Music: Pat Metheny Group — ‘To The End Of The World’
The federal response to protests extends far beyond Portland
Ken Klippenstein reports: In a conspicuous show of force, armed Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers were recently seen in Portland carrying out surveillance and arrests. Agency director Mark Morgan has defended the deployment as measured and restrained. “I will not send any resource out anywhere to confront American citizens,” he told Time. But CBP’s support to local law enforcement has extended far beyond its controversial Portland deployment, and includes not just thousands of personnel but also drones and dozens…
Trump is putting on a show in Portland
Anne Applebaum writes: The very idea seems, on the face of it, sheer madness. In Portland, Oregon, federal security officers dressed for combat—wearing jungle-camouflage uniforms with unclear markings, carrying heavy weapons, using batons and tear gas—are patrolling the streets, making random arrests, throwing people into unmarked vans. The officers do not come from institutions that specialize in political crowd control. Instead, they come from Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, and the Coast Guard….
Why is Trump using little green men in American cities?
Daniel W. Drezner writes: This is not actually about anarchy in Portland because the city seems both ordered and copacetic with what’s happening. This is about something else. What political gain does Trump see from escalating and nationalizing this situation? One possibility is that he believes this kind of law-and-order “performative authoritarianism” as a winning move because it a) is not about covid-19 and b) plays into old partisan divisions. According to my Post colleagues Nick Miroff and Mark Berman,…
We’re police officers. You should know our names. That goes for Portland, too
Patrick Skinner writes: My name is Patrick Skinner, and I’m a local police officer. I love that I can say that. For me, one of the best things about being a local police officer is the openness of the job. On patrol my name is on my uniform; as a detective my name is on my business cards. Either way, it’s always on my tongue: I introduce myself to literally every single neighbor I meet while on duty. By definition…
New antibody mix could form ‘very potent’ Covid-19 treatment, say scientists
The Guardian reports: Researchers have identified a potent cocktail of antibodies that may help doctors treat Covid-19 infections and protect people at risk from falling ill with the disease. The antibodies were collected from patients hospitalised with severe Covid-19, and they could be manufactured at scale by pharmaceutical firms and transfused into the blood to fight the virus or prevent it from taking hold. Scientists at Columbia University in New York screened antibodies from 40 Covid-19 patients and identified 61…
The November election is going to be a mess
Norm Ornstein writes: American voters face a nightmare in November. The recent stretch of primary elections has raised a slew of red flags of glitches, missteps, incompetence, and worse that could plague the national elections in November. In Wisconsin, the failure of election officials to send out absentee ballots requested by voters and the failure of the United States Postal Service to deliver them in time forced those voters to physically go to the polls during the pandemic. Once there,…
An arms race for space has begun
Time reports: American intelligence analysts have been watching a pair of Russian satellites, identified as Cosmos 2542 and 2543, for months. Or rather, they have been watching them since they were one satellite, deployed by a Soyuz rocket that took off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Nov. 26, 2019. It was 11 days after that launch that the first satellite split in two, the second somehow “birthed” from the other, and no one in the U.S. military was happy about…
Music: Maati Baani — ‘Jao Piya’
How Biden’s climate plan makes clean energy by 2035 ‘very doable’
NBC News reports: When Hillary Clinton proposed a climate plan in the run-up to the 2016 election that included $60 billion for clean energy infrastructure and $30 billion more to redevelop coal-mining communities, it was met with mixed reviews: an “ambitious” plan but one with “holes.” The plan proposed some of the largest investments in clean energy tech put forward by a major presidential candidate, a sign of how far the topic of climate change had come in politics but,…
Philadelphia’s top prosecutor is prepared to arrest federal agents
Brentin Mock writes: After numerous reports and lawsuits in Portland regarding un-badged and un-uniformed federal officers arresting, beating, and detaining people in unmarked vehicles, the Trump administration’s response is that they’re going to do it even more, and in more cities. Saying that his federal agents are doing a “fantastic job,” Trump has suggested that he will also deploy agents in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Milwaukee to do the same. In one of those cities, the city…
The federal crackdown in Portland is ‘legal.’ That’s the problem with it
Garrett M. Graff writes: When Americans worried about their nation slipping into a dystopian authoritarian regime, no one ever expected those nightmares to involve the Federal Protective Service. That’s in part because before the post-apocalyptic images of federal officers dressed in military gear waving flaming cans of smoke and dressed in gas masks on the streets of the community that inspired “Portlandia,” few Americans knew the FPS existed at all. Even today, the obscure entity may still be unknown to…
Former head of DHS says Trump’s use of its agents ‘undermines the credibility of the department’s principal mission’
Greg Sargent writes: Under fire for dispatching federal law enforcement into cities in defiance of local leaders, in part to create TV imagery that sends an authoritarian thrill up President Trump’s leg, top officials are offering several new defenses. All are profoundly weak — which is why senior members of previous Republican administrations are now condemning what’s happening. One of these is Michael Chertoff, the former director of homeland security under George W. Bush, who said in an interview that…
Trump’s request to his UK ambassador: Get the British Open for me
The New York Times reports: The American ambassador to Britain, Robert Wood Johnson IV, told multiple colleagues in February 2018 that President Trump had asked him to see if the British government could help steer the world-famous and lucrative British Open golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland, according to three people with knowledge of the episode. The ambassador’s deputy, Lewis A. Lukens, advised him not to do it, warning that it would be an unethical use of…
Elizabeth Warren’s new role: Key Joe Biden policy adviser
The Associated Press reports: Joe Biden accused Elizabeth Warren last year of holding an “angry, unyielding viewpoint.” She embraced that label and slammed Biden as “naive” for thinking he could work with Republicans as president. She warned Democrats against picking a “Washington insider” and pointedly refused to endorse Biden until weeks after exiting the race. Now, those bitter primary clashes are a distant memory. Warren, a Massachusetts senator and leading progressive, has become an unlikely confidant and adviser to Biden,…
Ten ways that racial and environmental justice are inextricably linked
Nishan Degnarain writes: Cities across the United States and Europe have been reflecting on the unprecedented protests demanding greater racial justice following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May. This has sparked a deeper conversation around the world among companies, universities, religious institutions, museums who have historic links to racial injustice and slavery. Given the significance of 19 June (Juneteenth), many companies and organizations have also been quick to sign up to pledges around racial justice. However,…