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SWAT borTac cbp

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i lost this til portland

SEE BOVINO

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AI Overview

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Gregory **Bovino, a high-ranking U.S. Border Patrol official and key figure in the BORTAC (Border Patrol Tactical Unit), announced his retirement in March 2026 amid controversies, lawsuits, and federal scrutiny over his tactics in leading immigration enforcement, including "Operation Metro Surge". Known for aggressive techniques, he was chastised by a judge for using chemical agents and, according to reports, providing false testimony.

Key Details on Greg Bovino:

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WIRED sifted through the identities of federal agents sent to Chicago in Donald Trump's "Operation Midway Blitz," and they've been able to identify some of them as a "heavily armed paramilitary unit."

"A WIRED analysis of DHS records identified dozens of specialized federal agents who used force against US civilians during the largest known deployment of its kind in U.S. history," the outlet reported Thursday.

The ongoing mass deportation efforts come from Trump's pledge to deport millions of people he claimed entered the U.S. in the four years between his administrations. He's come up against the problem, however, that there aren't millions of criminals for his agents to nab and deport one *Washington Post* report explained. The campaign has led to hostility and protests that took the lives of two Americans when federal agents opened fire on them.

One PBS/NPR/Marist poll in February showed two-thirds of Americans think Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CPB) have "gone too far."

Four of the men WIRED found are "members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC." It's a specialized federal law enforcement force based mainly at Fort Bliss. They've been sent out to at least 11 "detachments" around the U.S. The report described the agents as, at one time, being "reserved for desert rescues, executing high-risk warrants, conflicts with armed drug cartels and manhunts."

One of those unmasked was John Bockstanz, WIRED said. The Marine veteran is from Michigan, and also runs a company as a side hustle that sells "pre-workout supplements." Essentially, they're "testosterone supplements."

"Conquer each day with unparalleled potency," promises the “Alpha Testosterone Booster."

Bockstanz was in an SUV with "agent John Leslie from BORTAC’s Detroit detachment."

Another agent was identified as Javier Puente, who was in the U.S. Army. The body camera he wore showed him gripping a 40-mm grenade launcher while sitting in the back of an SUV. It wasn't used for grenades there, however, they used it to launch "less lethal" pepper-spray rounds into crowds, the report said.

While BORTAC is described as an elite unit, that isn't a sentiment embraced by others in the top forces.

One former Special Forces member was critical of BORTAC when speaking to WIRED.

“They go in real hot — in my opinion, too hot and too unruly,” the veteran said about his experience with the agents. They tend to be “ego-driven hotheads.” While they might be "highly trained," they have little or no actual war-fighting experience.

“Even then, they’re definitely not the people I’d want in any sort of civilian law enforcement context," he added.

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REF WIRED NO LNX

:{Apr 2, 2026

Unmasking the Paramilitary Agents Behind Trump’s Violent Immigration Crackdown

A WIRED analysis of DHS records identified dozens of specialized federal agents who used force against US civilians during the largest known deployment of its kind in US history.

Documents and body camera footage released by the Department of Homeland Security reveal the paramilitary agents who used force against civilians during Operation Midway Blitz.Composite: WIRED Staff; Source materials: Department of Homeland Security

In the early morning last September 30, hundreds of federal agents swarmed the South Shore Apartments, a beige brick building on Chicago’s South Side. As feds in body armor rappelled down from a Black Hawk helicopter overhead, others crashed through the building’s doors with battering rams, rounding up residents at gunpoint.

A group of burly, masked agents wearing helmets and bulletproof vests, and toting suppressor-equipped M4 rifles, moved through the hallways in a rapid, tightly organized file. Padraic Daniel Berlin, a 34-year-old Michigan native and son of a Detroit firefighter, held Yoda, his Belgian Malinois, on a leash. David Dubar Jr., a 53-year-old onetime construction worker, followed closely behind him. Their team leader, Corey Myers, a Marine veteran from the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, checked apartment doors. Paul Delgado Jr., a standout cross-country runner in high school, was the final member of the entry team.

The four men are members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC. Based mainly out of Fort Bliss, with at least 11 detachments stationed around the United States, BORTAC and its sister unit, Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue, or BORSTAR, were once reserved for desert rescues, executing high-risk warrants, conflicts with armed drug cartels, and manhunts.

Under Donald Trump, however, they have been sent into the streets of major US cities. The result is the largest known deployment of BORTAC and BORSTAR agents in US history, a fact made difficult to pin down due to the government's secrecy around their operations. Many of the agents’ identities have remained hidden from the public. The decision to use offensive, heavily armed paramilitary units for street-level immigration sweeps in American cities is a first—a bellwether of the Trump administration’s project to militarize domestic law enforcement operations.

Myers, Berlin, Dubar, Delgado, and their teammates seemed keyed up. The intelligence briefing they received claimed the building was controlled by Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang the Trump administration categorized—despite contrary evidence amassed by its own intelligence services—as a foreign terrorist organization. Gang members were supposedly occupying the building and storing grenades, handguns, and rifles on the second floor, where a suspect with an open warrant for firearms possession lived. This intelligence was never released or substantiated, and Illinois later launched an investigation into whether the property owner had sent baseless claims to the feds. But at that moment, it didn’t matter.

At every door approached by his team, Berlin yelled, “Police! Speak to me now or I’ll send the dog!” In a second-floor unit, the BORTAC team detained one man. Further down the hall, Myers noticed “signs of forced entry” and smashed open the door. Tolulope Akinsulie, an undocumented immigrant from Nigeria, happened to be hiding in the bedroom. Without issuing a warning or verbal command, Berlin let go of Yoda’s leash and the Malinois pounced, sinking its teeth into Akinsulie’s leg as he screamed in agony. Yoda bit Akinsulie repeatedly in the leg, hip, and hands before Berlin called the dog off and his team placed the man in cuffs. Akinsulie, who was not a target of the raid and has no known history of violent crime or gang affiliation, was treated for his injuries and taken to the Broadview Processing Center to face removal proceedings.

Berlin’s actions that morning were not isolated. He was involved in at least five uses of force during Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump administration’s 2025 surge of hundreds of immigration agents into Chicago and surrounding communities. Nor were the actions of his team, according to a WIRED analysis of US government records, which appeared to escalate tensions with civilian onlookers rather than quell them. Since last year, BORTAC and BORSTAR have fronted several of the US government’s invasions of its own cities, often engaging in almost theatrical uses of force that litter newscasts and social feeds, adding a new salience to US Border Patrol Special Operations Group’s self-proclaimed status as the “tip of the spear.”

The agents sent to Chicago—and Los Angeles, North Carolina, Boston, Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Sacramento—come from a secretive, tightly knit world. Their names, many of which are available in a narrow set of court records and reported here for the first time, are typically excluded from official documents and shielded from public records requests. In the streets of American cities, they are usually masked, identified only by “call signs” that are sometimes visible on their uniforms and mean nothing to people demanding badge numbers.

One BORTAC agent is married to a TV news anchor who reports on the Border Patrol. Another, who also engaged in a gun battle with a school shooter in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, has posted frequently in an online gun forum with thread titles like “Whipping Haitians.” Many are military veterans, some of whom saw combat during the Forever Wars. Several have histories of domestic violence or sexual assault. Others are former cops who joined the Border Patrol after questionable uses of force. BORTAC and BORSTAR agents are not police—they are paramilitaries who operate by a different standard and with different rules of engagement, trained and suited not for law enforcement but for war.

A WIRED review of over 78 incident reports from Operation Midway Blitz found that BORTAC and BORSTAR agents were, as a group, the most violent of the hundreds of federal agents deployed to Chicago. In these documents, CBP employees recorded over 144 discrete uses of force by CBP personnel from September through early November. Sixty-two BORTAC and BORSTAR personnel were involved in these incidents over an eight-week period. Of that group, 25 were involved in two or more incidents, and 16 more used force at least once during this period. Of the 234 federal law enforcement personnel WIRED identified in these reports, BORTAC and BORSTAR agents represent almost a quarter of all personnel involved in documented confrontations with civilians during Operation Midway Blitz

Hennepin County attorney Mary Moriarty is actively investigating 17 separate incidents involving federal agents for potential criminal conduct. At least two of those incidents—the January 21 gassing of a crowd in South Minneapolis and a chaotic enforcement action outside Roosevelt High School—involve BORTAC personnel, per videos and photographs taken on scene.

The Department of Homeland Security has kept data and documents about the federal immigration deployments closely guarded, disclosing records only in response to litigation. US senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina has been wrestling with DHS over data regarding last fall’s Operation Charlotte’s Web in his state. Tillis requested records on stops, detentions, questioning, searches, releases, uses of force, and property damage incidents, as well as the total number of detentions and a tally of all encounters with American citizens.

During Operation Midway Blitz, incidents beyond the South Shore Apartment raids included the gassing of an affluent Northside Chicago neighborhood right before a children’s Halloween parade, a chaotic car chase on the city’s South Side, and clashes with protesters outside the Broadview immigration detention facility.

BORTAC’s and BORSTAR’s uses of force in Chicago included punching and kicking protesters, throwing tear gas, macing civilians, firing pepperballs and 40-mm foam rounds into crowds, shocking people with tasers, unleashing dogs on deportation targets, and shooting unarmed civilians, killing at least one of them. This violence tracks with a loosening of the Border Patrol’s use-of-force guidelines following Gregory Bovino’s directives, as reported by the American Prospect.

“I think if we push this whole fucking block back, that ought to teach ’em a lesson,” says Bovino on an agent's body camera recording from September 27, during clashes with demonstrators at Chicago’s Broadview detention facility. “And if it doesn't, we arrest.” Bovino, the now-retired face of Trump’s immigration surges throughout 2025 and early 2026, is a longtime BORTAC member who led dozens of these agents on incursions into Southern California, Chicago, and Minneapolis, putting them front and center at some of the most high-profile clashes between immigration enforcement and the public during the past nine months.

Other body camera footage from nearly a month later captured one BORTAC agent, Edgar Vazquez, telling his colleagues that he planned to refuse Bovino’s directives. “The chief wanted us to throw gas, and I was like, we can’t!” said Vazquez. “Nah, I’m not gonna fucking do it—I’m gonna stay within policy.”

“It’s clear the administration likes the optics of BORTAC—the long guns, the camouflage, the body armor. They certainly did for Trump’s first go-round,” says John Sandweg, who was director of ICE from 2013 to 2014. However, he says, the unit is not generally familiar with urban policing, and its record in Chicago demonstrates the poor fit of borderland tactics for densely packed cities. “It’s malpractice to have paramilitary teams try to impose order by force,” he says.

In a response to WIRED’s requests for comment, CBP cited the threat of “doxing” and refused to confirm employment of the Border Patrol agents identified in the government’s own records. CBP personnel are “trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and themselves,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement.

CBP also declined to comment on whether any of the use-of-force incidents from Operation Midway Blitz are the subject of internal investigations, stating that the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility handles all such probes before submitting them to CBP’s Use of Force Review Boards.

The documents, body camera footage, and other material WIRED used to identify more than 60 BORTAC and BORSTAR operators were pried loose during litigation against DHS over alleged First Amendment violations, unconstitutional arrests, and grievous uses of force during Operation Midway Blitz, including the killing of Silverio Villegas González and nonfatal shooting of Marimar Martinez by ICE and Border Patrol agents, respectively.

No BORTAC or BORSTAR agent named in this story responded to WIRED’s request for comment.

In Illinois, civil rights attorneys and civic organizations are pressuring the Cook County state’s attorney to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and potentially prosecute ICE, CBP, and Border Patrol agents for uses of force and wrongful arrests during Operation Midway Blitz.

To date, no Border Patrol, CBP, or ICE agent has faced criminal charges for their conduct during the operation in Chicago.

The full force of the paramilitary surge into American cities was on open display the morning of October 25, 2025, when a convoy of BORTAC and other Border Patrol agents swept through the tranquil North Side Chicago neighborhood of Irving Park, trailed by whistle-blowing “ICE watchers” in cars and on bicycles.

Shortly before 10 am, a gray Suburban with BORTAC agents Andy Chavez and Tee Rico riding in the back seat cruised through Irving Park’s tree-lined streets. A black Wagoneer filled with Border Patrol agents followed closely behind, carrying BORTAC agent Javier Puente, an Army veteran, in the rear seat. All the agents wore masks and camouflage tactical gear, with pistols at their hips and M4-pattern rifles near at hand. Puente’s body camera video shows him gripping a 40-mm grenade launcher intended to fire pepper-spray-loaded “less lethal” rounds.

On the sidewalks around them, Irving Park residents gathered for the community’s Halloween parade. Before the hour was up, chaos would erupt in the residential neighborhood.

Chavez and Rico spotted a Latino man running from their convoy, leaped out of their vehicle, and tackled the man on the front lawn of a white townhouse. The home’s owner, Brian Kolp, an attorney and onetime Cook County state’s attorney who used to represent Chicago police officers in civil litigation, stormed out of his house, barefoot, screaming at the feds to get off his property and take their masks off.

“This has nothing to do with enforcing the law, and everything to do with intimidating citizens with military tactics,” Kolp tells WIRED of the incident.

Other residents and members of ICE-watch groups joined in, blowing whistles, cursing out the agents, and recording the incident on their phones. As the Border Patrol convoy attempted to leave the scene, enraged onlookers—at least one still wearing a bathrobe—moved to block their path.

As the crowd grew more hostile, agents ramped up their uses of force. Michael Brosilow—a photographer, Irving Park resident, and decorated long-distance runner—pulled into his neighborhood after returning from a training session. Rico and Chavez confronted the 68-year-old man, who yelled, “Fuck you!” as he stepped out of his silver Toyota. Rico then tackled Brosilow, planted his knee in his back, and handcuffed him. “This is my block!” Brosilow screamed. Six of Brosilow’s ribs were broken in the encounter, and he suffered internal bleeding.

Chavez pulled the pin on a can of tear gas and tossed it into the street as bystanders screamed. Puerte, meanwhile, spotted 25-year-old ICE watcher Maria Bryan allegedly hit Rico in the head and slammed her and her bicycle to the ground, fracturing seven of her ribs.

The agents eventually loaded into the vehicle, drove off, and radioed in that they had arrested two US citizens for “impeding” and “assault.” (Neither Brosilow nor Bryan were charged.)

As the agents moved out of Irving Park, the horns of trailing cars and whistles from ICE watchers were clearly audible. When the SUV stopped at a red light, two men on the sidewalk stepped up to remonstrate with the feds.

Puente photographed one with his iPhone, then rolled down his window and pointed his grenade launcher at a second man.

“Get the fuck out of the way!” he yelled, aiming his muzzle at the civilian as the vehicle pulled away. “Fuck you!”

Created in 1984 to deal with riots in immigration detention camps, BORTAC has been sent to South America for narcotics interdiction missions alongside the Drug Enforcement Administration; conducted missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Jordan; and, in the recent past, raided desert aid stations. While BORTAC is designed for close combat, BORSTAR, which was created in 1998 in response to a rise in migrant deaths on the southern border, specializes in open-country operations. Members of both teams undergo Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training, are taught complex military surveillance and countersurveillance tactics, and tend to be recruited from specialized military units like the Army Rangers.

“They go in real hot—in my opinion, too hot and too unruly,” says a former Special Forces member, speaking on condition of anonymity. This veteran says that in his experience, BORTAC members tend to be “ego-driven hotheads” who are highly trained but have little or no operational war-fighting experience. “Even then, they’re definitely not the people I’d want in any sort of civilian law enforcement context.”

Beginning in February 2020, the first Trump administration sent BORTAC into Democrat-run “sanctuary cities” for civil immigration enforcement, a surge that was short-circuited by the Covid-19 pandemic. Later that summer, BORTAC agents were documented snatching protesters off the streets of Portland, Oregon, during the George Floyd protests.

Since the start of the second Trump administration, BORTAC and BORSTAR agents have participated in immigration blitzes in California, North Carolina, Minnesota, and Vermont. Since October, the Border Patrol’s paramilitary units, led by Timothy P. Sullivan, the head of the Fort Bliss–based Border Patrol’s Special Operations Group, have also commanded the federal presence at an ICE facility in Portland, Oregon, that has been a constant target of protests, often resulting in violent clashes. More recently, in mid-March, agents from one of the Border Patrol’s local Special Operations detachments used crowd control munitions on protesters in South Burlington, Vermont, during a chaotic immigration arrest.

Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies who has studied police militarization and paramilitary units for decades, says that BORTAC’s presence in Chicago was a textbook case of authoritarian overreach. “Why are they enforcing civil immigration violations with paramilitary teams?” Kraska says. “Armored personnel carriers, hostage rescue tactics, Special Forces–grade weapons, SEAL-style tactics—why do you need all that for civil violations?”

A week and a half before the Irving Park incident, another event between Border Patrol agents and a Latino couple shows how quickly Border Patrol agents escalated to tear-gassing dozens of civilians and Chicago police officers.

On October 14, Border Patrol agents were involved in a car chase and a collision with a Latino couple. One of the agents involved in the crash, Carlos Chavira Jr., radioed for help, and several BORTAC agents drove to the scene.

One of the SUVs that arrived was driven by John Bockstanz, a Michigan resident and former Marine who runs a company that sells pre-workout supplements on the side—“Conquer each day with unparalleled potency,” promises the “Alpha Testosterone Booster.” With him was agent John Leslie from BORTAC’s Detroit detachment.

The other agents who answered Chavira’s call for help were Derek Volmering, a 39-year-old Michigan native, BORTAC supervisor, and onetime Buffalo Bills linebacker prospect; Paul Beaulieu, a New England native assigned to the Border Patrol’s rough-country search and rescue team; Edgar Vazquez, a 39-year-old firearms instructor from BORTAC who joined the Border Patrol in 2007; Padraic Daniel Berlin, who sicced his dog on a Nigerian immigrant during the South Side apartment raid two weeks earlier; David Dubar Jr., the BORTAC Michigan agent who’d also been on the South Side Apartments entry team, and supervisory agent Warren Becker from the Del Rio BORTAC detachment, who exchanged gunfire with the Uvalde school shooter in 2022 after the gunman executed 19 children.

The crew met a furious and growing civilian crowd. Television news crews arrived on the sidewalks. A CBP helicopter circled overhead. “It’s gonna be a nightmare getting out of here,” Volmering grumbled.

“Yeah, we’re probably going to get stuff thrown at us,” Bockstanz replied.

They immediately began positioning themselves around the scene. Two combat veterans, who reviewed incident body-camera footage for WIRED, said the agents moved in the same way that active-duty troops would to protect and extract a disabled vehicle from a hostile crowd in a war zone.

Tensions between the agents and the crowd escalated as someone threw an egg into the mass of feds, and agents tackled one of the onlookers to the ground in response. By then, Border Patrol agents had already donned gas masks and retrieved gas canisters from their vehicles in preparation for their exit.

Bockstanz heard an object strike one of the CBP vehicles and walked over to Volmering, who was speaking to a group of Chicago police commanders. “Hey, they’re starting to throw rocks,” Bockstanz said, his voice muffled by his gas mask. “I’m gonna have to deploy gas,” he told CPD deputy chief Dan O’Connor, who appeared to object. “We gotta worry about ourselves.”

“Well, give us a minute to talk to ’em and let’s go get you guys out of here,” O’Connor replied.

Bockstanz and Volmering ignored him. As projectiles sailed overhead and struck their cars, Bockstanz took a step forward, pulled the pin on a can of tear gas, and skipped it along the pavement towards the crowd without a warning, right through a line of unmasked Chicago cops.

Bockstanz waved to a Border Patrol SUV to leave and tossed another can of gas as the first one was thrown back, yelling, “Get the fuck out of here” at his colleagues. At the skirmish line, Dubar tossed his canisters into the crowd. Demonstrators began throwing and kicking gas canisters back toward the feds, prompting Vazquez, who had previously been involved in clashes with the public in Southern California and would later use less-lethal weapons on civilians in Minneapolis, to fire a round of tear gas at the fleeing crowd before the agents sped away.

More than a dozen cops and an unknown number of residents were sickened by the tear gas, with three American citizens arrested for “assaulting” federal agents, in addition to the two “deportable” people detained. No criminal charges were filed.

The operation tapered down by mid-November amid a national backlash and a series of adverse legal rulings that restricted the feds’ ability to use less-lethal and crowd-control munitions on civilians. While a key court decision was later overturned, the judge said in her opinion that Border Patrol, ICE, and CBP used force without clear warnings, failed to wear marking insignia, and failed to justify uses of force.

At least 3,800 people were arrested during Operation Midway Blitz as of late last year. More than 2,500 have been deported, and more than a hundred may have been illegally removed from the United States. None of the dozens of people whom BORTAC and BORSTAR agents arrested for alleged assaults or other crimes against them appear to have been convicted.

Six of the BORTAC agents involved in Operation Midway Blitz—Michael Sveum, Dubar, Vazquez, Delgado Jr., Belen Lleras, and Chavez—were involved in immigration enforcement operations in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Charlotte, Boston, and other cities. Vazquez and Sveum used force on angry Minnesotans in the immediate aftermath of Renee Good’s killing, per reporting by Chicago outlet Unraveled. It does not appear that they have faced any internal discipline or criminal charges.

For Brian Kolp, the Chicago lawyer whose Irving Park street was shaken by the October 25 BORTAC raid, the incident had a “radicalizing effect” on him. He still seethes with rage about the masked Border Patrol agents, and has been working overtime to research legal strategies that would hold the feds accountable for brutalizing his neighbors and terrifying their children.

“I’m never gonna be satisfied,” Kolp says, “until there’s some kind of accountability and justice for what happened on my street.”

Additional reporting by Tim Marchman, Matt Giles, Samantha Spengler, and Andrew Couts.

Ali Winston is an independent reporter covering criminal justice, privacy, and extremism. He has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York magazine and has reported documentaries for BBC Panorama and PBS Frontline. His work has earned several honors, including a George Polk Award for Local Reporting, an ... Read More

Contributor

Maddy Varner is a senior reporter for WIRED. In the past, she was an investigative data journalist at The Markup, where she brought numbers to stories about labor, education and politics. Before The Markup, she was a researcher at ProPublica, where she was on a team that won a Loeb ... Read More

Senior Writer, Investigations

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see BORTAC

Operation Whistle Pig

In 2017, Jeffrey Rambo, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent working for the National Targeting Center, investigated Watkins, other journalists including Martha Mendoza, and NGOs while on an assignment to combat forced labor in the Congo. The operation was called "Whistle Pig" and in addition to its own database trawling[46] it got the CBP’s Counter Network Division to provide information about Watkins' mother and brother and links to their public profiles, as well as details of Watkin's domestic and international travel. Rambo met Watkins under the fictitious name Jack Bentley, but Watkins obtained his real name from a credit card receipt. Watkins perceived Rambo's approach as a threat.[47]

In 2021, Watkins said: “I’m deeply troubled at the lengths CBP and DHS personnel apparently went to try and identify journalistic sources and dig into my personal life.”[48] A few days later, CBP launched an investigation.[49]

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The National Targeting Center (NTC) is a division of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It is based in Sterling, Virginia.[1] The NTC observes air traffic and trade activities,[2] gathers and vets intelligence, and is empowered to send e-mails requesting that U.S. citizens be detained and questioned.[3]

The National Targeting Center includes several divisions, including: NTC-Cargo, NTC-Passenger, Counter-Network, and National Targeting Center – Investigations (NTC-I). The latter was established in 2013.[4]

The NTC was initially established in 2001; its original name was Office of Border Security.[5]

In 2017, the NTC approached journalists "as part of a broader effort to get reporters to write about forced labor around the world as a national security issue." The journalists included Ali Watkins and Martha Mendoza.[6]

In 2021, CBP launched an investigation of the NTC's targeting of journalists, members of Congress, and others.[7]

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c de v

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/expert-on-the-radical-right-warns-that-vigilantes-are-preparing-to-launch-a-coup}:

in the Age of Trump, Portland, Oregon, is no longer just another city. Now it is a symbol and almost a Rorschach test for the country’s deep and explosive political divides.

For Trumpists, Republicans and members of the far right, Portland is all that is wrong with “the Left” and “Liberals,” a chaotic nightmare zone where Black Lives Matter, antifa and other“enemies”are running amok while they attack “patriotism” and “real American values.”

To TrumpWorld, Portland and other Democratic-led big cities (which of course is virtually all of them) are hives of scum and villainy, overrun by criminals and “rioters,” which must be conquered by Trump’s enforcersand armed vigilante supporters.

Trump’s “law and order” politics, and its inherent racism and violence, are believed by many to be his path back to the White House. In this view, Portland and other “Democrat cities” and communities are targets of opportunity for the Trump regime.

writing at Washington Monthly, David Atkins explains Trump’s mindset:

He sees the violence as politically beneficial, a useful cudgel against Democratic nominee Joe Biden — even though the violence is happening while Trump himself is president, not Biden.

Trump’s election theme is that Americans won’t be safe in a Biden presidency. The opposite is true. Americans won’t be safe as long as a white supremacist president is leading a movement of bigots to incite a civil war, and attempting to ensure that the majority of Americans with cosmopolitan, egalitarian values remain politically disenfranchised and under the thumb of those who fear and despise them.

Trump’s campaign of racial authoritarianism and stochastic terrorism, as well as overt threats of “law and order,” resulted in a group of his supporters driving into Portland last weekend, armed with mace and paintball guns, to seek out confrontations with Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist protesters. During one such encounter, a member of the right-wing militia group Patriot Prayer, Aaron Danielson,was shot and killed. On Thursday night, the apparent shooter,Michael Reinoehl, was himself shot and killed by U.S. marshals in Olympia, Washington.

Despite this lamentable violence — for which Trump and the right must bear ultimate responsibility — for progressives and other people of conscience Portland is a symbol of resistance and hope. As part of the nationwide people’s uprising sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, protesters have been outside the Portland federal courthouse for more than 100 days.

The protests were largely peaceful until Trump and acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf deployed federal police forces to the city in July. Their presence, as designed, escalated the tension and led to increasing levels of property damage and incidents of violence.

Previewing Trump’s plan for other parts of the nation, these federal shock troops made journalists and reporters a special focus of their violence. They also kidnapped protesters and other “enemies” of Donald Trump’s regime off the street as though they were operating in a banana republic.

Much of the mainstream American news media’s coverage of the recent events in Portland lacks meaningful context. Writing at Medium, a Portland press collective describes one such example of this “parachute journalism”:

One night last week, during one of the smaller demonstrations, a tall white man in a clean ballistic helmet and brand-new plate carrier emblazoned with “PRESS” strolled through the crowd in front of the Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland, Oregon. He stopped by a gaggle of other journalists, most out-of-towners. “I’ve only been around for the last week,” he said, “but the protests in Portland feel a lot more performative than the ones I’ve seen in other cities. Less genuine.” A local journalist mentioned having been present for over 50 nights of the protests, starting in early June. “Yeah, I can only speak for what I’ve seen this week,” said Clean Helmet. “I’m flying back to DC tomorrow.” … Clean Helmet was on the ground in Portland, by his own description, for less than a week. This means that he was present for approximately 1/10th of Portland’s BLM protests, thus far. I’m sure he got some great footage.

The Parachutes (as we have come to know them) come with money, and zero community connections. Their goal is the clip that can make the nightly news. They want a story that will dominate the news cycle. They do not know what is happening in Portland, and they do not care. They are coming to a city with a vibrant, scrappy community of street-level journalists. By and large, they do not want the context that those journalists can provide. And soon they will come to a city near you. When the Feds and the Parachutes come to your town, you’ll want everyone to understand the context there, too. And they are coming. Clean Helmet is already back in DC, and on to the next assignment.

The important context which “the Parachutes” usually omit includes the way Portland is depicted as a liberal oasis in America’s popular imagination. In reality, Portland is a very race and class-segregated city. As historian and activist Walidah Imarisha and others have richly documented, the Oregon territory passed laws in 1844 explicitly excluding Black people from the region under punishment of whippings and other violence. The state of Oregon formally included white supremacy in its constitution, explicitly banning nonwhites.

To this day, Oregon remains a redoubt of white supremacy, where white supremacists and other right-wing extremists have a large presence in the state and surrounding region. Portland itself has a long and ongoing history of right-wing violence.

Alexander Reid Ross is a doctoral fellow at the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. His most recent book is “Against the Fascist Creep.” Ross has also completed new research which documents more than 500 incidents in which white vigilantes and other right-wing extremists have confronted Black Lives Matter protests. This includes hundreds of acts of intimidation and other threats as well as dozens of examples in which right-wing extremists have assaulted or attacked Black Lives Matter protesters.

In this conversation Ross shares his firsthand experiences with the recent George Floyd protests in Portland. He also provides some context for those events and the police and federal response. Ross also details the long history of right-wing paramilitaries and political street gangs in Portland and their relationship with local police and other law enforcement.

Reid warns that Portland, the right-wing vigilante killings in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the hundreds of other attacks by right-wing extremists on Black Lives Matter protesters is just a preview of the massive violence that Donald Trump and his movement may unleash before and after Election Day — perhaps including the arrest or imprisonment of prominent Democrats, journalists, and others deemed to be enemies of the state.

Q: After almost four years of Trump and his regime’s authoritarian, neofascist behavior, some voices in the mainstream American news media now use that correct and appropriate language to describe the reality of the situation. Why was there so much fear and denial about the obvious? Even when they use the correct terminology, the coverage is largely superficial and avoids serious discussion of the dire implications.

You must also take into account that many so-called left-leaning voices have also been interfering with bringing that truth to light. There were writers at the Guardian, for example, who were trying to sound the alarm about the dangers of right-wing extremism and fascism in America, but they were derided by their peers across the political spectrum.

I also believe that publications such as the Washington Post and the New York Times saw themselves as being aloof from questions of the mob and political violence in America. There is a tendency among elite voices to want to say that, “We’re above political violence here in America and we resolve our differences through conversation. Therefore, let’s give everyone a hearing and let’s debate these issues, regardless of how extreme they may be. That is what a democratic country should act like.”

In a sense, they put their faith completely in some abstract idea of “democracy” instead of taking the temperature of what is really happening on the ground.

You live in Portland. How is your experience different from the narrative being offered by the mainstream American news media and other outside observers?

We in Portland have been dealing with right-wing extremists and police abuse for a long time. Portland has experience with the likes of right-wing extremist groups such as Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys. This is not new to us.

I would go out to protests and see how the political violence is not a result of the breakdown in the monopoly of violence held by the police. The political violence was a result of the Proud Boys and the police effectively acting as two different elements of the same side. It wasn’t that the police had lost the monopoly of violence. It was the police were shooting us in order to allow the Proud Boys to march through the city without proper permits.

Most mainstream news media coverage of the protests which have taken place here in Portland, recently and before, totally fail to acknowledge or even fathom the police involvement in the rise of the far right in this community. That failure has cascaded to the point that we are now at a point where the press is painting the current crisis as some type of grudge match between the feds and the anarchists. In fact, the protest movement is a very diverse group of people — especially by Portland standards — who are coming out night after night and making extraordinarily clear demands and being absolutely brutalized in the streets every night.

What too many reporters in many cases are trying to do is figure out how to resolve the situation, rather than understanding it and properly explaining to the public what is really happening and the context for it.  By doing so, too many reporters are creating false equivalencies regarding the various forces at play here in Portland.

What does Portland exemplify, in terms of the protests and the Trump’s regime’s reaction?

It is an example of Donald Trump attempting to rise to the level of a right-wing political strongman. Donald Trump is using classic authoritarian tactics that one does not often see in a healthy democracy. Donald Trump is deliberately undermining the Constitution by using federal law to circumvent local governments’ control over their police forces.

Trump and William Barr’s de facto secret police are literally disappearing people off the streets of Portland and in other parts of the country where the Democratic Party is in power. How do you explain what is happening to people who do not live in those communities? Who are not being targeted by Trump and his henchmen?

The specific federal forces involved are BORTAC — the Border PatrolTactical Unit — and the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Groupand others, under the coordination of the Department of Homeland Security. BORTAC have been in Portland shooting at people and launching tear gas. BORTAC is not trained for crowd or riot control. They are trained to engage in raids against migrants and to separate children from their mothers. That is what BORTAC does. They pride themselves on being the most militarized branch and group of the U.S. law enforcement community. BORTAC members are extreme Trump supporters.What is happening in Portland and other parts of the country is the border closing in on the citizens of the United States.

BORTAC is loyal to Donald Trump and that’s why he is using them. He’s not using them because they’re the most skilled and adept at riot and crowd control management. That also explains why there are so many incidents of people being shot in the face and otherwise abused here in Portland and other places where BORTAC and other such forces are being deployed by the Trump administration.They don’t know what they’re doing at all.

BORTAC is being used because Trump feels that they are his most loyal forces. That is fully in keeping with the tactics of authoritarian leaders who cultivate secret police whose main function is to serve as the government leader’s private force, one that operates outside of any restraints such as internal review.

The [former] Chilean dictatorship is explicitly supported by Trump’s own supporters, who wear T-shirts that say, “Right-wing death squad” and “Pinochet did nothing wrong.”The American mainstream news media is far too charitable with its narrative that “Trump is playing to his base.”

During the recent protests in Portland, were there moments where you feared that the federal forces were going to start shooting the crowd with lethal rounds?

The fear is very real and it’s constant. The federal forces have assault rifles. They are loaded with live rounds. There are protesters who were throwing fireworks and things of that sort at the courthouse. What if one of the feds has an itchy trigger finger? What if a firework explodes and they then open fire on an entire group of unarmed people?

Trump and their defenders and other apologists will just say, “Well, these poor agents have been overworked for 60 days and look at all the things that have been thrown at them” and so on and so forth. We know what the narrative will be. All a person can do when protesting is to act accordingly and stay focused.

You have been documenting what are now almost 500 attacks, acts of intimidation, vehicular assaults, shootings and other threats by Trump supporters and other members of the right against Black Lives Matter protests. What do we know?

I have never seen this amount of anti-left vigilantism from the right. During the first year of Barack Obama’s administration, the Tea Party was huge, and they mobilized with events all over the country. There were also armed protests in opposition to Obamacare. But those right-wing protesters were not coming out to confront and intimidate a much smaller group of anti-racists. Of course, those anti-Obama Tea Party and anti-health-care type protesters were extremely racist and a breath away from being fascists, but there was not that same energy and menace that we are seeing today.

The idea of these right-wing protesters and militia types being “anti-government” — again, a narrative circulated by the mainstream American news media — is very uncritical, a total misnomer. They are really pro-government. They are entirely in favor of the United States government as controlled by Donald Trump. Their claim to be “libertarians” is a joke.

Those right-wing militias and others sympathetic to them are arming in opposition to Democrats, liberals and progressives.

Right-wing extremists and other terrorists, including white supremacists and neo-Nazis, are also coordinating at times with the police.

They actually say that they are at the protests to “protect the police.” Think about that claim: They are “anti-government” vigilantes who promise that they are trying to protect the police. In essence, these right-wing militias and the like are American citizens who believe it is their role not to become police, but to guard the police. Such a claim is ludicrous. It is a paramilitary force. These right-wing forces are coordinating and positioning themselves to be able to launch a coup against American democracy and the Democratic Party, if the latter gains control of the presidency and government.

The closest parallel with what we are seeing with Trump’s movement would be the “massive resistance” by white people against racial integration in the South during the civil rights movement. I am of the opinion that the United States has not seen such a mobilization of violent, far-right forces to this extent since the 1960s.

Recently, a Trumpist and right-wing militia supporter traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin and involved himself in the protests there. He apparently shot three people, killing two of them. He crossed state lines illegally with a weapon he was not allowed to own. He was only a teenager, and was radicalized online into right-wing extremism. He is now being valorized by the right-wing media machine. Trump has defended this young man as a hero who was fighting against “criminals” and “looters.” This apparent killer now has hundreds of thousands of dollars pledged to his defense.

Trump has defended Kyle Rittenhouse with the claim he was firing in “self-defense.” In essence, Donald Trump supports the right-wing vigilante movement, which represents the disintegration of the rule of law.

We are witnessing an erosion of democratic norms in this country by Republicans. They accept breaking the law as being viable if it supports “traditional values” — meaning racism. As a practical matter, Donald Trump is spearheading the movement of the Republican Party into a full-on violent racist organization that encourages vigilantism.

In terms of engaging in the worst type of “both-sides-ism” and false equivalencies that helped Trump win and now keep power, the American mainstream news media is now advancing a “mutual combat” narrative in its coverage of Trump’s supporters and the violence in Portland last weekend. How does that narrative contradict what really happened in Portland?

The “mutual combat” framing is inane, legally a non-starter, and obviously supportive of the aggressive party, which is typically the Trump supporters. Their strategy is to provoke fights and then call for “law and order” intervention from a corrupt president.

Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibsonhas not been leading protests in Portland for a long time. He is a marginal figure, but the American news media has suddenly selected him and lifted him up for no apparent reason other than that he participated in an aggressive and bellicose Trump “caravan” last week during which right-wing vigilantes tried to run people over with their trucks, shot protesters and bystanders with paintball guns, and used pepper spray to attack people.

Should Black Lives Matter, antifascist and other human rights and social justice supporters stop protesting in order to deny Trump’s supporters and other right-wing hooligans a narrative that could hurt Joe Biden nd the the Democrats? In essence, should they make a tactical withdrawal to deny Trump a strategic victory, because of how events will likely be distorted by the media to his advantage?

I will not say what protesters should or shouldn’t do. I do not think what they choose to do or not do will matter much. What is significant is that the far right will deepen its insurgency against the left the more that Donald Trump falters and as he continues demanding “law and order.”

The left would be remiss to engage them on this level. The left is not in the streets to spark a civil war or escalate violent encounters to the point of breaking civil society into protracted sectarian warfare. The left is in the streets to make life better for ordinary people, and to present a version of the future that would be better and more prosperous for everyone. The more the left maintains its sanity against overwhelming odds, the more the right’s paranoia and hysteria will marginalize it in American society. This will create new spaces for progressive causes and movements.

What do you want to warn the American people about? What do you think happens next?

I am worried about crackdowns by Donald Trump and his forces against their direct enemies. This would involve dragging Democrats in front of kangaroo courts and starting to criminalize dissent such that the average American who has a bumper sticker or other affiliation with the Democratic Party or liberal or progressive causes becomes a target for Trump’s zealots. I worry that Trump will find some way to round up the leaders of the Democratic Party and put them in jail or execute them.

That is the future that right-wing conspiracists such as the QAnon people want. They are the crowd that Donald Trump is signaling to. I do not believe that there is much stopping Donald Trump from following through on his extreme impulses. At this point Donald Trump is desperate. If Trump wins again it will just be more fuel on the fire for his followers. The right wing will follow through on his cues and start attacking regular people, not just protesters, who they believe are Democrats.

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aha: trump utter fail on covid. numbers scary and undeniable (tho they try to suppress by route to DHS, swat secret police];

BLM not really subsiding, and they need it a bogeyman so trump can do Nixonian Law and Order scam; cruel irony/paradox is trump/libtards unable or unwilling to govern, so crash/crisis then gives cover for I alone am strong man who can deal with these commie degenerates who hate aMerica. [tho so far just kick blame to states [tho kemp under the bus on covid mask lawsuit?]

yes i am a vulgar bigot, but look at the stock mkt! and corp tax cut, dereg] but he can't depend on corp dark money to buy election [esp if zuck cuts ads]  thus he needs the economy to re-open, which means he needs schools open (for child care?) so willing to kill kids?! no rallies (basis of ego boost, proof of popularity/thus legit // inaug crowd BS, pix of trumpistas will be on TV and soc med]

one of 4 horses, related to all but esp militarization, esp on climate refugee; note sublethal used on nat aM dapl remote ppl of color now pepperball explodes to head of activist, press lost eye?  state of exception/margin periphery comes to Portland

yikes primary 7/20 portland secret police

:{:{}:

}:

combo of militarization and criminalization (of undoc immigrant, periphery, then sanctuary city, BLM ACTIVIST AND PRESS SUB-LETHAL WEAPONS)

why did portland get hit 1st by secret police vs seattle autonomous zone?

Washington enacted a measure in June 2019 in favor of sanctuary cities, similar to California and Oregon laws which are among the strongest statewide mandates in the nation.[186]

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aha-let authoritarian putin bolson etc homophobe ppp? white male xian straight is normal, all else is deviant

mind you, human rights violations in ICE covid, baby jails and secret police in portland

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/pompeo-panels-human-rights-report-pushes-radical-isolationist-anti-rights-anti-scientific-religious-agenda/

~ Amnesty int'l

Human rights advocates denounced as “dangerous” a draft report released Thursday by the U.S. State Department’s controversial Commission on Unalienable Rights that paintsproperty rightsand religious liberty as “foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure” while casting doubt on other liberties, including reproductive freedom.

“Make no mistake: this report was not designed with principles of equality, justice, and rights in mind. Instead, it serves as another stepping stone in the White House’s radical, isolationist, anti-rights, anti-scientific, religious agenda,” Serra Sippel, president of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), said in a statement.

“The Commission on Unalienable Rights is a thinly veiled religious fundamentalist panel, and the people on it should have absolutely no say about the human rights of people all over the world,” Sippel declared, calling the panel “a dangerous distraction from the fact that this administration does not believe that all people are equal and entitled to human rights."

[twt]

"This administration has shown time and time again that their concern with human rights is not about defining rights; it has to do with whose rights are being protected,” she added. “And when it comes to women and girls, and LGBTQI persons, equal protection of our human rights is not guaranteed under this administration, and this commission is just another attempt to deny women and others their rights.”

Critics of the commission, including CHANGE, have soughtto disband it with a lawsuit arguing that the biased views of its members could advance discrimination against certain groups. The panel was announced in July 2019 by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who unveiled its new report in a speech in Philadelphia Thursday, introduced by Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, who chairs the commission.

The commissioners write in the report that they, “like our fellow Americans, are not of one mind on many issues where there are conflicting interpretations of human rights claims—abortion, affirmative action, and capital punishment, to name a few.”

The panel’s treatment of reproductive rights in the report drew a rebuke from Planned Parenthood Action on Twitter Friday:...

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-secret-police-things-are-heading-in-that-direction/

no lnx

Trump’s secret police? Things are heading in that direction

[President Donald J. Trump speaks with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers coming in for their shift change, after President Trump attended a Roundtable on Immigration and Border Security Thursday, January 10, 2019, at the U.S. Border Patrol McAllen Station in McAllen, Texas. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)]

Written by John Stoehr, The Editorial Board February 18, 2020

I wrote this morning about the president’s new intimidation of sanctuary cities. He’s deploying 100 CBP agents, including BORTAC, which is a SWAT team for border security. The official goal is increasing deportations by 35 percent, but it’s pretty clear the aim is bullying local law enforcement into cooperating with federal authorities. I set the Times report in historical context, trying to explain, as I see it, how 9/11 sparked a chain reaction leading to what appears to be Donald Trump’s secret police force.

I end the piece by quoting Jenn Budd, a former Border Patrol agent turned civil rights activist, who reported a conversation she had with a former CBP official. She wrote:

Border Patrol does not believe they are a civilian law enforcement agency. They believe they are kin to the Marine Corps. They do not believe they are accountable to Congress, which is why they have no issues lying to them even while under oath.

They believe they are only accountable to … presidents like Trump. Border Patrol believes it is not required to answer to local police, FBI, CIA or any other law enforcement agency. They claim to be the “premiere” law enforcement agency, superior to all others. They say they will become a “national police force” to be used by a president to enforce laws even among citizens. (Italics are mine.)

Check out the whole thing here.

And while you’re there, please support my work by becoming a member!

Thanks. —John Stoehr

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Border Patrol as Trump's Secret Police?

History and current events point in that direction.

John Stoehr

Feb 17

9

Image result for bortac

A long time ago, before September 11, 2001, the right-most flank of the Republican Party tolerated the establishment’s compromise with racial liberalism, by which I mean “the basic consensus that existed across the mainstream of both political parties since the 1970s, to the effect that, first, bigotry of any overt sort would not be tolerated, but secon…

==

A long time ago, before September 11, 2001, the right-most flank of the Republican Party tolerated the establishment’s compromise with racial liberalism, by which I mean “the basic consensus that existed across the mainstream of both political parties since the 1970s,

  1. to the effect that, first, bigotry of any overt sort would not be tolerated, but second, that what was intolerable was only overt bigotry—in other words, white people’s definition of racism.” (I’m using here

@nils_gilman

’s helpful definition.)

The Collapse of Racial Liberalism - The American Interest

Both the Right and the Left have dropped the pretense of racial liberalism, and the country faces a choice.

the-american-interest.com

John Stoehr's Editorial Board

@johnastoehr

·

Feb 17

  1. After 9/11, that basic consensus began to break down. The GOP’s right-most flank refused to recognize its political legitimacy, even though it was white-centered.
  1. They refused, because they believed the basic consensus on race, and on other areas of political difference, permitted “radical Islamic terrorists” to attack God’s country.
  1. While the rest of America focused on terrorism, the disastrous occupation of Iraq and the endless “war on terror,” the right-most flank of the Republican Party focused on “illegal immigration.” This is not as random as it appears.
  1. Brown people threatened America’s covenant with God. Brown people were “breaching” the southern border. That these brown people were worlds apart was a distinction with zero difference.
  1. The Republican establishment, by which I mean people wielding real power, did not realize how diametrical the GOP’s right-most flank had become until after 2004. George W. Bush won reelection in part using this strategy—**scare the bejesus out of everyone**.
  1. The liberals were coming for your guns. The gays and feminists were coming for your sons and daughters. The heathens and atheists were for coming for your God. After the election, Bush thought he had political capital to burn. Then things changed.
  1. The cause of change was partly Bush’s failure in Iraq. But failing was not what most polarized the right-most flank of the Republican Party.
  1. What most polarized them was President Bush stoking their white rage and then turning around to try privatizing Social Security and reforming federal immigration law. To put it one way, they wanted freedom and “entitlements,” but only for them.
  1. Put quite another way, the government was trying to “take away their money” and “give it to the illegals.” After 2007, when both reform attempts failed, Bush was a lame duck. The GOP became something else.
  1. We didn’t know what it would become until after the 2008 election. And even then, racial liberalism still prevailed. No one, not even the GOP’s right-most flank, dared use explicit language with respect to Barack Obama commonplace in public discourse prior to 1970. )
  1. John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 were committed to racial liberalism.) But the upward pressure was building. Obama’s victory, according to

@ArthurGoldwag

(a subscriber to this newsletter!), brought “hidden feelings to light”:

  1. AG: Viral, Photoshopped images of President Obama in an African witch doctor’s getup, of Mrs. Obama with her face morphed into an ape’s, of watermelons growing on the White House lawn, and

==

'Government tyranny' is finally here, but this time it's being met with crickets from the Republicans

John Stoehr

Jul 17

5

2

I have been listening to “conservatives” blast government tyranny since I was an 8-year-old boy watching the “CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.” Every time liberals want to use government to address a problem, from enforcing civil rights laws, to protecting the environment to lifting the burden of expensive health insurance, “conservatives” have found a way to equating the federal government to evil.

Well, now we have this evidence that it was all a con.

Naveed Jamali

@NaveedAJamali

I’ve been speaking to fed sources about this. They tell me agents are investigating “attacks” on the Fed courthouse, and that gives them jurisdiction. But I have many questions. A thread.

July 17th 2020

592 Retweets961 Likes

Hamed Aleaziz

@Haleaziz

In this interview, Miller says the administration is planning to make an announcement next week on how they will use the "authorities" of the federal government to come to the "rescue" of "these long suffering citizens" re: cities like Portland.

Lou Dobbs @LouDobbs

Law and Order President: Stephen Miller says there will be a major announcement next week on how @POTUS will use his full authority to rescue long-suffering citizens of Democrat-run cities. #MAGA #AmericaFirst #Dobbs https://t.co/JzEGmjmVX3

July 17th 2020

32 Retweets16 Likes

I’ll have more to say about this later, but for now, please don’t given them the benefit of the doubt. State’s rights and local control only matter when it’s good for them politically, and by “them” I don’t mean the normal people of the United States.

5

2

Biden can add 10 points to Clinton's share of white evangelicals just by being a white man

It's been a long time since bigotry worked in a Democrat's favor.

John Stoehr

Jul 17

3

Progressive evangelical leader urges Biden to talk to evangelicals ...

At this point, it’s become conventional wisdom that the president is losing support among white evangelical Protestants (WEPs). The conventional wisdom is wrong, though. It’s based on polling by the Public Research Religion Institute showing Donald Trump with sky-high approval among WEPs in March, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, but a 10-point drop a month later. Cue predictions of doom.

The president’s approval was sky-high across all demographics in March, because he was at the time enjoying what’s called, among demographers, the “rally around the flag” effort. As the country faced an emergency, many people who would normally stand against Trump found themselves looking to him for leadership. That effect was short-lived, of course, because this president could not lead anyone out of a brown paper bag. Fact is, Trump’s approval among WEPs has returned to normal, and all things being equal, a return to normal means support among WEPs remains strong.

Would outreach to WEPs make that much difference?

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The thing about the debate over WEPs is that Trump can’t lose any of them. He has alienated too many other voters. He’s not right about much, but he was when he told an interviewer recently that if he loses just 1 percent of WEPs, he’ll lose. He’s so conscious of the need to hold on to WEPs he’s sounding apocalyptic, as if the “pro-life moment” will end in fire and fury, along with the rest of the world, if Joe Biden wins.

One percent is probably hyperbole, but it raises a couple of interesting questions: are WEPs gettable and if so, how many? Ronald Sider says yes, they’re gettable. In an op-ed for USA Today, the former head of Evangelicals for Social Action said progressive WEPs (yes, they exist) will vote for Biden no matter what, but if he wants more WEPs to support him, he should reach out with messages on abortion and religious freedom.

Meanwhile, Michael Wear, the faith outreach director for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, said recently that Hillary Clinton failed to reach out to any WEPs. The result was 16 percent voting for her. Biden, he said, could match Obama’s 26 percent. “Broad swaths of the faith community did not feel like the Democratic nominee was interested in their vote." The result, he said, was Trump winning them by 81 percent.

Don’t forget the tip jar!

I’m skeptical of the usefulness of outreach. Yes, Biden should do it for the sake of doing it, but are WEP voters going to vote for a Democrat based on whether or not he says the right things about abortion and religious liberty. Sider says Biden only has to say abortion should be rare, and that some religious institutions should be exempted from laws and court-rulings requiring equal treatment for the LGBTQ community. Call me crazy but that sounds a bit like gaslighting. Sider says these WEPs are not single-issue voters. If so, there are plenty of ways to rationalize voting for Biden.

If anything, it isn’t Biden who should compromise. It’s WEPs who should. Biden said last year that he supported repealing the 1976 Hyde Amendment, the provision of law barring federal funds from being used for abortions. Hyde is a traditional WEP threshold. Support it and you’re with us; oppose it and you’re against us. But that was before the new coronavirus pandemic turned everything about politics upside down. The most recent multibillion-dollar bailout aimed at shoring up the economy sent millions of dollars to tax-exempt churches and tax-exempt religious schools. If public money can float a religious institution’s payroll, it can be used to pay for abortions.

Biden won’t touch that, of course, nor should he. But the question remains: Will reaching out to WEPs, thus making them “feel like the Democratic nominee was interested in their vote,” as Wear said, result in an extra 10 points in support to match Obama’s performance in 2012? Again, I’m skeptical. Obama had to reach out, because he was the first Black man with a decent shot at winning the presidency. Clinton, for her part, was already so despised by WEPs, I don’t blame her for not bothering. Biden, however, is a totally different candidate for the plainest of reasons: he’s a white man.

No matter how “progressive” they might be, WEPs are still hidebound creatures. God’s law is the law of nature, and according to the WEP worldview, hierarchies of power are natural: God over man, white over black, men over women, parents over kids. Obama, as a Black man, put in extra hours to overcome that worldview. Clinton, as a woman, never had a chance, so didn’t bother. Biden, I suspect, can follow Clinton’s example, put in zero work, but still come out 10 points ahead just for being a white man.

So much of “political strategy” is merely finding new ways of talking about old things like prejudice and bigotry. It’s been a long time since they worked for Democrats.

—John Stoehr

3

Pause the Trump-is-losing narrative

The point of this column is being wrong.

John Stoehr

Jul 16

11

7

Trump admits it: He's losing - POLITICO

You have probably heard speculation that Joe Biden has a chance of winning Texas. The president won the Lone Star State by just nine points last time around. It’s highly suburban, giving the advantage to the Democrat. Moreover, the new coronavirus is rampaging through the state after its governor reopened recklessly to give Donald Trump a boost. One recent poll has Biden up by a point. Another has him up by five.

This has some Democratic partisans salivating. Texas has 36 electorate votes. If Biden wins them as well as those Hillary Clinton won, he wins the whole shebang by four electoral votes. Of course, if Biden wins Texas, he probably won’t lose Florida or Arizona. He probably won’t lose Michigan or Wisconsin for the same reason. Texas, in other words, doesn’t matter in terms of exceeding 270 electoral votes. Winning it does matter, though, because it would snap a losing streak for the Democrats going back to 1976, and because winning Texas would signal huge transformative political change.

We still live in a 40-year-old conservative political regime that defines people as consumers, not citizens.

Share

That’s why I don’t like speculation about Texas. What we are speculating isn’t winning or losing the 2020 presidential election. It’s whether we have truly moved on from a conservative political regime rooted in the 1980s, and which we are all still living in, when the federal government flipped sides. From the 1930s until then, it took the side, with a major qualification, of normal people. After Ronald Reagan, though, it took the side of the elites. In that decade, we stopped talking about people as citizens and started talking about them as consumers. I yearn for that regime’s end as much as the next guy, but if we must speculate about Texas, let’s be clear what we are speculating.

I prefer participation to speculation, frankly. As a consequence, I think, of our ongoing occupation of a conservative political regime that defines people as consumers, not citizens, we just can’t get enough of it. We appear to love speculating, as well as spectating, more than participating! And there’s so much data to do it with! A new niche industry has emerged to meet, and manufacture, demand. All the elite news organizations have teams of data editors and journalists churning fascinating stories, truly fascinating stories, about this and that election, about this and that person’s chances of winning, all properly qualified, all nevertheless confident in the story that the data is telling. And the latest media narrative is that Joe Biden is going to win.

Here’s the tip jar ——> click here!

I want to believe that, but I can’t bring myself to, and I can’t bring myself to, because I also believe a media narrative in which Biden wins has the power to undo him and all of us. When enough people in the right places in a electoral college system believe something is going to happen with or without their participation, they could end up believing they don’t have to honor their civic obligations, due also to thinking of themselves as consumers, not citizens, and instead spectate. But rather than watching what they thought was going to happen, they instead watch the world going to hell.

Some say apathy won’t be an issue. The collective trauma of 2016 will prevent it. I hope so, but even if people think of themselves as citizens rather than consumers, their participation must presume the election will be fair. Do not presume fairness. Georgia and Florida have demonstrated the lengths Republican-controlled governments are willing to go to block people, especially people of color, from voting. Moreover, GOP resistance to mail-in balloting could prove decisive as the Covid-19 pandemic might keep people from showing up. In 2016, less than 60 percent of Americans who could vote did vote. The only antidote to voter suppression is overwhelming numbers. But overwhelming numbers might not come from an electorate still living in a political regime defining people as consumers, not citizens. Democracy should be the incentive to participate. But the incentives to speculate, and spectate, might be greater still.

I like the horse race. (I wouldn’t be much of a polemicist if I didn’t!) I’m a fan of the data journalists tracking the polling and informing readers like me of the state of play. Furthermore, every one of them, without qualification, responsibly qualifies their arguments, leaving room for being wrong. But these are still human beings making judgments about what to pay attention to, and given the rapid pace of the emerging narrative of Joe Biden beating Donald Trump, there’s news incentive to pay attention to data suggesting that Joe Biden is going to beat Donald Trump, all of which can create a self-reinforcing media narrative, leading to a possible repeat of last time.

I could be wrong. Indeed, being wrong is the point of this column. If I’m wrong, perhaps we are indeed moving out of the old regime and into something unknowable and full of renewed hope. Perhaps a majority of voters really has decided that the government should be on the side of normal people, not the elites. What I do know is that if I’m wrong, you’re going to have to be prove me wrong. That takes participation, not speculation. That takes the American people defining themselves as citizens.

—John Stoehr

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An apology

John Stoehr

Jul 15

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I used the word “goombah” to describe Roger Stone in Monday’s and Tuesday’s editions of the Editorial Board. I should not have done that. That’s an offensive word. I believe I have hurt some readers. I apologize without qualification for using that word. I have struck the word out of those pieces. And I pledge to do better in the future.

Again, I am sorry.

Sincerely,

John Stoehr

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The intellectual fraud of Bari Weiss

She's part of a larger project to warp American politics.

John Stoehr

Jul 15

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The New York Times' Made-for-TV Endorsement Missed the Mark ...

The New York Times suffers from the same problem all elite institutions suffer from—its own elite status. I know that sounds silly, but remember that being elite comes with the immense burden, absurd as it is, of keeping up appearances. A consequence, when it comes to hiring op-ed contributors, to pick a totally random example, is not quite recognizing talent and intelligence that does not already fit into the elite view of what “talented” and “intelligent” mean. Being elite means excluding all but the “best.”

The result of this narrow-mindedness—an accurate word—is homogeneity of a kind. This is not to say bad or boring, but good and interesting are not enough for an institution keeping up appearances. Independent of attacks from partisans inside and outside the institution, the institution’s own elite status demands diversity of thought, especially when, as the Times does, it claims to be “the paper of record.” Being vulnerable to its own status, however, means being vulnerable to intellectual frauds.

Exploiting the Times’ vulnerabilities for political gain.

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Intellectual frauds, though commonplace, are identifiable when they are not obscured by an artificially constructed media apparatus in which intellectual dishonesty is not only tolerated and encouraged, but rewarded financially and handsomely. This is what happened, starting about half a century ago, when very “conservative” and very rich Americans looked at Republican Barry Goldwater’s extremist campaign for the White House and thought it made perfect sense. Moreover, they believed Goldwater failed to beat the Democratic incumbent, not because he was too extreme, but because the Washington press corps was too liberal. So they set out to manufacture an alternative.

The result of this investment, decades in the making, is a media climate in which people can commit their entire professional careers to telling very “conservative” and rich people what they want to hear while also appearing scholarly, detached and dispassionate for those whose interests are contrary to the interests of the very “conservative” and rich. An ambitious person fresh out of college can go straight to Breitbart or the Daily Caller before jumping to legacy outlets like Commentary or the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages, with speaking gigs over time at the American Enterprise Institute or the Manhattan Institute as well as chances to write books for Regnery and Center Street. You can live your whole life in this bubble and never face serious criticism, because free and responsible inquiry isn’t the point. The point is telling very “conservative” and rich people what they want to hear, and making their views respectable to people whose interests conflict with those of your bosses.

Don’t forget the tip jar.

It’s worth repeating that this apparatus is not dedicated to determining facts, as the press corps is. It’s not committed to realizing profits, as the Times’ publisher is. Its reason for being is warping politics so that a tiny cohort of Americans—the very, very rich, who pay for the apparatus—have vastly more influence in a democratic republic than it would without it. And the general means for pulling that off is convincing as many people as possible that the profit-making mainstream media is either too liberal or not telling the truth. In other words, it’s conventional rightwing propaganda.

The power of this propaganda has grown over the decades so that one Republican president got caught stealing and spying (Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace) while another got away with treason (Donald Trump, as you know, is still president). Moreover, this media apparatus is where elite institutions turn when they are attacked for being too liberal while also being trapped by their own elite status. When the Times hired Bari Weiss, for instance, the paper thought it was diversifying its roster of opinion writers with a veteran of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages. What it was really doing, however, was importing, and therefore laundering, intellectual fraud.

“Fraud” should have been the first word on people’s minds when news emerged that Weiss quit. In her letter of resignation, which she made public, she said that she experienced, as a consequence of her conservative views, “unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge.” If that were true, she should have filed a lawsuit. Instead, she posted her resignation letter to her personal website. (Moreover, she made it a section of her website, giving it prominent play.) In doing so, Weiss was creating the appearance of “evidence” that rightwing media had been right about the Times. It’s liberal, but also illiberal, intolerant of the ideological diversity it claims to value. And as if on cue, the president wrote this this morning on Twitter: “Wow. The @nytimes is under siege. The real reason is that it has become Fake News. They never covered me correctly—they blew it. People are fleeing, a total mess!”

Weiss can deny having set out to discredit a newspaper that daily makes the president look bad by telling the truth and making money doing it. She can deny enabling the president’s authoritarian attacks on the free press. She can deny giving the impression to white GOP voters that the Times, and by extension the Democratic Party, is just as bad as the president, so they may as well vote for a Republican. All she’s doing, after all, is fighting for free speech. She’s not, though. Neither are her peers inside and outside the rightwing media apparatus. The point isn’t the free and responsible search for knowledge. It’s warping politics, making bad things look good, perverting public morality, and exploiting the inherent vulnerabilities of elite institutions like the Times.

—John Stoehr

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