Sunday, July 19, 2020

TRUMP'S POLICE COUP ON AMERICA



Dem Rep. Meeks: Trump Turning America into North Korea with Feds Taking Protesters off the Street

1:23

Sunday on MSNBC, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) said President Donald Trump using federal agents to remove protesters in Portland, OR is something that would happen in North Korea.
Host Alex Witt said, “To the battle in Portland, Oregon where anonymous militarized federal agents have been squaring off with protesters as you watch what is unfolding, what is your opinion and do you think it is an abuse of power?”
Meeks said, “My reaction is this the United States of America? This is the same kind of thing that I guess this president wants to go along with his good friends as he says, Vladimir Putin and Russia, something that you would think would take place there, or Kim Jong-un in North Korea something that would take place there. This is how they govern and operate, and I hoped we moved far past that. I heard the mayor of Portland talk long ago how they have put things under control and what happened by doing this, it is escalating, it is throwing fire on the fuel. So we look at some of the pictures and what is going on, we would be very critical when we saw these tapes as we have in the past take place in Russia and North Korea and now this president wants to be just like his two friends, I guess.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN


Civil War 2.0 going hot in Portland, Oregon

In recent weeks, Portland, Oregon has emerged as the flashpoint of the organized violent anarchist-communist movement that seeks to “transform” the United States into a lawless Third World Marxist state. Late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, a mob of hundreds of “protesters” played another violent cat and mouse game with the city’s police and federal officers on the streets of downtown Portland. The police officially declared a riot at 11 PM PDT after which the building housing the police union (PPA) headquarters was set on fire by “demonstrators,” according to multiple sources.
I have been following reports from the streets on Twitter and elsewhere online all night that have included multiple cell phone videos. The hashtag #portlandprotest is one active thread featuring reports and videos, many if not most of them sympathetic to the violence. In fact, the vast majority of tweets on the subject have taken the side of the “protesters,” many of them insisting that the fire at the PPA was a false flag – a modern version of the 1933 Reichstag Fire set by the Nazis in Berlin – this time allegedly set by the Portland police themselves in order to provide an excuse for more “repression.” Other tweets have claimed the fire was a worthy tactic in the radicals’ campaign to do away with Portland’s police force. Trending on Twitter this past week – some of them serving as organizing tools for street actions and flash mobs – are hashtags like #TrumpThreatensAmerica and #trumpnazi.
After almost two months of violent demonstrations, rioting, and looting in multiple American cities, President Trump finally took steps this past week to address the situation. As the Daily Wire reported on July 19:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently deployed an elite unit of law enforcement operators to Portland this week under President Donald Trump’s Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence.
The New York Times confirmed an earlier report that identified the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC, as the unit that was deployed to Portland as the city has been rocked by approximately 48 consecutive days of riots. Reuters reported that in addition to BORTAC, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are helping DHS’s Federal Protective Service, which provides security for federal buildings.”
It was exactly two years ago that I was reporting, including here at American Thinker and at The Epoch Times, on Occupy ICE Portland, a ragtag group of professional Marxist agitators and local grifters who set up camp adjacent to Portland’s ICE (federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement) building and effectively shut it down for almost a month. During that insurrection, the police were ordered to stand down by the city’s left-wing Democrat mayor. Occupy ICE demanded not only an end to ICE, but, as I wrote in June 2018, to borders, police, and prisons. As absurd as those demands may have seemed at the time, they have now gone mainstream including being championed by many leading Democrats not only in Portland but nationwide in the wake of the fuse lit by the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody on May 25.
Portland Police tweets @PortlandPolice issued between 10:31 and 10:58 PM PDT Saturday July 18
Sympathizers with the violent rioters and looters, which includes Portland’s daily newspaper, The Oregonian, have tried to claim the 52 nights of demonstrations have been peaceful. Typical is the headline on an Oregonian lead story published on July 18: “Feds, right-wing media paint Portland as ‘city under siege.’” Independent media have reported more accurately on the situation, including noting the $23 million in property damage that has been visited on the city since the demonstrations began on May 26th.

A federal officer in Portland was struck in the head and shoulder with a hammer after a man tried to use to the tool to break down a door to a federal courthouse, police said. Photo by Portland Police Bureau
It seems likely that the Portland protests will continue. The local elected officials, all Democrats, have been demanding that the federal government withdraw the troops sent in by the Department of Homeland Security to protect federal buildings that the police have been unable or unwilling to defend. Escalation of the situation, and its likely spread to other cities, is not out of the question – especially with top Democrats egging on the violent rioters.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), for example, tweeted this incendiary comment – which essentially pours more gasoline on the fire – on July 17:
Nancy Pelosi
@SpeakerPelosi
Unidentified stormtroopers. Unmarked cars. Kidnapping protesters and causing severe injuries in response to graffiti. These are not the actions of a democratic republic.
@DHSgov’s actions in Portland undermine its mission. Trump & his stormtroopers must be stopped.
Photo credit: Twitter
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications.  He also appears in the media, including recently as a guest analyst on BBC World News. Peter's website is http://peter.media.  For updates on his work, follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.






Portland Mayor Wheeler: Feds Scooping Protesters Off the Street ‘Completely Unconstitutional’

1:32


Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) called accusations federal police to remove protesters in his city “completely unconstitutional.”
Wheeler said, “The president has a complete misunderstanding of cause and effect. What’s happening here is we have dozens if not hundreds of federal troops descending upon our city. What they’re doing is they are sharply escalating the situation. Their presence here is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism. And it’s not helping the situation at all. They’re not wanted here. We haven’t asked them here. In fact, we want them to leave.”
Host Jake Tapper asked, “The ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration Friday night as did your state attorney general. She accused federal agents of a, quote, ‘escalation of fear in violence.’ Do you think the Trump administration is breaking the law in your city?”
Wheeler said, “I absolutely do. The tactics that the Trump administration is using on the streets of Portland are abhorrent. People are being literally scooped off the street into unmarked vans, rental cars, apparently. They are being denied probable cause. And they are denied due process. They don’t even know who’s pulling them into the vans. The people aren’t identifying themselves. And as far as I can see, this is completely unconstitutional.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN


Mayor of Portland to Trump: Get your troops out of the city




In this July 4, 2020, file photo, protesters gather near a fire in downtown Portland, Ore. Oregon's largest city is in crisis as violent protests have wracked downtown for weeks. The mayor can't bring the council along on cracking down because of very liberal council members and no matter what …

The mayor of Portland is demanding that President Donald Trump remove militarized federal agents he deployed to the city after some detained people on streets distant from federal property they were sent to protect
Mayor of Portland to Trump: Get your troops out of the cityBy ANDREW SELSKY and GILLIAN FLACCUSAssociated PressThe Associated PressPORTLAND, Ore.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The mayor of Portland demanded Friday that President Donald Trump remove militarized federal agents he deployed to the city after some detained people on streets far from federal property they were sent to protect.
“Keep your troops in your own buildings, or have them leave our city,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said at a news conference.
Democratic Gov. Kate Brown said Trump is looking for a confrontation in the hopes of winning political points elsewhere. It also serves as a distraction from the coronavirus pandemic, which is causing spiking numbers of infections in Oregon and the nation.
Brown’s spokesman, Charles Boyle, said Friday that arresting people without probable cause is “extraordinarily concerning and a violation of their civil liberties and constitutional rights.”
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said she would file a lawsuit in federal court against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Marshals Service, Customs and Border Protection and Federal Protection Service alleging they have violated the civil rights of Oregonians by detaining them without probable cause. She will also seek a temporary restraining order against them.
The ACLU of Oregon said the federal agents appear to be violating people’s rights, which “should concern everyone in the United States.”
“Usually when we see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone off the street we call it kidnapping,” said Jann Carson, interim executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon. “The actions of the militarized federal officers are flat-out unconstitutional and will not go unanswered.”
Federal officers have charged at least 13 people with crimes related to the protests so far, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported Thursday. Some have been detained by the federal courthouse, which has been the scene of protests. But others were grabbed blocks away.
“This is part of the core media strategy out of Trump’s White House: to use federal troops to bolster his sagging polling data,” Wheeler said. “And it is an absolute abuse of federal law enforcement officials.”
One video showed two people in helmets and green camouflage with “police” patches grabbing a person on the sidewalk, handcuffing them and taking them into an unmarked vehicle.
“Who are you?” someone asks the pair, who do not respond. At least some of the federal officers belong to the Department of Homeland Security.
Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that its agents had information indicating the person in the video was suspected of assaulting federal agents or destroying federal property.
“Once CBP agents approached the suspect, a large and violent mob moved towards their location. For everyone’s safety, CBP agents quickly moved the suspect to a safer location,” the agency said. However, the video shows no mob.
In another case, Mark Pettibone, 29, said a minivan rolled up to him around 2 a.m. Wednesday and four or five people got out “looking like they were deployed to a Middle Eastern war.”
Pettibone told The Associated Press he got to his knees as the group approached. They dragged him into the van without identifying themselves or responding to his questions and pulled his beanie over his eyes so he couldn’t see, he said.
“I figured I was just going to disappear for an indefinite amount of time,” Pettibone said.
Pettibone said he was put into a cell and officers dumped the contents of his backpack, with one remarking: “Oh, this is a bunch of nothing.”
After he asked for a lawyer, Pettibone was allowed to leave.
“Authoritarian governments, not democratic republics, send unmarked authorities after protesters,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a tweet.
U.S. Attorney Billy Williams in Portland said Friday he has requested the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General to investigate the actions of DHS personnel.
In a letter Friday, Oregon’s two senators and two of its House members demanded that U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf immediately withdraw “these federal paramilitary forces from our state.”
The members of Congress also said they’ll be asking the DHS inspector general and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the presence and actions of federal forces in Portland.
“It’s painfully clear this administration is focused purely on escalating violence without answering my repeated requests for why this expeditionary force is in Portland and under what constitutional authority,” Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden said.
On Thursday night, federal officers deployed tear gas and fired non-lethal rounds into a crowd of protesters.
Wolf visited Portland on Thursday and called the demonstrators, who are protesting racism and police brutality, “violent anarchists.”
Wolf blamed state and city authorities for not putting an end to the protests. But Portland police said Friday they wound up arresting 20 people overnight.
At least two protests occurred Thursday night, one near the federal courthouse and the other by a police station in another part of the city. Police told protesters to leave that site after announcing they heard some chanting about burning down the building. Protester Paul Frazier said Friday the chant was “much more rhetorical than an actual statement.”
Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell told reporters Friday that his officers are in contact with the federal agents, but that neither controls the others’ actions.
“We do communicate with federal officers for the purpose of situational awareness and deconfliction,” Lovell said. “We’re operating in a very, very close proximity to one another.”
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Oregon on Friday added the federal government to a lawsuit it filed earlier to halt the use of crowd control measures, including tear gas and rubber bullets, against journalists and legal observers at protests in Portland.
“The lawsuit is one of many the ACLU will be filing against federal authorities in Portland for their unconstitutional attacks on people protesting the police killing of George Floyd,” the group said.
Tensions have escalated in the past two weeks, particularly after an officer with the U.S. Marshals Service fired a less-lethal round at a protester’s head on July 11, critically injuring him.
The protests following the police killing of Floyd in Minneapolis have often devolved into violent clashes between smaller groups and the police.
___
This version corrects that the governor did not say the deployment serves as a distraction, and that chanting about burning happened at police station, not federal courthouse.
___
Selsky reported from Salem, Oregon. AP reporters Ben Fox in Washington and Jake Bleiberg in Dallas contributed.

Democrats Are Forcing a Civil War


Through Antifa and BLM, the Democrats are preparing for war.  The riots, looting, arson, and public beatings taking place every day are merely practice for the coming revolutionary conflagration.  They are war-gaming to see how best to seize control of the streets and intimidate citizens into ceding their right to vote for the candidate they support.
From the beginning, they forced the police to stand down.  The constant drumbeat for defunding the police has sent a message to LEOs everywhere: "Don't interfere" when the insurrection goes hot.
Knowing that the police can be constrained into allowing anarchy to reign, they then went after the National Guard and regular army, saying it would be un-American to deploy troops to quell the violence and restore law and order against "mostly peaceful" protesters exercising their First Amendment rights.
They appear to be having great success in controlling the narrative, but if they think this nation is going down without a fight, they have another "think" coming.
Americans believe that one can never be too rich, too thin, or too well armed.  And we are, indeed, well armed, with citizens who are beginning to see the game that is being played.  Many estimate that between 300 million and 700 million firearms are in the hands of the public.
If only 10% of those guns are brought to bear, it would mean a minimum of 30 million weapons deployed against Antifa and BLM.  No one wants to see bloodshed, especially gun-owners, who for the most part want to be left alone to protect their families, homes, places of worship, and places of employment.
Yet people are not going to stand by and watch America become another "socialist paradise."  Americans are going to fight back — this should worry the left, as every hunter is something of a sniper.
Leftists are pushing to see how far they can go before the people confront them.  The push for "change only they can believe in" is going to force this country in a series of bloody battles the left cannot win.
Before the economy-killing and unnecessary lockdowns, and the rioting, I would have said the civil war would happen after the election, no matter who won.  Yet, those on the left are not going to allow that grace.
Everything they are doing speaks to a political movement preparing to overthrow a nation.  They think this country is owed to them and they are determined to take it.
Having sidelined or neutered the National Guard and police, the facts on the ground today are Antifa and BLM rioting in most cases unopposed.  They will run rampant in the days and weeks preceding the election unless citizens stand up to them.  It is early, but it seems that more and more people have had enough of their terror tactics.
As far as the election is concerned, the police probably will be ordered to stand down, and the National Guard, if they are out at all, will be unarmed.  Democrats think voter intimidation will be easy. Why not use rioting, chaos, and anarchy to shut down the polls in areas suspected of supporting the president?  Remember the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia in 2008 — something like that, but more so.
Yet regular Americans vastly outnumber the forces of the left — they can terrorize the populace into submission only if normal people allow them to.
Part of their plan is to use the media to push the BLM message and social media to destroy anyone who does not go along.  The "fake history" 1619 Project, claims of systemic racism, the national monument defacements, the toppling of statues with no real coherence as to the reasons why — are all done to rewrite the history and force-sell the notion that all they do is justified because we are to blame.
It is all propaganda to convince citizens that they must acquiesce to the violence or be labeled a racist and be canceled, their jobs gone, and their lives ruined.  People are not even allowed to remain silent because "silence is violence."  If they can get people to apologize for their privilege, all the better.
It is all about getting people to be active participants in their machinations to install the "king of aphasia," Joe Biden, as the new president.
Once Americans accept their culpability, the left can begin the process of healing by abrogating the constitution on which our republic is based.  The violence they will use to make this so will be a "healing violence."  After all, one cannot make a revolution omelet without breaking some heads.
They think they can convince Americans to forgo the fight and accept what they will force upon us.  We must not allow them to succeed.  They must be confronted when they come for our country.  We must fight.
To date, the vast majority of Americans do not support the premise that America is unfair and must be changed.  In response, the Democrats, in conjunction with Antifa, the party's paramilitary arm; BLM, the ideological arm of the party; and the media, its propaganda arm, are planning outright rebellion.  What we are witnessing now from the Democrats is insurrection.  It is a revolution that will end in bloody civil war.  The left could not win total control of the nation at the ballot box, so leftists intend to take it.
They have miscalculated; what we are about to see in the streets of this country is going to make the violence and destruction of the riots seem mild by comparison.
But in the end, they lose, and we win...
Please follow the author on Twitter @williamlgensert.


Garbage- and graffiti-strewn Portland upchucks at offered federal help


Oregon's city of Portland is looking more like Caracas, Venezuela by the day, not just in its Marxist ideology, but in its moral rot and physical shambles.
John Hinderaker at Power Line noted a few days ago that he had until recently taken comfort in knowing that his home city of Minneapolis wasn't the worst-run city in America, because of Portland.
But now the blue-city shambles is taking another turn - Portland's leaders are openly screaming for federal law enforcement coming in to protect federal property, such as courthouses, to leave the burning garbage dump that is their city. They'd rather the city be left to fester.
Fox News has a very good report:

What a dump.
According to the Washington Post:
During a video news conference Friday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler twice called the federal police in his city President Trump’s “personal army” and said that he is joining a chorus of Oregon’s elected officials in sending a clear message to Washington: “Take your troops out of Portland.”
“This is part of a coordinated strategy out of Trump’s White House to use federal troops to bolster his sagging polling data, and it is an absolute abuse of federal law enforcement officials,” Wheeler said. “As we were starting to see things de-escalate, their actions last Saturday and every night since have actually ratcheted up the tension on our streets.”
There was also this leftist fool:
“I am proud to be among the loud chorus of elected officials calling for the federal troops in Portland’s streets to go home,” Portland Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty said in a statement shared with The Post on Sunday. “Their presence here has escalated tensions and put countless Portlanders exercising their First Amendment rights in greater danger.”
The governor of Oregon was just as bad:
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said President Donald Trump, who deployed Department of Homeland Security officers to Portland, "is looking for a confrontation in Oregon in the hopes of winning political points in Ohio or Iowa."
"Now he is deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland in a blatant abuse of power by the federal government," Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement late Thursday.
And here's more overwrought rhetoric from an under-brained Oregon senator:
“A peaceful protester in Portland was shot in the head by one of Donald Trump’s secret police,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote in a Thursday tweet that also called out acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf. “Now Trump and Chad Wolf are weaponizing the DHS as their own occupying army to provoke violence on the streets of my hometown because they think it plays well with right-wing media.”
According to federal officials, leftist anarchists were preparing to attack federal property, such as courthouses, had attempted to break and enter, and were last seen chanting of their plans to burn it down. If that doesn't suggest a situation that requires federal intervention -- to defend the threatened third branch of government with its courts and rule of law -- what does?
A federal official tweeted this:


Oregon's U.S. Attorney, a federal rather than state official, had this to say:
“The overarching goal of law enforcement is public protection and, during tense and dangerous situations, de-escalation. Federal law enforcement officers protecting the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse and other federal buildings have been operating with those two critical goals. Night after night for the past 50 nights, they have protected the federal courthouse from incursion and fire. They have rebuffed efforts to enter the building by force and have been met with an onslaught of commercial fireworks, laser strikes, glass, mortars, paint, and anything else near at hand. They have endeavored to find the individuals within the crowd who are committing these violent acts and arrest them in a manner that is safe for both the officers and nearby non-violent protesters. In limited instances, their conduct has been questioned and the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General appropriately opened an investigation into the use of less lethal ammunition directed at a [protester] last week."
What we are looking at here is an unprecedented opposition to any semblance of law and order. Worse still, we are seeing a city and state at odds with federal interests in the most basic of interests, protecting federal property.
We are seeing fantastical narratives from Oregon's mayor in particular, but pretty much all of them.
Start with the claim that the Portland violence had died down until the feds came along. The feds were causing the problems, not the rabid leftists. Baloney, Portland has been a leftist hellhole for months - just look at the evidence shown from the Fox News coverage. Widespread reports about people not being able to go out at nights and crime running rampant didn't suggest anything at all dying down, it suggested a festering problem growing and getting worse.
And, considering Wheeler's bizarre projecting, not a word about why there was violence and hellishness in the first place, a violence brought about by Wheeler's own weak leadership and more likely, kowtowing to the rabid mob. The mob had pretty much become his governing arm, either by choice or default. That ought to be grounds to demand he forfeit his office, given his hostility to all rule of law and failure to maintain the peace. We haven't really seen anything like this in the last 100 years. Perhaps the best analogy would be that some dispirited elements of the defeated Confederacy embraced the ways of the mob, unable to accept the results of the Civil War. They became Klansmen. Portland looks disturbingly similar in its defiance.
There was also the nonsense from several of them, claiming Trump was only cracking down on their hellhole city to please voters in Ohio and Iowa, to get his numbers up in the polls. Let's translate that: Instead of numbers up in the polls, how about 'doing things people like'? People like it when laws mean what they say and rule of law is a given in any American city. They like courthouses to be courthouses, and police to police, all things that are anathema to the freaks running Portland. Why would people support the president and reward him in the polls if his administration decided to protect federal, taxpayer-paid-for property? It's completely opaque to them that this would be popular - except of course among all those un-hip people in Iowa, as one of them said. By extension, they unwittingly signalled that they had been keeping their city a hellhole to keep President Trump's poll numbers down, which doesn't speak well for them.
Thirdly, there were the bizarre and Confederate-like howls to get out. They want the feds to abandon federal property to the Antifa mobs they succor. The howls should be treated with the contempt they deserve and the federal response should if anything be harsher. We all know what they really want out, not the feds, but President Trump, out from the White House. That's what explains the vehemence of their statements. They never really got over the 2016 election and now that they know they can't overturn it, they turn their own city into a dump and tell the President to get out that way.
It just serves as a new argument to re-elect Trump.
  

AMERICA'S LOOMING CIVIL WAR

Civil War 2.0 going hot in Portland, Oregon

In recent weeks, Portland, Oregon has emerged as the flashpoint of the organized violent anarchist-communist movement that seeks to “transform” the United States into a lawless Third World Marxist state. Late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, a mob of hundreds of “protesters” played another violent cat and mouse game with the city’s police and federal officers on the streets of downtown Portland. The police officially declared a riot at 11 PM PDT after which the building housing the police union (PPA) headquarters was set on fire by “demonstrators,” according to multiple sources.
I have been following reports from the streets on Twitter and elsewhere online all night that have included multiple cell phone videos. The hashtag #portlandprotest is one active thread featuring reports and videos, many if not most of them sympathetic to the violence. In fact, the vast majority of tweets on the subject have taken the side of the “protesters,” many of them insisting that the fire at the PPA was a false flag – a modern version of the 1933 Reichstag Fire set by the Nazis in Berlin – this time allegedly set by the Portland police themselves in order to provide an excuse for more “repression.” Other tweets have claimed the fire was a worthy tactic in the radicals’ campaign to do away with Portland’s police force. Trending on Twitter this past week – some of them serving as organizing tools for street actions and flash mobs – are hashtags like #TrumpThreatensAmerica and #trumpnazi.
After almost two months of violent demonstrations, rioting, and looting in multiple American cities, President Trump finally took steps this past week to address the situation. As the Daily Wire reported on July 19:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently deployed an elite unit of law enforcement operators to Portland this week under President Donald Trump’s Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence.
The New York Times confirmed an earlier report that identified the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC, as the unit that was deployed to Portland as the city has been rocked by approximately 48 consecutive days of riots. Reuters reported that in addition to BORTAC, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are helping DHS’s Federal Protective Service, which provides security for federal buildings.”
It was exactly two years ago that I was reporting, including here at American Thinker and at The Epoch Times, on Occupy ICE Portland, a ragtag group of professional Marxist agitators and local grifters who set up camp adjacent to Portland’s ICE (federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement) building and effectively shut it down for almost a month. During that insurrection, the police were ordered to stand down by the city’s left-wing Democrat mayor. Occupy ICE demanded not only an end to ICE, but, as I wrote in June 2018, to borders, police, and prisons. As absurd as those demands may have seemed at the time, they have now gone mainstream including being championed by many leading Democrats not only in Portland but nationwide in the wake of the fuse lit by the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody on May 25.
Portland Police tweets @PortlandPolice issued between 10:31 and 10:58 PM PDT Saturday July 18
Sympathizers with the violent rioters and looters, which includes Portland’s daily newspaper, The Oregonian, have tried to claim the 52 nights of demonstrations have been peaceful. Typical is the headline on an Oregonian lead story published on July 18: “Feds, right-wing media paint Portland as ‘city under siege.’” Independent media have reported more accurately on the situation, including noting the $23 million in property damage that has been visited on the city since the demonstrations began on May 26th.

A federal officer in Portland was struck in the head and shoulder with a hammer after a man tried to use to the tool to break down a door to a federal courthouse, police said. Photo by Portland Police Bureau
It seems likely that the Portland protests will continue. The local elected officials, all Democrats, have been demanding that the federal government withdraw the troops sent in by the Department of Homeland Security to protect federal buildings that the police have been unable or unwilling to defend. Escalation of the situation, and its likely spread to other cities, is not out of the question – especially with top Democrats egging on the violent rioters.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), for example, tweeted this incendiary comment – which essentially pours more gasoline on the fire – on July 17:
Nancy Pelosi
@SpeakerPelosi
Unidentified stormtroopers. Unmarked cars. Kidnapping protesters and causing severe injuries in response to graffiti. These are not the actions of a democratic republic.
@DHSgov’s actions in Portland undermine its mission. Trump & his stormtroopers must be stopped.
Photo credit: Twitter
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications.  He also appears in the media, including recently as a guest analyst on BBC World News. Peter's website is http://peter.media.  For updates on his work, follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.





Portland Mayor Wheeler: Feds Scooping Protesters Off the Street ‘Completely Unconstitutional’

1:32


Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) called accusations federal police to remove protesters in his city “completely unconstitutional.”
Wheeler said, “The president has a complete misunderstanding of cause and effect. What’s happening here is we have dozens if not hundreds of federal troops descending upon our city. What they’re doing is they are sharply escalating the situation. Their presence here is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism. And it’s not helping the situation at all. They’re not wanted here. We haven’t asked them here. In fact, we want them to leave.”
Host Jake Tapper asked, “The ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration Friday night as did your state attorney general. She accused federal agents of a, quote, ‘escalation of fear in violence.’ Do you think the Trump administration is breaking the law in your city?”
Wheeler said, “I absolutely do. The tactics that the Trump administration is using on the streets of Portland are abhorrent. People are being literally scooped off the street into unmarked vans, rental cars, apparently. They are being denied probable cause. And they are denied due process. They don’t even know who’s pulling them into the vans. The people aren’t identifying themselves. And as far as I can see, this is completely unconstitutional.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN


Mayor of Portland to Trump: Get your troops out of the city



In this July 4, 2020, file photo, protesters gather near a fire in downtown Portland, Ore. Oregon's largest city is in crisis as violent protests have wracked downtown for weeks. The mayor can't bring the council along on cracking down because of very liberal council members and no matter what …

The mayor of Portland is demanding that President Donald Trump remove militarized federal agents he deployed to the city after some detained people on streets distant from federal property they were sent to protect
Mayor of Portland to Trump: Get your troops out of the cityBy ANDREW SELSKY and GILLIAN FLACCUSAssociated PressThe Associated PressPORTLAND, Ore.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The mayor of Portland demanded Friday that President Donald Trump remove militarized federal agents he deployed to the city after some detained people on streets far from federal property they were sent to protect.
“Keep your troops in your own buildings, or have them leave our city,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said at a news conference.
Democratic Gov. Kate Brown said Trump is looking for a confrontation in the hopes of winning political points elsewhere. It also serves as a distraction from the coronavirus pandemic, which is causing spiking numbers of infections in Oregon and the nation.
Brown’s spokesman, Charles Boyle, said Friday that arresting people without probable cause is “extraordinarily concerning and a violation of their civil liberties and constitutional rights.”
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said she would file a lawsuit in federal court against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Marshals Service, Customs and Border Protection and Federal Protection Service alleging they have violated the civil rights of Oregonians by detaining them without probable cause. She will also seek a temporary restraining order against them.
The ACLU of Oregon said the federal agents appear to be violating people’s rights, which “should concern everyone in the United States.”
“Usually when we see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone off the street we call it kidnapping,” said Jann Carson, interim executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon. “The actions of the militarized federal officers are flat-out unconstitutional and will not go unanswered.”
Federal officers have charged at least 13 people with crimes related to the protests so far, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported Thursday. Some have been detained by the federal courthouse, which has been the scene of protests. But others were grabbed blocks away.
“This is part of the core media strategy out of Trump’s White House: to use federal troops to bolster his sagging polling data,” Wheeler said. “And it is an absolute abuse of federal law enforcement officials.”
One video showed two people in helmets and green camouflage with “police” patches grabbing a person on the sidewalk, handcuffing them and taking them into an unmarked vehicle.
“Who are you?” someone asks the pair, who do not respond. At least some of the federal officers belong to the Department of Homeland Security.
Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that its agents had information indicating the person in the video was suspected of assaulting federal agents or destroying federal property.
“Once CBP agents approached the suspect, a large and violent mob moved towards their location. For everyone’s safety, CBP agents quickly moved the suspect to a safer location,” the agency said. However, the video shows no mob.
In another case, Mark Pettibone, 29, said a minivan rolled up to him around 2 a.m. Wednesday and four or five people got out “looking like they were deployed to a Middle Eastern war.”
Pettibone told The Associated Press he got to his knees as the group approached. They dragged him into the van without identifying themselves or responding to his questions and pulled his beanie over his eyes so he couldn’t see, he said.
“I figured I was just going to disappear for an indefinite amount of time,” Pettibone said.
Pettibone said he was put into a cell and officers dumped the contents of his backpack, with one remarking: “Oh, this is a bunch of nothing.”
After he asked for a lawyer, Pettibone was allowed to leave.
“Authoritarian governments, not democratic republics, send unmarked authorities after protesters,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a tweet.
U.S. Attorney Billy Williams in Portland said Friday he has requested the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General to investigate the actions of DHS personnel.
In a letter Friday, Oregon’s two senators and two of its House members demanded that U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf immediately withdraw “these federal paramilitary forces from our state.”
The members of Congress also said they’ll be asking the DHS inspector general and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the presence and actions of federal forces in Portland.
“It’s painfully clear this administration is focused purely on escalating violence without answering my repeated requests for why this expeditionary force is in Portland and under what constitutional authority,” Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden said.
On Thursday night, federal officers deployed tear gas and fired non-lethal rounds into a crowd of protesters.
Wolf visited Portland on Thursday and called the demonstrators, who are protesting racism and police brutality, “violent anarchists.”
Wolf blamed state and city authorities for not putting an end to the protests. But Portland police said Friday they wound up arresting 20 people overnight.
At least two protests occurred Thursday night, one near the federal courthouse and the other by a police station in another part of the city. Police told protesters to leave that site after announcing they heard some chanting about burning down the building. Protester Paul Frazier said Friday the chant was “much more rhetorical than an actual statement.”
Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell told reporters Friday that his officers are in contact with the federal agents, but that neither controls the others’ actions.
“We do communicate with federal officers for the purpose of situational awareness and deconfliction,” Lovell said. “We’re operating in a very, very close proximity to one another.”
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Oregon on Friday added the federal government to a lawsuit it filed earlier to halt the use of crowd control measures, including tear gas and rubber bullets, against journalists and legal observers at protests in Portland.
“The lawsuit is one of many the ACLU will be filing against federal authorities in Portland for their unconstitutional attacks on people protesting the police killing of George Floyd,” the group said.
Tensions have escalated in the past two weeks, particularly after an officer with the U.S. Marshals Service fired a less-lethal round at a protester’s head on July 11, critically injuring him.
The protests following the police killing of Floyd in Minneapolis have often devolved into violent clashes between smaller groups and the police.
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This version corrects that the governor did not say the deployment serves as a distraction, and that chanting about burning happened at police station, not federal courthouse.
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Selsky reported from Salem, Oregon. AP reporters Ben Fox in Washington and Jake Bleiberg in Dallas contributed.

Democrats Are Forcing a Civil War


Through Antifa and BLM, the Democrats are preparing for war.  The riots, looting, arson, and public beatings taking place every day are merely practice for the coming revolutionary conflagration.  They are war-gaming to see how best to seize control of the streets and intimidate citizens into ceding their right to vote for the candidate they support.
From the beginning, they forced the police to stand down.  The constant drumbeat for defunding the police has sent a message to LEOs everywhere: "Don't interfere" when the insurrection goes hot.
Knowing that the police can be constrained into allowing anarchy to reign, they then went after the National Guard and regular army, saying it would be un-American to deploy troops to quell the violence and restore law and order against "mostly peaceful" protesters exercising their First Amendment rights.
They appear to be having great success in controlling the narrative, but if they think this nation is going down without a fight, they have another "think" coming.
Americans believe that one can never be too rich, too thin, or too well armed.  And we are, indeed, well armed, with citizens who are beginning to see the game that is being played.  Many estimate that between 300 million and 700 million firearms are in the hands of the public.
If only 10% of those guns are brought to bear, it would mean a minimum of 30 million weapons deployed against Antifa and BLM.  No one wants to see bloodshed, especially gun-owners, who for the most part want to be left alone to protect their families, homes, places of worship, and places of employment.
Yet people are not going to stand by and watch America become another "socialist paradise."  Americans are going to fight back — this should worry the left, as every hunter is something of a sniper.
Leftists are pushing to see how far they can go before the people confront them.  The push for "change only they can believe in" is going to force this country in a series of bloody battles the left cannot win.
Before the economy-killing and unnecessary lockdowns, and the rioting, I would have said the civil war would happen after the election, no matter who won.  Yet, those on the left are not going to allow that grace.
Everything they are doing speaks to a political movement preparing to overthrow a nation.  They think this country is owed to them and they are determined to take it.
Having sidelined or neutered the National Guard and police, the facts on the ground today are Antifa and BLM rioting in most cases unopposed.  They will run rampant in the days and weeks preceding the election unless citizens stand up to them.  It is early, but it seems that more and more people have had enough of their terror tactics.
As far as the election is concerned, the police probably will be ordered to stand down, and the National Guard, if they are out at all, will be unarmed.  Democrats think voter intimidation will be easy. Why not use rioting, chaos, and anarchy to shut down the polls in areas suspected of supporting the president?  Remember the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia in 2008 — something like that, but more so.
Yet regular Americans vastly outnumber the forces of the left — they can terrorize the populace into submission only if normal people allow them to.
Part of their plan is to use the media to push the BLM message and social media to destroy anyone who does not go along.  The "fake history" 1619 Project, claims of systemic racism, the national monument defacements, the toppling of statues with no real coherence as to the reasons why — are all done to rewrite the history and force-sell the notion that all they do is justified because we are to blame.
It is all propaganda to convince citizens that they must acquiesce to the violence or be labeled a racist and be canceled, their jobs gone, and their lives ruined.  People are not even allowed to remain silent because "silence is violence."  If they can get people to apologize for their privilege, all the better.
It is all about getting people to be active participants in their machinations to install the "king of aphasia," Joe Biden, as the new president.
Once Americans accept their culpability, the left can begin the process of healing by abrogating the constitution on which our republic is based.  The violence they will use to make this so will be a "healing violence."  After all, one cannot make a revolution omelet without breaking some heads.
They think they can convince Americans to forgo the fight and accept what they will force upon us.  We must not allow them to succeed.  They must be confronted when they come for our country.  We must fight.
To date, the vast majority of Americans do not support the premise that America is unfair and must be changed.  In response, the Democrats, in conjunction with Antifa, the party's paramilitary arm; BLM, the ideological arm of the party; and the media, its propaganda arm, are planning outright rebellion.  What we are witnessing now from the Democrats is insurrection.  It is a revolution that will end in bloody civil war.  The left could not win total control of the nation at the ballot box, so leftists intend to take it.
They have miscalculated; what we are about to see in the streets of this country is going to make the violence and destruction of the riots seem mild by comparison.
But in the end, they lose, and we win...
Please follow the author on Twitter @williamlgensert.


Garbage- and graffiti-strewn Portland upchucks at offered federal help


Oregon's city of Portland is looking more like Caracas, Venezuela by the day, not just in its Marxist ideology, but in its moral rot and physical shambles.
John Hinderaker at Power Line noted a few days ago that he had until recently taken comfort in knowing that his home city of Minneapolis wasn't the worst-run city in America, because of Portland.
But now the blue-city shambles is taking another turn - Portland's leaders are openly screaming for federal law enforcement coming in to protect federal property, such as courthouses, to leave the burning garbage dump that is their city. They'd rather the city be left to fester.
Fox News has a very good report:

What a dump.
According to the Washington Post:
During a video news conference Friday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler twice called the federal police in his city President Trump’s “personal army” and said that he is joining a chorus of Oregon’s elected officials in sending a clear message to Washington: “Take your troops out of Portland.”
“This is part of a coordinated strategy out of Trump’s White House to use federal troops to bolster his sagging polling data, and it is an absolute abuse of federal law enforcement officials,” Wheeler said. “As we were starting to see things de-escalate, their actions last Saturday and every night since have actually ratcheted up the tension on our streets.”
There was also this leftist fool:
“I am proud to be among the loud chorus of elected officials calling for the federal troops in Portland’s streets to go home,” Portland Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty said in a statement shared with The Post on Sunday. “Their presence here has escalated tensions and put countless Portlanders exercising their First Amendment rights in greater danger.”
The governor of Oregon was just as bad:
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said President Donald Trump, who deployed Department of Homeland Security officers to Portland, "is looking for a confrontation in Oregon in the hopes of winning political points in Ohio or Iowa."
"Now he is deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland in a blatant abuse of power by the federal government," Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement late Thursday.
And here's more overwrought rhetoric from an under-brained Oregon senator:
“A peaceful protester in Portland was shot in the head by one of Donald Trump’s secret police,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote in a Thursday tweet that also called out acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf. “Now Trump and Chad Wolf are weaponizing the DHS as their own occupying army to provoke violence on the streets of my hometown because they think it plays well with right-wing media.”
According to federal officials, leftist anarchists were preparing to attack federal property, such as courthouses, had attempted to break and enter, and were last seen chanting of their plans to burn it down. If that doesn't suggest a situation that requires federal intervention -- to defend the threatened third branch of government with its courts and rule of law -- what does?
A federal official tweeted this:


Oregon's U.S. Attorney, a federal rather than state official, had this to say:
“The overarching goal of law enforcement is public protection and, during tense and dangerous situations, de-escalation. Federal law enforcement officers protecting the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse and other federal buildings have been operating with those two critical goals. Night after night for the past 50 nights, they have protected the federal courthouse from incursion and fire. They have rebuffed efforts to enter the building by force and have been met with an onslaught of commercial fireworks, laser strikes, glass, mortars, paint, and anything else near at hand. They have endeavored to find the individuals within the crowd who are committing these violent acts and arrest them in a manner that is safe for both the officers and nearby non-violent protesters. In limited instances, their conduct has been questioned and the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General appropriately opened an investigation into the use of less lethal ammunition directed at a [protester] last week."
What we are looking at here is an unprecedented opposition to any semblance of law and order. Worse still, we are seeing a city and state at odds with federal interests in the most basic of interests, protecting federal property.
We are seeing fantastical narratives from Oregon's mayor in particular, but pretty much all of them.
Start with the claim that the Portland violence had died down until the feds came along. The feds were causing the problems, not the rabid leftists. Baloney, Portland has been a leftist hellhole for months - just look at the evidence shown from the Fox News coverage. Widespread reports about people not being able to go out at nights and crime running rampant didn't suggest anything at all dying down, it suggested a festering problem growing and getting worse.
And, considering Wheeler's bizarre projecting, not a word about why there was violence and hellishness in the first place, a violence brought about by Wheeler's own weak leadership and more likely, kowtowing to the rabid mob. The mob had pretty much become his governing arm, either by choice or default. That ought to be grounds to demand he forfeit his office, given his hostility to all rule of law and failure to maintain the peace. We haven't really seen anything like this in the last 100 years. Perhaps the best analogy would be that some dispirited elements of the defeated Confederacy embraced the ways of the mob, unable to accept the results of the Civil War. They became Klansmen. Portland looks disturbingly similar in its defiance.
There was also the nonsense from several of them, claiming Trump was only cracking down on their hellhole city to please voters in Ohio and Iowa, to get his numbers up in the polls. Let's translate that: Instead of numbers up in the polls, how about 'doing things people like'? People like it when laws mean what they say and rule of law is a given in any American city. They like courthouses to be courthouses, and police to police, all things that are anathema to the freaks running Portland. Why would people support the president and reward him in the polls if his administration decided to protect federal, taxpayer-paid-for property? It's completely opaque to them that this would be popular - except of course among all those un-hip people in Iowa, as one of them said. By extension, they unwittingly signalled that they had been keeping their city a hellhole to keep President Trump's poll numbers down, which doesn't speak well for them.
Thirdly, there were the bizarre and Confederate-like howls to get out. They want the feds to abandon federal property to the Antifa mobs they succor. The howls should be treated with the contempt they deserve and the federal response should if anything be harsher. We all know what they really want out, not the feds, but President Trump, out from the White House. That's what explains the vehemence of their statements. They never really got over the 2016 election and now that they know they can't overturn it, they turn their own city into a dump and tell the President to get out that way.
It just serves as a new argument to re-elect Trump.