Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: With an umbrella in his left hand and a hammer in his right, the man in black lobbed his weapon so nonchalantly into an auto parts shop’s windows that it surprised many others in Minneapolis marching nearby in a May 27 protest after George Floyd’s death. Soon after the abrupt attack, the mostly calm demonstration near a police precinct erupted into looting and arson — the first fire in riots that eventually caused $500 million in…

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The New York Times reports: From the earliest days of the recent protests against police brutality and racism, some top federal law enforcement officials viewed the demonstrators with alarm and called for an aggressive federal response that two months later continues to escalate. A memo from the deputy director of the F.B.I., dated June 2, demanded an immediate mobilization as protests gathered after George Floyd’s death while he was in police custody a week earlier. David L. Bowdich, the F.B.I.’s…

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The New York Times reports: The Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan was packed with developers, politicians and New York celebrities, more than 600 in all, for the funeral of Fred C. Trump, the builder whose no-frills brick rental towers transformed Brooklyn and Queens. Three of his four living children, who had grown up listening to the sermons of the church’s most famous minister, Norman Vincent Peale, offered loving eulogies to their father. Then it was Donald Trump’s…

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NBC News reports: The threat of terrorism — particularly from the far right — should be a major concern for governments on both sides of the Atlantic as coronavirus restrictions continue to ease, according to multiple experts and former law enforcement officials who have experience monitoring violent extremist activity. High unemployment levels due to the pandemic, poor economic prospects and the spread of disinformation through the internet and social media could accelerate radicalization, they said. And after a major drive…

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David Lapan writes: I believe deeply that how our government’s security forces are seen by the American public is critical to their ability to protect us and our ability to maintain a healthy democracy. That belief comes from experience: I served for decades in the U.S. Marine Corps, as a Department of Defense spokesperson, and as the Trump administration’s first Department of Homeland of Security spokesperson. It’s as an American who cares profoundly about the missions of both DOD and…

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Ellis Cose writes: When Trump ran for president, he promised to take America back to greatness. I assumed he wanted to return us to the 1950s, when minorities and women supposedly knew their respective places, and coal and tobacco were king. He apparently had an earlier period in mind: the years right after World War I. In that era, federal agents stormed across America, arresting and deporting presumed enemies of the state. The effort was led by Attorney General A….

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