Marisa Kabas writes:

A delivery worker was tased, punched and kicked by multiple federal agents in the middle of the street outside a popular brunch spot in Northwest DC on Saturday morning, a video shared with The Handbasket shows. While customers sitting outside at the Logan Circle cafe munched on avocado smash and matcha pancakes, two and then an additional four masked agents beat the shit out of the man in broad daylight. This is America.

 

America’s largest cities are currently under siege: Not by local gangs and rampant street crime, but by occupying law enforcement sent by the federal government. Strangers—mostly men, many with their faces covered—patrol neighborhoods by foot, car and even horse in search of problems, and this week the terror entered our nation’s capital. Agents from the FBI to the Secret Service and the immigration agencies of the Department of Homeland Security invaded our nation’s capitol this week. As of Thursday, the White House told TIME that more than 100 people had been arrested since Trump’s goon squad took over, claiming they were a result of warrants for various felonies and violations of immigration orders. On Wednesday night alone, 1,650 thugs occupied the city.

During the agents’ violent attack on a delivery worker Saturday morning in DC, bystanders repeatedly demanded the agents share their badge numbers. One of them—his face fully obscured by a black balaklava—eventually shot back, “Do I have to answer to you?”

It was a moment as brazen as it was astonishing. We’ve long known that federal agencies operating under Trump consider themselves above or outside the law. But to hear it stated so confidently, so plainly, that the federal government does not have to answer to the people who pay their salaries was jarring.

“You guys are ruining this country. You know that, right?” one bystander said to the agents at one point during the incident. An agent, ironically clad in a rainbow face mask, replied “Liberals already ruined it.” [Continue reading…]