Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Please keep in mind as you read and watch information about "rioters" that the FBI has clearly identified that white supremacist domestic terrorist groups have long been awaiting a moment exactly like this in order to magnify violence against black and brown folk.

A Twitter account claiming to belong to a national “antifa” organization and pushing violent rhetoric related to ongoing protests has been linked to the white nationalist group Identity Evropa, according to a Twitter spokesperson.
The spokesperson said the account violated the company's platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts. Twitter suspended the account after a tweet that incited violence.

As protests were taking place in multiple states across the U.S. Sunday night, the newly created account, @ANTIFA_US, tweeted, “Tonight’s the night, Comrades,” with a brown raised fist emoji and “Tonight we say 'F--- The City' and we move into the residential areas... the white hoods.... and we take what's ours …”

This isn’t the first time Twitter has taken action against fake accounts engaged in hateful conduct linked to Identity Evropa, according to the spokesperson.

The antifa movement — a network of loosely organized radical groups who use direct action to fight the far-right and fascism — has been targeted by President Donald Trump as the force behind some of the violence and property destruction seen at some protests, though little evidence has been provided for such claims.

Other misinformation and misleading claims spread across Twitter on Sunday night and into Monday related to the protests.

Two hashtags that trended worldwide on Twitter falsely claimed that there was a "cover-up" or a "blackout" of protests in Washington, D.C., overnight. Both appeared to insinuate that protesters have been silenced in some way, perhaps by a secret internet blackout.

Twitter says it has removed the trend from its "trending topics" section because of "coordinated attempts to disrupt the public conversation" around the protests.

Twitter said it suspended several hundred accounts and is investigating the viral spread of the hashtag, which it said was boosted by "hundreds of spammy accounts."

"We're taking action proactively on any coordinated attempts to disrupt the public conversation around this issue," a Twitter spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said the company sometimes pulls down hashtags that violate the company's rules, like platform manipulation.

The entire point is that white supremacist domestic terrorists are trying to ignite a "race war" where they will be justified in rampant violence against black and brown people and have the backing of the Trump regime's police state while doing it.

They want looting and burning.

In some cases they are doing it themselves.

In all cases, the goal is to light the fuse on massive violence.

Trump Lives Matter (More Than Ours)

Donald Trump had quite the evening yesterday, holding a Rose Garden presser where he vowed to unleash the force of the US military on protesters, had Lafayette Park next to the White House tear gassed and cleared by a platoon of DC cops and the National Guard, and then strolled through the park to have a photo op at St. John's Episcopal Church a couple blocks away with his cabinet and White House staff.

The bishop of the church, Rev. Mariann Budde, was pissed.

The Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, was seething.

President Trump had just visited St. John’s Episcopal Church, which sits across from the White House. It was a day after a fire was set in the basement of the historic building amid protests over the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police.

Before heading to the church, where presidents have worshiped since the days of James Madison, Trump gave a speech at the White House emphasizing the importance of law and order. Federal officers then used force to clear a large crowd of peaceful demonstrators from the street between the White House and the church, apparently so Trump could make the visit.

“I am outraged,” Budde said in a telephone interview a short time later, pausing between words to emphasize her anger as her voice slightly trembled.

She said she had not been given any notice that Trump would be visiting the church and did not approve of the manner in which the area was secured for his appearance.

“I am the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and was not given even a courtesy call, that they would be clearing [the area] with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop,” Budde said.

She excoriated the president for standing in front of the church — its windows boarded up with plywood — holding up a Bible, which Budde said “declares that God is love.”

“Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence,” Budde of the president. “We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.”

In a written statement, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, head of the Episcopal denomination, accused Trump of using “a church building and the Holy Bible for partisan political purposes.”

“This was done in a time of deep hurt and pain in our country, and his action did nothing to help us or to heal us,” Curry wrote.

“The prophet Micah taught that the Lord requires us to ‘do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God,’ ” he continued, calling on Trump and others in power to be moral. “For the sake of George Floyd, for all who have wrongly suffered, and for the sake of us all, we need leaders to help us to be ‘one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.’ ”

Trump wanted his photo op because he was mad that the press made fun of him for hiding in a bunker Sunday night.  Oh, and he threatened Americans with military force. The Pentagon is openly saying this is a bad idea.

Defense officials tell CNN there was deep and growing discomfort among some in the Pentagon even before President Donald Trump announced Monday that he is ready to deploy the military to enforce order inside the United States. 

As tear gas wafted through the air in Lafayette Park across from the White House, Trump announced from the Rose Garden that if state or city leaders refuse "to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents," he will invoke the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that allows a president to deploy the US military to suppress civil disorder. 

But some Pentagon officials are deeply wary, several defense officials tell CNN. They have tried to respond by making a strong case that the situation does not yet call for deploying active duty troops unless state governors make a clear argument such forces are needed. 

"There is an intense desire for local law enforcement to be in charge," a defense official said, alluding to the laws that forbid the military from performing law enforcement roles inside the United States. 

There is also discomfort with the civil order mission among some National Guard troops -- more of whom are now mobilized inside the US than at any previous time in history.

The Pentagon clearly doesn't want this, but what happens when Trump orders it anyway?

It may be the single most important answer in decades.  And yes, COVID-19 didn't just go away, folks. We still have that to deal with too.

StupidiNews!

• Official numbers from the CDC finds one-quarter of US nursing homes have reported at least one COVID-19 case.
• A federal judge has upheld Virginia's efforts to expand making absentee ballots available for all eligible voters who request them, stopping a right-wing effort to suppress votes in the state.
• Singapore is building housing for some 60,000 migrant workers amid the COVID-19 pandemic in order to reduce density to prevent further outbreaks.
• Despite security and health protests form Maine Gov. Janet Mills, Donald Trump says he will visit a nasal swab manufacturing facility in the state later this week.
• on top of a measles and CODI-19 outbreak, the Democratic Republic of Congo now has confirmed new cases of Ebola in the city of Mbandaka.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Donald Trump has completely lost whatever humanity he had left, because he's now calling for a nationwide military crackdown.

President Trump lashed out at America’s governors on Monday, warning that they will look like “jerks” if they don’t order protesters arrested and imprisoned.

Speaking on a private conference call, audio of which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Trump began the conversation with an extended, angry diatribe.

“You have to dominate,” he told governors on the call. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time — they’re going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks.”

The president continued: “You have to arrest people, and you have to try people, and they have to go jail for long periods of time.”

Mr. Trump, who has not addressed the nation since the unrest began, said he was putting Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “in charge,” but did not immediately specify what that meant or if he would deploy the military to quell the violence in the nation’s cities.

“He hates to see the way it’s being handled in the various states,” Mr. Trump said of General Milley.

Alluding to television footage of violence and looting, Mr. Trump called the people committing those acts “scum” and demanded of the governors: “Why aren’t you prosecuting them?” Taking over a call that was supposed to feature Vice President Mike Pence, the president said Minnesota had become “a laughingstock all over the world.”

We went from "You have to end these tyrannical COVID-19 lockdowns!" to "SEND IN THE TANKS!" really quickly, didn't we?

It's almost like Trump is a deeply insecure malignant narcissist who wants to kill and destroy anyone who makes him look bad.

One participant on the call described the president's words and tone as "unhinged."

"You have to dominate, if you don't dominate you're wasting your time. They're going to run over you. You're going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate," the president told governors.

The president said that the violence "is coming from the radical left — you know, it everybody knows it — but it's also looters, and it's people that figure they can get free stuff by running into stores and running out with television sets. I saw it — a kid has a lot of stuff, he puts it in the back of a brand new car and drives off. You have every one of these guys on tape. Why aren't you prosecuting them? Now, the harder you are, the tougher you are, the less likely you're going to be hit."

This kind of violence has happened before, Mr. Trump said. "It's happened numerous times. And the only time it's successful is when you're weak. And most of you are weak. I will say this, what's going on in Los Angeles — I have a friend lives in Los Angeles — they say all the storefronts are gone," the president continued. "They're all broken and gone. The merchandise is gone. It's a shame. It didn't look as bad to me — maybe it was the sunshine, I don't know. But in Los Angeles, the storefronts are gone. Philadelphia's a mess. What happened there is horrible."

On the call, the president also encouraged states to enact laws against flag burning.

It's Nixon 1974 in the bunker being Nixon in 1968. And no, this isn't just Trump saying something and then not following through.

A senior Department of Justice official says U.S. Attorney General William Barr has directed the Bureau of Prisons to send riot teams (Special Operation Response Teams) to Miami and Washington, D.C. to help with crowd control, a senior DOJ official said.

The team was already present in Miami over the weekend, this official said.

On Sunday night, Barr also dispatched the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team to help D.C. police.

All FBI field offices have been instructed to set up command posts to deal specifically with the protests in nearby communities, the official said.

Things are going to get very bad, very quickly.

Black Lives Still Matter, Even In Kentucky

Louisville Metro PD backed by the KY National Guard killed the owner of a BBQ joint last night.

Gov. Andy Beshear has ordered Kentucky State Police to investigate the early Monday incident that featured Louisville Metro Police and National Guard personnel fatally shooting the owner of a popular West End barbecue business at 26th Street and Broadway.

The victim was David McAtee, the popular owner of a barbecue business next to the Dino's Food Mart parking lot where the shooting occurred around 12:15 a.m. Monday, McAtee's nephew told The Courier Journal.

Louisville police and National Guard troops were breaking up a "large crowd" that had gathered in the parking lot outside Dino's Food Mart in the Russell neighborhood when someone shot at them, LMPD Chief Steve Conrad said this morning.

"Officers and soldiers began to clear the lot and at some point were shot at," Conrad said. "Both LMPD and National Guard members returned fire."

Conrad said it is unclear if the person who was shot was the person who also fired at the officers.

At a Monday morning news conference in Frankfort, Beshear said he has contacted Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and asked LMPD to release the "significant" amount of body camera footage from the incident "as soon as possible."

The governor added that he wants any video footage to be released Monday "before nightfall."

"I think it's really important for the truth to get out there," Beshear said. "But I think it's also really important in ensuring that we don't have violence if people can see (and) know that, bad or ugly, we're being absolutely transparent about it."

"I don't want people to have to wait several days," Beshear added. "I think it's very important to communicate with the public, especially with the tensions right now."

We're entering Week 11 since Breonna Taylor was murdered in her own home by Louisville Metro PD officers and nobody's been charged or arrested for it, but LMPD has rounded up dozens of protesters, fired at journalists on the street covering the protests, and now they've killed a person.

Andy Beshear, to his credit, seems to actually care what's going on with police violence. But he doesn't seem at all interested in actually uttering the words "Black Lives Matter".  Not in this state.

The moment he does, it costs him his career.

We matter.  We die without justice, but we will be heard.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

As Trump continues to throw gasoline on the fire, he's also taking advantage of the chaos to make his move to start rounding up dissidents by declaring people to be "Antifa" and declaring Antifa to be a domestic terrorist organization.

President Trump said on Twitter on Sunday that the United States would designate a group of far-left anti-fascism activists as a terrorist organization, a declaration that lacked any clear legal authority, as his administration sought to blame the group for violent protests across the nation over the weekend.
“The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,” Mr. Trump wrote.

The president has periodically criticized antifa, a contraction of the word “anti-fascist” that has come to be associated with a diffuse movement of left-wing protesters who engage in more aggressive techniques like vandalism.

But it was not clear that Mr. Trump’s declaration would have any real meaning beyond his characteristic attempts to stir a culture-war controversy, attract attention and please his conservative base.

First, antifa is not an organization. It does not have a leader, membership roles or any defined, centralized structure. Rather, it is a vaguely defined movement of people who share common protest tactics and targets.

More important, even if antifa were a real organization, the laws that permit the federal government to deem entities terrorists and impose sanctions on them are limited to foreign groups. There is no domestic terrorism law, despite periodic proposals to create one.

“There is no authority under law to do that — and if such a statute were passed, it would face serious First Amendment challenges,” said Mary B. McCord, a former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “But right now, the only terrorist authority is for foreign terrorist organizations.”

In dealing with effectively domestic terrorism investigations into neo-Nazi organizations like the Base and Atomwaffen Division, for example, the F.B.I. has treated them as criminal enterprises.

Nevertheless, in a statement after Mr. Trump’s tweet, Attorney General William P. Barr said the F.B.I. would use its partnerships with state and local police to identify violent protesters, whom he also called domestic terrorists.

“The violence instigated and carried out by antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly,” Mr. Barr said.

Let's not forget Trump did this before, treating protesters at his inauguration as domestic terrorists, locking up dozens and charging them with federal rioting felonies before the courts acquitted multiple people and dismissed charges against everyone else.

No, Trump wants show trials to distract from the fact the country is burning itself to the ground under his "leadership" and he's most likely going to get them.

StupidiNews!

• NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio's daughter Chiara was arrested while protesting Sunday, she was later released as Black Lives Matter demonstrations enter their seventh day across the US.
• Donald Trump reportedly left the White House last night for a bunker and turned off all the lights as demonstrators gathered around the White House grounds on Sunday.
• House Republicans are planning to introduce a bill preventing US companies from selling to or investing in China's military.
• The Trump campaign says Donald Trump will resume large-scale campaign rallies this month despite COVID-19 and nationwide protests.
• Sunday's SpaceX launch from Cape Canaveral successfully delivered two US astronauts to the International Space Station, the first US manned spaceflight mission in a decade.

Sunday Long Read: Shop Till You Drop

Grocery delivery services like Instacart aren't any better than Amazon or Uber when it comes to treating their employees like indentured servants, and utterly disposable ones at that.

Once people got too scared to leave the house, there was lots of money to be made as a shopper-for-hire. Rachel had been running groceries for Instacart since October, but the Las Vegas market had barely offered enough gigs to scrape by. After the company switched to the On Demand model in February, the good orders (or “batches,” as Instacart calls them) went to whoever clicked first — and even when Rachel was lucky, she often wasn’t fast enough. But one morning in March, she logged on to see order after order piled up, lucrative ones at $50, $70, $100, all ready for the taking.

“The demand was insane,” she says. “Things were great. You could make in one batch what a lot of people would be making in a day. But you could also be standing in line at Costco for an hour and a half just to get in.”

By then, Rachel was making most of her money off Instacart. She wanted to take precautions on the job but wasn’t sure how. At first, she was just wearing gloves, thinking that touching the groceries was the biggest risk. A few days in, the news from New York scared her into digging up a box of face masks. She started having an allergic reaction from the latex in the gloves, so after that, she was down to just the mask and hand sanitizer. Stores were getting smarter at the same time. Soon, there was a separate line for Instacart shoppers; later, there was a guy giving out hand wipes just inside the door.

After running down high-dollar batches for two weeks, she started to feel sick. It began as a bad cough, dry and deep in her lungs. At first, she thought it might just be the arid climate. Perhaps it would just get better? “I thought maybe it could be allergies or a seasonal change,” Rachel says. “It’s hard to tell out here with the weather.”

A few days later, she woke up with a weight on her chest that made it hard to breathe. Her doctor gave her a full chest X-ray and a bunch of medications to tide her over, promising a proper coronavirus test a few days later. They had set it up as a drive-through: she pulled into the lot behind the doctor’s office, rolled down her window, and reclined her seat to offer a good angle to the nurse, clad in scrubs and gloves, who proceeded to thread a six-inch cotton swab so deep through her nose that it scraped mucus from the back of her throat.

From the symptoms alone, the doctor believed Rachel had COVID-19, but it would be weeks before the results came back. The doctor told her to quarantine for 14 days — then, the standard recommendation for anyone with a low fever and a bad cough who wasn’t sick enough to be hospitalized. At that point in March, Nevada had fewer than 500 available ventilators, and hospitals were bracing for impact. The last thing anyone wanted was a sick worker making grocery deliveries.

In theory, Rachel could still get paid while she self-isolated. On March 10th, Instacart announced that it would be offering two weeks of extended pay to any shoppers “diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed in mandatory isolation or quarantine, as directed by a local, state, or public health authority.”

Rachel had been careful with the paperwork, too, alerting Instacart in advance and arriving for the test with a form from the company for the doctor to fill out. She scanned and submitted it the next day, then settled into quarantine. The first week was the hardest. She rested, prayed, and tried to drink as much water as she could, but the medicines didn’t seem to be helping. She started to panic. There was no money coming in, and she didn’t know when it would get easier to breathe. The week passed, and still no word from Instacart.

“I was emailing them, I don’t know, 20 times a day, just saying, ‘Hey I’m entitled to a response,’” she tells The Verge. “Every time I got the same automated response: submit your claim, submit your claim.”

After 12 days, the test came back negative — either a fluke illness or a fluke test result — but Rachel was still in a hole for the two weeks she’d spent in quarantine. Instacart finally wrote her back, rejecting Rachel’s claim. She needed a quarantine order from a government agency, the company said, not just a note from her doctor. She tried other outlets — her doctor again, then the state department of health, then the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, then the state department of labor — but none of them could satisfy Instacart or hold the company to account. She never got the money. Because of the nature of gig work, she didn’t even qualify for Nevada’s unemployment benefits.

“Every path I went down, I hit a dead end,” she says. “My thing is, you don’t have to offer this to anyone. Why offer it if you’re not going to pay it?”

It’s a common story. On forums and in Facebook groups, Instacart’s sick pay has become a kind of sour joke. There are lots of posts asking how to apply, but no one seems to think they’ll actually get the money. The Verge spoke to eight different workers who were placed under quarantine — each one falling prey to a different technicality. A worker based in Buffalo was quarantined by doctors in March but didn’t qualify for an official test, leaving him with no verification to send to reps. In western Illinois, a man received a quarantine order from the state health department, but without a test, he couldn’t break through. Others simply fell through the cracks, too discouraged to fight the claim for the weeks it would likely take to break through.

Only three of the eight workers actually got their money: one full-time staff employee got paid through HR channels, while another gig worker received a partial sum after weeks of haggling.

In a third case, a 50-year-old shopper named Alejo tested positive and was admitted to the ICU, but he had his claim denied while he was hospitalized. A gig workers group seized on the case to publicly pressure Instacart with a blistering Medium post, and the pressure worked: Instacart paid up, although the company noted that the circumstances were exceptional. But Alejo hasn’t improved. He’s been in the hospital for more than a month now and is still on a ventilator, with his doctors increasingly concerned about organ failure. In the meantime, his stepson Alejandro has gone back to making Instacart runs. With Alejo laid up, it’s the only way to keep the family afloat.

People are dying out there on the front lines of the COVID-19 war, and nobody in corporate America or the Trump regime really seems to give a damn.  No wonder the country is rapidly burning these days.

Retribution Execution, Con't

The first heads are rolling in the FBI over the Trump regime's retribution over Michael Flynn and a lot more will follow.

After a 38-year career with the Justice Department, the FBI's top lawyer Dana Boente was asked to resign on Friday. Two sources familiar with the decision to dismiss Boente said it came from high levels of the Justice Department rather than directly from FBI Director Christopher Wray.
His departure comes on the heels of recent criticism by Fox News for his role in the investigation of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

A spokesman for the FBI confirmed to NBC News that Boente did in fact resign on Friday.

Fox News has recently criticized Boente's role in the investigation of Flynn, whose criminal charge for lying to the FBI was recently dropped by the Justice Department based in part on the argument that his lies were not material to an underlying investigation.

Boente also said in a recently leaked memo that material put into the public record about Flynn was not exculpatory for the former national security advisor. The memo undermines the Justice Department's latest position that material about Flynn was mishandled by prosecutors.

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs said on April 27 that, "Shocking new reports suggest F.B.I. General Counsel Dana Boente day was acting in coordination with F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray to block the release of that evidence that would have cleared General Flynn."

Wray formally asked for Boente's resignation, but the decision to end his tenure at the FBI came from Attorney General William Barr's Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, according to two sources.

A spokesman for the FBI said Boente announced on Friday his decision to retire, which will take effect June 30.

"Few people have served so well in so many critical, high-level roles at the Department," Wray said in a statement. "Throughout his long and distinguished career as a public servant, Dana has demonstrated a selfless determination to ensure that justice is always served on behalf of our citizens."

Boente has long been a target of Trump for his role in the Mueller probe, being involved in all stages of the investigation as both the FBI's top lawyer and as former assistant AG before Rod Rosenstein.  Barr cashiering him is a loud, unmistakable message that he is now officially collecting heads, and that nobody is safe.

A Supreme Legacy Of Order

In a 5-4 decision, US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts sided with California's right to public safety over a church's challenge to be immune from common sense during a pandemic.

The Supreme Court on Friday turned away a request from a church in California to block enforcement of state restrictions on attendance at religious services.

The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the court’s four-member liberal wing to form a majority.

“Although California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the free exercise clause of the First Amendment,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in an opinion concurring in the unsigned ruling.

“Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time,” the chief justice wrote. “And the order exempts or treats more leniently only dissimilar activities, such as operating grocery stores, banks and laundromats, in which people neither congregate in large groups nor remain in close proximity for extended periods.”

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh noted dissents.

“The church and its congregants simply want to be treated equally to comparable secular businesses,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch. “California already trusts its residents and any number of businesses to adhere to proper social distancing and hygiene practices.”

“The state cannot,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote, quoting from an appeals court decision in a different case, “‘assume the worst when people go to worship but assume the best when people go to work or go about the rest of their daily lives in permitted social settings.’”

The court’s ruling was its first attempt to balance the public health crisis against the Constitution’s protection of religious freedom. And it expanded the Supreme Court’s engagement with the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, after rulings on voting in Wisconsin and prisons in Texas and Ohio.

The case was brought by the South Bay United Pentecostal Church in Chula Vista, Calif., which said Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, had lost sight of the special status of religion in the constitutional structure.

“The Covid-19 pandemic is a national tragedy,” lawyers for the church wrote in their Supreme Court brief, “but it would be equally tragic if the federal judiciary allowed the ‘fog of war’ to act as an excuse for violating fundamental constitutional rights.”

The brief, filed May 23, asked the justices to block a ruling the day before from a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, saying that the shutdown orders did not single out houses of worship for unfavorable treatment. The majority said state officials had struck an appropriate balance.

“We’re dealing here with a highly contagious and often fatal disease for which there presently is no known cure,” the majority wrote in an unsigned opinion that went on to quote a famous dissent from a 1947 Supreme Court decision. “In the words of Justice Robert Jackson, if a ‘court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.’”

Luckily, Roberts was the voice of reason here that saved America from becoming a theocracy.

For now.  But remember, there were four justices who agreed that the church has the right to kill you with a deadly disease, and that your right not to die from COVID-19 cannot take precedence over the church's right to violate health and public safety.

A second Trump term would end us all.

Tales From The Trump Depression, Con't

We're basically entering June under a worst-case scenario situation, and it doesn't look like there's going to be any relief anytime soon.  It's all what we make of it from here on out.

A global pandemic has now killed more than 100,000 Americans and left 40 million unemployed in its wake. Protests — some of them violent — have once again erupted in spots across the country over police killings of black Americans.

President Trump, meanwhile, is waging a war against Twitter, attacking his political rivals, criticizing a voting practice he himself uses and suggesting that looters could be shot.

America’s persistent political dysfunction and racial inequality were laid bare this week, as the coronavirus death toll hit a tragic new milestone and as the country was served yet another reminder of how black people are killed by law enforcement in disproportionately high numbers. Together, the events present a grim tableau of a nation in crisis — one seared by violence against its citizens, plagued by a deadly disease that remains uncontained and rattled by a devastating blow to its economy.

The threads of our civic life could start unraveling, because everybody’s living in a tinderbox,” said historian and Rice University professor Douglas Brinkley.

Barbara Ransby, a historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a longtime political activist, said the toll of the coronavirus outbreak made long-standing racial inequities newly stark. Then, images of police violence made those same disparities visceral.

“People are seething about all kinds of things,” said Ransby, the author of “Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century.” “There are major turning points and ruptures in history. . . . This is one of these moments, but we’ve not seen how it will fully play out.”

In the days after a 46-year-old black man died in the custody of Minneapolis police in an incident caught on video, demonstrators took to the streets. In that city, a police precinct was breached and set ablaze, along with other businesses. In Colorado, shots were fired near the statehouse. At a protest in Louisville, seven people were shot.

At this point America itself is entering a new chapter, as I've said before.  We're witnessing history, and not all of us will make it out to the other side in order to observe what's going on from the distance of time and safety.

We'll see what happens, but at this point all my fears being realized of America quickly descending into a semi-fascist state with Trump as dictator through emergency powers is not only possible, but I'd say increasingly likely.

 

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Meanwhile here in Kentucky, protests continue against police for the murder of Breonna Taylor in March, killed by Louisville Metro PD as they invaded her home.

Groups of protesters demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, who was an African American woman killed in her apartment by police officers on March 13, are gathered on Jefferson and Sixth Street.

Around 9:30 p.m., shortly after a police transport unit was rolled down by protesters on Jefferson Street toward Sixth Street, against normal flow of traffic, reports of loud bangs came followed by tear gas.

Around 9 p.m., protesters pulled down the American and Kentucky flags in front of the Hall of Justice and set them ablaze. Moments later, some protesters threw objects at the building's glass doors, more items were lit on fire and there was three loud bangs went off.

A group of more than 1,000 people were estimated to be gathering around the Hall of Justice where everything seems to be focused.

Earlier in the day, the group which was more than 500 gathered at Jefferson Street with two helicopters circling overhead, including a LMPD chopper. The groups had speakers talking from the steps of Metro Hall. The crowd has continued to grow as the evening demonstrations carried on.

Hundreds also knelt between Broadway and Jefferson Street with their fists are in the air and marched around the police department chanting, 'No justice no peace.'

Protesters were also seen banging on glass at Hall of Justice steps calling for officers to come outside.

Jibriyll Izsreal, of Louisville, told the crowd they shouldn't bang on the doors.

"What I said to the crowd, 'Was do you really want to break down the glass doors of the police precincts? You’re going to give them the impression that you want to fight and if you want to fight the police what you really need to do is go home and get your guns and come back here with some force,' at which point everyone got silent," he said. "I asked everyone who had a gun and again every one was silent. Breonna Taylor’s family asked all the people in Louisville who are concerned about her loved ones not to engage in violence in order to honor memory. I felt imperative to come down here primarily for that reason, to honor Breonna's family in the way that her family is asking the community to do."

To his credit, Mayor Greg Fischer says the LMPD will suspend no-knock raids until further notice.  Seven people were shot during protests Thursday night, nobody was killed thankfully, but LMPD, hours after saying they didn't fire a single bullet, promises lethal force against protesters if things get out of hand again this weekend.

But at this point it's been ten weeks, and nobody's been fired yet.

It's going to be a long, deadly summer.

Last Call For Press The Meat, Con't

We openly arrest journalists on live TV in America now, because we all live in a fascist police state and have for years.

A CNN crew was arrested while giving a live television report Friday morning in Minneapolis -- and then released about an hour later -- as the crew covered ongoing protests over the death in police custody of George Floyd. 

State police detained CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez, his producer and his photojournalist shortly after 5 a.m. CT (6 a.m. ET) as Jimenez was reporting live from a street south of downtown, near where a police precinct building was earlier set ablaze. 

Jimenez could be seen holding his CNN badge while reporting, identifying himself as a reporter, and telling the officers the crew would move wherever officers needed them to. An officer gripped his arm as Jimenez talked, then put him in handcuffs. 

"We can move back to where you like. We are live on the air here. ... Put us back where you want us. We are getting out of your way -- wherever you want us (we'll) get out of your way," Jimenez said to police before he was led away. 

"We were just getting out of your way when you were advancing through the intersection," Jimenez continued. 

Police told the crew they were being detained because they were told to move and didn't, one member of the CNN crew relayed to the network. 

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker that he deeply apologizes for what happened and would work to have the crew released. 

Later, after the crew was freed, Walz told reporters: "We have got to ensure that there is a safe spot for journalism to tell the story." 

The troopers were clearing the area at Walz's direction, he said, adding there was "absolutely no reason" for the journalists' arrests and that he takes full responsibility.

Jimenez is Afro-Latino, his CNN colleague Josh Campbell, who is white and was a block away, was treated normally by the police.

CNN's Josh Campbell, who also was in the area but not standing with the on-air crew, said he, too, was approached by police, but was allowed to remain. 

"I identified myself ... they said, 'OK, you're permitted to be in the area,'" recounted Campbell, who is white. "I was treated much differently than (Jimenez) was." 

Jimenez is black and Latino. Kirkos is white, and Mendez is Hispanic.

Any questions about Trump calling CNN "enemies of the people" being a bad thing, or are we still on "Trump doesn't mean what he says" as shitty excuse?

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Retribution Execution, Con't.

I predicted yesterday that Twitter would fold like a house of cards as they have every other time before when it came to Donald Trump using their social media platform against the company's stated terms of use that until now, would have generated some sort of account penalty or tweet removal for anyone else on the planet. That was until last night when Trump reacted to the Minneapolis police using violence against protesters and sparking major civil unrest in the city with a call towards more violence against black America, and Twitter took action.

Twitter said Friday morning that a tweet from President Trump in which he threatened shooting in response to civil unrest in Minneapolis violated the company's rules. The company said it was leaving the tweet up in the public interest. 

Why it matters: The move exacerbates tensions between Twitter and Trump over the company's authority to label or limit his speech and, conversely, the president's authority to dictate rules for a private company. 

"This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence," the company said in text that now accompanies the tweet. "However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible." 

The decision to label Trump's tweet was made by teams within Twitter and CEO Jack Dorsey was informed of the plan before the tweet was labeled, Twitter told Axios.

Trump's outright threat against the people of Minneapolis is example #75927 of his absolute unfitness for the job he's in, and it looks like we may have finally hit the point where we're about to have a summer of breathtaking violence on top of a pandemic that is killing thousands of Americans per week on top of a massive economic depression.

Last night seemed like a new chapter in the story began, and at this point I fully expect it to be written in blood.

The line about looting and shooting is the same quote made by former Miami Police Chief Walter Headley. The following is an excerpt from a December 28, 1967 article by United Press International about what was described as Headley's "shotgun crackdown on Negro slum hoodlums."

"In declaring war on 'young hoodlums, from 15 to 21, who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign,' Headley said, 'we don’t mind being accused of police brutality.'

'They haven’t seen anything, yet.'

Headley said Miami hasn't been troubled with racial disturbances and looting because he let the word filter down, 'When the looting starts, the shooting starts.'"

Trump wants blood so badly right now, and he's going to get it.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Minneapolis is burning.

A police precinct was burning in Minneapolis late Thursday as protests over the death of George Floyd raged on for a third straight day.

Protesters had focused their attention on the Police Department's 3rd Precinct, the base of four officers who were fired after Floyd's death in their custody Monday.

A fire appeared to have spread to the interior of the stations, which police had evacuated. They cleared the building shortly after 10 p.m., when demonstrators forcibly entered and "ignited several fires," department spokesman John Elder said.

Fires also burned on both sides of the police station as demonstrators pushed down temporary fencing and occupied property at the precinct. Officers fired tear gas from the ground and a rooftop.

The city of Minneapolis on Twitter urged people to "retreat" from the area as a precaution. "We're hearing unconfirmed reports that gas lines to the Third Precinct have been cut and other explosive materials are in the building."

Police said late Thursday no serious injuries had been reported.

Multiple blazes also burned on nearby blocks.

The Minnesota guard said on Twitter that 500 soldiers have been activated for duty in the Twin Cities. "Our mission is to protect life, preserve property and the right to peacefully demonstrate," it said.

Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order Thursday activating the Minnesota National Guard. A statement from the governor's office said the order was needed after "extensive damage to private property occurred and peaceful protests evolved into a dangerous situation for protesters and first responders."

Businesses across the Twin Cities were boarding up their windows and doors Thursday in an effort to prevent looting.

Looters on Thursday broke into a Target on University Avenue in St. Paul before police arrived, sending the raiders scrambling.

But as police circled the store and faced off with an angry crowd, looters broke into a T.J. Maxx close by and made off with whatever they could carry. That store was later reported to be on fire.

"Officers continue to be hit with rocks and bottles thrown by people who are also breaking into buildings, looting and destroying property," St. Paul police said on Twitter.

And Black Lives still matter, even as Hennepin County refuses to bring charges against a monster who murdered a man in public with dozens of witnesses.

Prosecutors looking at the death of George Floyd on Thursday asked the people of Minneapolis for patience while they investigate the case that has riled the city and the nation. 

Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died after pleading for help as a police officer used his knee on Floyd's neck to pin him -- unarmed and handcuffed -- to the ground. His death sparked outrage and protests across the country, demonstrations that continued Thursday. 

In Minneapolis, hundreds of people gathered outside the police departments Third Precinct. Some protesters brought signs and some threw rocks. A temporary fence in front of the station was knocked over. Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and bean bags fired at rock throwers. 

Earlier, Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman, giving an update to reporters on the case, said he must look at all evidence before bringing charges. 

"My job in the end is to prove he violated a criminal statute. And there is other evidence that does not support a criminal charge. We need to wade through all of that evidence and come to a meaningful decision and we are doing that to the best of our ability."

It's been centuries, but sure.

Patience is what's needed right now, right?