw on Bergdorf’s own experiences, including growing up in a mixed-race family, going to an all-boys school and starting her transition at the age of 24. In it, she will argue that transition is an experience every person faces in every phase in

On the other hand there are genuine assaults on freedom. It’s just that they don’t come from the CDC.

In the early hours of July 15, after a night spent protesting at the Multnomah County Justice Center and Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse, Mark Pettibone and his friend Conner O’Shea decided to head home.

Things had been calm; the Portland cops and the feds had mostly kept a low profile.

A block west of Chapman Square, Pettibone and O’Shea bumped into a group of people who warned them that people in camouflage were driving around the area in unmarked minivans grabbing people off the street.

Uh…what? That could be anybody. That could be far-right vigilantes. That’s terrifying.

They

Meeting to discuss mask policy postponed because…

… because dozens of people not wearing masks filled the room.

Well at least they’re sincere.

Utah County Commissioner Tanner Ainge said Wednesday the gathering in Provo, Utah violated current health recommendations and moved to suspend the meeting until a later date. His motion to adjourn was approved with a 2-to-1 vote, with the dissent coming from a commissioner who had organized the meeting.

“This is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing,” Ainge said at the meeting. “We are supposed to be physically distancing, wearing masks.”

The audience responded with a loud chorus of boos. 

Because…why? Do they really want to make health and safety a libbrul thing and disease and peril a conservative thing?… Read the rest