Lessons UnLearned: Portland in 2020, Los Angeles Today, the United States Tomorrow?

Lessons UnLearned
Portland in 2020, Los Angeles Today, the United States Tomorrow?

By Karen J. Greenberg


(TomDispatch) "I must say,” Donald Trump commented, “I wish we had an occupying force.” It was June 1, 2020. The president, then in his first term in office, was having a phone call with the nation’s governors to discuss the ongoing Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests taking place nationwide in response to the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman. He was urging the governors to call in the National Guard in response to BLM protests in their states. Otherwise, he threatened he would do so himself. “You have to dominate,” he told them, while labeling the protesters “terrorists.” Otherwise, he claimed, “they are going to run over you.”

Later that morning, Trump left the White House and took his infamous walk through Lafayette Park, where members of the Washington National Guard, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and several other agencies, joined by guard units from a number of states, confronted protesters. As I recounted in my book Subtle Tools, “Protesters threw eggs, candy bars, and water bottles, while law enforcement shot rubber bullets, launched pepper balls, and fired tear gas into the crowd.”

....(snip)....

Donald Trump is once again president, and immigration raids across the country are hurrying to meet the White House target of 3,000 arrests per day. This time around, Los Angeles has become the focal point of the resulting battle over federal versus state authority. In early June, responding to an outbreak of protests challenging the administration’s brutal immigration raids, Trump sent 700 active-duty Marines and 4,100 National Guard into that city to counter the protesters. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and California Attorney General Bonta have protested resoundingly, claiming, like their Portland counterparts, that the deployment was unnecessary and counterproductive. Mayor Bass has maintained that the local authorities “had the situation under control,” concluding that “there was no need for the National Guard.” Summing up the consequences of the deployment, Governor Newsom considered them to be “intentionally causing chaos, terrorizing communities, and endangering the principles of our great democracy. It is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.” Attorney General Bonta echoed Newsom by insisting that the troops were instigating violence, not defusing it, and suing the Trump administration (unsuccessfully so far) for illegally taking over a state National Guard.

....(snip)....

Today, in Los Angeles, the courts are similarly engaged in a suit over the administration’s deployment of federal agents to counter protests. So far, however, the outcome is trending very differently. Earlier in the month, a federal judge issued a TRO against the National Guard in that city. In a 46-page ruling, Judge Charles Breyer, the brother of retired Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, rejected the government’s characterization of the protests as “a rebellion” and excoriated the president for assuming powers beyond his constitutional and statutory authority. “That’s the difference between a constitutional government and King George” was the way he put it. In addition, Judge Breyer returned the authority to deploy the National Guard to California rather than the federal government. ...............(more)

https://tomdispatch.com/lessons-unlearned/