David Brooks' CALL TO ACTION: 'It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising'

 David Brooks of The New York Times:

In the beginning there was agony. Under the empires of old, the strong did what they willed and the weak suffered what they must.

But over the centuries, people built the sinews of civilization: Constitutions to restrain power, international alliances to promote peace, legal systems to peacefully settle disputes, scientific institutions to cure disease, news outlets to advance public understanding, charitable organizations to ease suffering, businesses to build wealth and spread prosperity, and universities to preserve, transmit and advance the glories of our way of life. These institutions make our lives sweet, loving and creative, rather than nasty, brutish and short.

Trumpism is threatening all of that. It is primarily about the acquisition of power — power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice.

So far, we have treated the various assaults of President Trump and the acolytes in his administration as a series of different attacks. In one lane they are going after law firms. In another they savaged U.S.A.I.D. In another they’re attacking our universities. On yet another front they’re undermining NATO and on another they’re upending global trade.

But that’s the wrong way to think about it. These are not separate battles. This is a single effort to undo the parts of the civilizational order that might restrain Trump’s acquisition of power. And it will take a concerted response to beat it back.

So far, each sector Trump has assaulted has responded independently — the law firms seek to protect themselves, the universities, separately, try to do the same. Yes, a group of firms banded together in support of the firm Perkins Coie, but in other cases it’s individual law firms trying to secure their separate peace with Trump. Yes, Harvard eventually drew a line in the sand, but Columbia cut a deal. This is a disastrous strategy that ensures that Trump will trample on one victim after another. He divides and conquers.

Slowly, many of us are realizing that we need to band together. But even these efforts are insular and fragmented. Several members of the Big Ten conference are working on forming an alliance to defend academic freedom. Good. But that would be 18 schools out of roughly 4,000 degree-granting American colleges and universities.

So far, the only real hint of something larger — a mass countermovement — has been the rallies led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But this, too, is an ineffective way to respond to Trump; those partisan rallies make this fight seem like a normal contest between Democrats and Republicans.

What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.

It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.

Peoples throughout history have done exactly this when confronted by an authoritarian assault. In their book, “Why Civil Resistance Works,” Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan looked at hundreds of nonviolent uprisings. These movements used many different tools at their disposal — lawsuits, mass rallies, strikes, work slowdowns, boycotts and other forms of noncooperation and resistance.

These movements began small and built up. They developed clear messages that appealed to a variety of groups. They shifted the narrative so the authoritarians were no longer on permanent offense. Sometimes they used nonviolent means to provoke the regime into taking violent action, which shocks the nation, undercuts the regime’s authority and further strengthens the movement. (Think of the civil rights movement at Selma.) Right now, Trumpism is dividing civil society; if done right, the civic uprising can begin to divide the forces of Trumpism.

Chenoweth and Stephan emphasize that this takes coordination. There doesn’t always have to be one charismatic leader, but there does have to be one backbone organization, one coordinating body that does the work of coalition building.

In his book “Upheaval,” Jared Diamond looked at countries that endured crises and recovered. He points out that the nations that recover don’t catastrophize — they don’t say everything is screwed up and we need to burn it all down. They take a careful inventory of what is working well and what is working poorly. Leaders assume responsibility for their own share of society’s problems.

This struck me as essential advice for Americans today. We live in a country with catastrophically low levels of institutional trust. University presidents, big law firms, media organizations and corporate executives face a wall of skepticism and cynicism. If they are going to participate in a mass civic uprising against Trump, they have to show the rest of the country that they understand the establishment sins that gave rise to Trump in the first place. They have to show that they are democratically seeking to reform their institutions. This is not just defending the establishment; it’s moving somewhere new.

Let’s take the universities. I’ve been privileged to teach at American universities off and on for nearly 30 years and I get to visit a dozen or two others every year. These are the crown jewels of American life. They are hubs of scientific and entrepreneurial innovation. In a million ways, the scholars at universities help us understand ourselves and our world.

I have seen it over and over: A kid comes on campus as a freshman, inquisitive but unformed. By senior year, there is something impressive about her. She is awakened, cultured, a critical thinker. The universities have performed their magic once again.

People flock from all over the world to admire our universities.

But like all institutions, they have their flaws. Many have allowed themselves to become shrouded in a stifling progressivism that tells half the country: Your voices don’t matter. Through admissions policies that favor rich kids, the elite universities have contributed to a diploma divide. If the same affluent families come out on top generation after generation, then no one should be surprised if the losers flip over the table.

In other words, a civic uprising has to have a short-term vision and a long-term vision. Short term: Stop Trump. Foil his efforts. Pile on the lawsuits. Turn some of his followers against him. The second is a long-term vision of a fairer society that is not just hard on Trump, but hard on the causes of Trumpism — one that offers a positive vision. Whether it’s the universities, the immigration system or the global economy, we can’t go back to the status quo that prevailed when Trump first rode down the escalator.

I’m really not a movement guy. I don’t naturally march in demonstrations or attend rallies that I’m not covering as a journalist. But this is what America needs right now. Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

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School board meetings are now the cultural battlefield

Time and again over the last two years, parents and protesters have derailed school board meetings across the country, reported ProPublica. Once considered tame, even boring, the meetings have become polarized battlegrounds over COVID-19 safety measures, LGBTQ+ student rights, “obscene” library books and attempts to teach children about systemic racism in America.

On dozens of occasions, the tensions at the meetings have escalated into not just shouting matches and threats but also arrests and criminal charges.

ProPublica identified nearly 90 incidents in 30 states going back to the spring of 2021. (That’s when the majority of boards resumed gathering in-person after predominantly holding meetings virtually.) Our examination — the first wide-ranging analysis of school board unrest — found that at least 59 people were arrested or charged over an 18-month period, from May 2021 to November 2022. Prosecutors dismissed the vast majority of the cases, most of them involving charges of trespassing, resisting an officer or disrupting a public meeting. Almost all of the incidents were in suburban districts, and nearly every participant was white.

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Protesters dressed in 'Call of Duty outfits' with big guns 'not advancing the cause of gun rights'

Across the country, openly carrying a gun in public is no longer just an exercise in self-defense — increasingly it is a soapbox for elevating one’s voice and, just as often, quieting someone else’s, writes Mike McIntire in The New York Times.

This month, armed protesters appeared outside an elections center in Phoenix, hurling baseless accusations that the election for governor had been stolen from the Republican, Kari Lake. In October, Proud Boys with guns joined a rally in Nashville where conservative lawmakers spoke against transgender medical treatments for minors.

In June, armed demonstrations around the United States amounted to nearly one a day. A group led by a former Republican state legislator protested a gay pride event in a public park in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Men with guns interrupted a Juneteenth festival in Franklin, Tenn., handing out fliers claiming that white people were being replaced. Among the others were rallies in support of gun rights in Delaware and abortion rights in Georgia.

Whether at the local library, in a park or on Main Street, most of these incidents happen where Republicans have fought to expand the ability to bear arms in public, a movement bolstered by a recent Supreme Court ruling on the right to carry firearms outside the home. The loosening of limits has occurred as violent political rhetoric rises and the police in some places fear bloodshed among an armed populace on a hair trigger.

But the effects of more guns in public spaces have not been evenly felt. A partisan divide — with Democrats largely eschewing firearms and Republicans embracing them — has warped civic discourse. Deploying the Second Amendment in service of the First has become a way to buttress a policy argument, a sort of silent, if intimidating, bullhorn.

“It’s disappointing we’ve gotten to that state in our country,” said Kevin Thompson, executive director of the Museum of Science & History in Memphis, Tenn., where armed protesters led to the cancellation of an L.G.B.T.Q. event in September. “What I saw was a group of folks who did not want to engage in any sort of dialogue and just wanted to impose their belief.”

More than 700 armed demonstrations found that, at about 77 percent of them, people openly carrying guns represented right-wing views, such as opposition to L.G.B.T.Q. rights and abortion access, hostility to racial justice rallies and support for former President Donald J. Trump’s lie of winning the 2020 election.

The records, from January 2020 to last week, were compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nonprofit that tracks political violence around the world. The Times also interviewed witnesses to other, smaller-scale incidents not captured by the data, including encounters with armed people at indoor public meetings.

Anti-government militias and right-wing culture warriors like the Proud Boys attended a majority of the protests, the data showed. Violence broke out at more than 100 events and often involved fisticuffs with opposing groups, including left-wing activists such as antifa.

Republican politicians are generally more tolerant of openly armed supporters than are Democrats, who are more likely to be on the opposing side of people with guns, the records suggest. In July, for example, men wearing sidearms confronted Beto O’Rourke, then the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, at a campaign stop in Whitesboro and warned that he was “not welcome in this town.”

Republican officials or candidates appeared at 32 protests where they were on the same side as those with guns. Democratic politicians were identified at only two protests taking the same view as those armed.

Sometimes, the Republican officials carried weapons: Robert Sutherland, a Washington state representative, wore a pistol on his hip while protesting Covid-19 restrictions in Olympia in 2020. “Governor,” he said, speaking to a crowd, “you send men with guns after us for going fishing. We’ll see what a revolution looks like.”

After Dan Crenshaw, a Republican congressman from Texas and former Navy SEAL, lamented in 2020 that “guys dressing up in their Call of Duty outfits, marching through the streets,” were not advancing the cause of gun rights, he was knocked by the Firearms Policy Coalition for “being critical of people exercising their right to protest.” The coalition has fought state laws that it says force gun owners to choose between the rights to free speech and self-defense.

Regardless of whether there is a right to go armed in public for self-defense, early laws and court decisions made clear that the Constitution did not empower people, such as modern-day militia members, to gather with guns as a form of protest, said Michael C. Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell University who has written about the tension between the rights to free speech and guns.

Mr. Dorf pointed to an 18th-century Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that a group of protesters with firearms had no right to rally in public against a government tax. Some states also adopted an old English law prohibiting “going armed to the terror of the people,” still on the books in some places, aimed at preventing the use of weapons to threaten or intimidate.

“Historically,” said Mr. Dorf, “there were such limits on armed gatherings, even assuming that there’s some right to be armed as individuals.”

More broadly, there is no evidence that the framers of the Constitution intended for Americans to take up arms during civic debate among themselves — or to intimidate those with differing opinions. That is what happened at the Memphis museum in September, when people with guns showed up to protest a scheduled dance party that capped a summer-long series on the history of the L.G.B.T.Q. community in the South.

While the party was billed as “family friendly,” conservatives on local talk radio claimed that children would be at risk (the museum said the planned activities were acceptable for all ages). As armed men wearing masks milled about outside, the panicked staff canceled all programs and evacuated the premises.

Mr. Thompson, the director, said he and his board were now grappling with the laws on carrying firearms, which were loosened last year by state legislators.

“It’s a different time,” he said, “and it’s something we have to learn to navigate.”

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Missouri governor pardons couple convicted of pointing guns at protesters

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson announced that he made good on his promise to pardon a couple who gained notoriety for pointing guns at social justice demonstrators as they marched past the couple’s home in a luxury St. Louis enclave last year, reported The Associated Press.

Parson, a Republican, on Friday pardoned Mark McCloskey, who pleaded guilty in June to misdemeanor fourth-degree assault and was fined $750, and Patricia McCloskey, who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment and was fined $2,000.

“Mark McCloskey has publicly stated that if he were involved in the same situation, he would have the exact same conduct,” the McCloskeys’ lawyer Joel Schwartz said Tuesday. “He believes that the pardon vindicates that conduct.”

The McCloskeys, both lawyers in their 60s, said they felt threatened by the protesters, who were passing their home in June 2020 on their way to demonstrate in front of the mayor’s house nearby in one of hundreds of similar demonstrations around the country after George Floyd’s death. The couple also said the group was trespassing on a private street.

Mark McCloskey emerged from his home with an AR-15-style rifle, and Patricia McCloskey waved a semiautomatic pistol, according to the indictment. Photos and cellphone video captured the confrontation, which drew widespread attention and made the couple heroes to some and villains to others. No shots were fired, and no one was hurt.

Special prosecutor Richard Callahan said his investigation determined that the protesters were peaceful.

“There was no evidence that any of them had a weapon and no one I interviewed realized they had ventured onto a private enclave,” Callahan said in a news release after the McCloskeys pleaded guilty.

Several Republican leaders — including then-President Donald Trump — spoke out in defense of the McCloskeys’ actions. The couple spoke on video at last year’s Republican National Convention.

Mark McCloskey, who announced in May that he was running for a U.S. Senate seat in Missouri, was unapologetic after the plea hearing.

“I’d do it again,” he said from the courthouse steps in downtown St. Louis. “Any time the mob approaches me, I’ll do what I can to put them in imminent threat of physical injury because that’s what kept them from destroying my house and my family.”

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States pass legislation to crack down on protestors

Eight states have passed laws cracking down on protest activity since Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the United States last summer, according to the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law, which tracks such legislation. Similar bills are pending in 21 states, according to the PEW Charitable Trust.

New laws enacted in Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma and Tennessee this year increase penalties for blocking traffic, tearing down monuments and other unlawful behavior during a protest or riot. The bills typically define “riot” as a gathering of three or more people that threatens public safety.

New Arkansas, Kansas and Montana laws increase penalties for protesting near oil and gas pipelines and other infrastructure. And an Alabama law will allow cities in Lauderdale County, where protestors called for the removal of a Confederate statue, to control where protests occur and to charge protest organizers permit fees.

Republican bill sponsors and police groups say increasing penalties for crimes committed during a protest will help prevent violence and protect law enforcement officers. But civil rights groups and Democrats say the heightened penalties will chill First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful assembly, and could be used to disproportionately arrest people of color.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed his state’s new law in April surrounded by GOP lawmakers and law enforcement officers.

“We wanted to make sure that we were able to protect the people of our great state, people’s businesses and property against any type of mob activity or violent assemblies,” he said then, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

But Democratic state Sen. Shev Jones told the Times that DeSantis’ “press conference spectacle was a distraction that will only further disenfranchise Black and brown communities.”

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DC will be the epicenter of protest in 2021

For years, West Coast cities have borne the brunt of violent confrontations between far-right extremists and counterprotesters who come to meet them, reported the Washington Post.

Brawls broke out in Berkeley, Calif. White-supremacist rallies in Sacramento ended in bloodshed. Violent clashes have become common in Portland, Ore., where gunfire broke out at demonstrations over the summer. Demonstrators in Olympia, Wash., recently fired weapons into a crowd, wounding at least one person.

Up and down the western United States, protests have devolved into violent clashes replete with thrown rocks, exploding fireworks and streams of chemical irritants.

But the nation’s capital — with its strict gun laws and history of orderly, peaceful protest — has largely avoided these violent conflicts.

Until now.

Extremism experts who study the far-right warn that D.C. is on a path to become the next battleground in increasingly violent confrontations with left-leaning counterdemonstrators.

In the weeks since the 2020 presidential election, a coalition of loyalists of President Trump, conspiracy theory adherents, white nationalists, self-proclaimed militia members and other fringe figures have flocked to the nation’s capital to support the president’s baseless claims of election fraud. As Trump’s hopes of reversing the election results have faltered, those who falsely believe the election was stolen or fraudulent have grown increasingly angry and desperate.

Extremist groups intent on sowing chaos and division have capitalized on these feelings to recruit members and spread disinformation, experts say. In online chat groups and forums, political rage and disbelief metastasizes into calls for violence.

 “They feel Trump won the election and that the country is being stolen from them, so this is their last chance to save America,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and the former director of intelligence at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “They’re a lot angrier now, and that worries me. It worries me that now they’re deciding if they’re going to bring guns to the street fight.”

During two weekends of pro-Trump demonstrations in November and December, violent melees spilled into the streets of downtown Washington.

Longtime D.C. protesters, many of whom have been demonstrating since the May police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, have called for D.C. residents and supporters to join them to stand against groups they see as an existential threat. Both times, they have been outnumbered.

“D.C. is not exactly a Proud Boy-friendly city,” said Eric Feinberg, who monitors online activity from extremist groups as vice president of content moderation at Coalition for a Safer Web. “Activists are in a more defensive position here. They see it as protecting their turf. But what happens is then you get these other groups like the Proud Boys that want to cause violence, and they know that if they come to D.C. they’ll be confronted by these left-wing activists — that’s where it gets dangerous.”

On Wednesday, Trump’s supporters and a litany of far-right groups who believe the president’s baseless claims of voter fraud will again converge in D.C. to demand that Congress overturn the results of the election. That same day, Congress is set to convene to certify electoral college votes, declaring President-elect Joe Biden the winner.

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Gun toting couple indicted for pointing semiautomatic handguns at protesters

A St. Louis grand jury handed down indictments against Mark and Patricia McCloskey, charged in July with brandishing weapons at protesters outside the couple’s Portland Place mansion, reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The couple was indicted on felony charges of unlawful use of a weapon and evidence tampering. The indictments were filed under seal Tuesday. St. Louis Circuit Clerk Thomas Kloeppinger said a judge ordered the indictments suppressed but Kloeppinger didn’t know the reason.

The grand jury added a count of evidence tampering after the Circuit Attorney’s Office in July charged the McCloskeys each with one count of unlawful use of a weapon — exhibiting.

A spokeswoman for Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner could not be reached.

The McCloskeys’ lawyer Joel Schwartz said he didn’t know specifics about the charges but said he’s not surprised a grand jury indicted his clients.

“I’ll certainly be interested in what was presented to the grand jury,” said Schwartz, who plans to request a transcript or recording of the proceedings, if such records were made.

Since their encounter with protesters this summer, the couple has gained national notoriety through appearances on Fox News and CNN, and by speaking at the Republican National Convention in August.

Earlier Tuesday, a St. Louis judge postponed the McCloskeys’ morning court appearance until next Wednesday.

The charges filed in July say that on June 28, Mark McCloskey, 63, pointed an AR-15 rifle at protesters and Patricia McCloskey, 61, wielded a semiautomatic handgun, placing protesters in fear of injury.

Outside the Carnahan Courthouse on Tuesday, Mark McCloskey criticized the City Counselor’s Office for opting against prosecuting protesters for trespassing in Portland Place, a private, gated street. Nine protesters were initially served police summonses, but City Counselor Michael Garvin said on Sept. 29 that trespassing charges would not be pursued.

“The government chooses to persecute us for doing no more than exercising our right to defend ourselves, our home, our property and our family and now we’re getting drug here time after time after time and for what?” Mark McCloskey said. “We didn’t fire a shot. People were violently protesting in front of our house and screaming death threats and threats of rape and threats of arson. Nobody gets charged but we get charged.”

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Alarming trend: Assault by vehicle at public protests on the rise

There have been at least 104 incidents of people driving vehicles into protests from May 27 through Sept. 5, including 96 by civilians and eight by police, according to Ari Weil, a terrorism researcher at the University of Chicago's Project on Security and Threats who spoke with USA TODAY this summer. Weil began tracking the incidents as protests sprung up in the wake of George Floyd's death in police custody.

There have been at least two fatalities, in Seattle and in Bakersfield, California.

Weil said that by analyzing news coverage, court documents and patterns of behavior – such as when people allegedly yelled slurs at protesters or turned around for a second hit – he determined that at least 43 of the incidents were malicious, and 39 drivers have been charged.

Most of the incidents happened in June, in the weeks following Floyd's May 25 killing, Weil said, and half of the incidents happened by June 7. While incidents continue to happen, they've trended downward since then, he said

"While these incidents were clustered in the beginning of the protest period, they continue to occur," Weil said on Twitter on Thursday. "As violent rhetoric intensifies in the lead up to the election, I worry about an uptick in these incidents."

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GateHouse: A ship without a captain, compass or rudder

Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse Media
September 25, 2020

As the winds of war swirled in Europe in 1938, a back-bencher in the British House of Commons gave a fiery speech denouncing the closed minds of the burgeoning totalitarian regimes of central Europe.

During a session in Parliament, an aging politician stood up and said, “You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts.”

He exclaimed, “A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.”

The words of that aging politician, Winston Churchill, could easily be invoked today. As President Donald Trump campaigns for reelection, he rails against any thoughts or words that examine his or the nation’s failures. He paints protesters as un-American and educators who study racial injustice as “Marxist” radicals who hate America and are revising history.

On the stump Trump suggests any criticism of the United States, even of slavery, is unpatriotic. According to the Washington Post, Trump’s rhetoric stands in sharp contrast to American leaders such as former President Barack Obama, who “spoke more frankly of the nation’s shortcomings, painting it as a country constantly striving to perfect itself.”

According to TIME, most Americans concur with Obama. According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 71% of registered voters agreed with the statement that “it makes the U.S. stronger when we acknowledge the country’s historical flaws.”

Trump is fearful of that “little mouse of thought.” On Constitution Day, according to the New York Times, the president focused much of his speech on what he called “left-wing rioting and mayhem” which are, according to Trump, the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools,” adding that “it’s gone on far too long.”

UCLA historian Gary Nash told TIME, revisionist history is a sign of a healthy democracy. “Why in a democratic society shouldn’t we be looking at history, warts and all? If we show only a smiley-face history we’re just mimicking what kids learn in authoritarian regimes,” he says. “As long as historical research is still valued, there will always be revisions to history.”

Bill Moyers wrote on his blog Moyers on Democracy that since Trump’s inauguration, “a handful of writers have urged Americans to heed history’s lessons on resisting tyranny in all its forms.”

One such writer is Thomas Ricks. His book, “Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom,” examines the writings of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, tracing how both came to recognize and resist abuses of power and political propaganda.

During an interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air in 2017, Gross read the last line of Ricks’ book, ”(T)he fundamental driver of Western civilization is the agreement that objective reality exists, that people of goodwill can perceive it and that other people will change their views when presented with the facts of the matter.”

Ricks replied, ”(T)his is the essence of Western society and, at its best, how Western society operates.” He continued, ”(Y)ou can really reduce it to a formula. First of all, you need to have principles. You need to stand by those principles and remember them. Second, you need to look at reality to observe facts and not just have opinions and to say, what are the facts of the matter? Third, you need to act upon those facts according to your principles.”

Facts, principles and action are essentially absent among today’s leaders - our nation is a ship without a captain, compass or rudder.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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'Law and Order' emerges as important campaign issue

COVID 19 seems to be the crucial issue in the 2020 presidential election. But the other issue that’s dominated the news in recent months — the combination of police violence, racial injustice, peaceful protests and rising crime in many cities — is gaining traction and is more politically complicated, reported the New York Times. It has the potential to hurt both Trump and Biden, in different ways. And so far, Biden has not managed to send voters a persuasive message that protects his vulnerabilities.

Perhaps the most surprising finding from the poll was this: In the four swing states — Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin — a larger share of voters said “addressing law and order” was a more important campaign issue to them than said “addressing the coronavirus pandemic” was.

On first glance, these law-and-order concerns may still seem to help Biden. More voters trust him to do a better job on several related issues — including violent crime, unifying the country and handling the protests — than trust Trump. But it’s not quite that simple.

Remember: Most Americans have already made up their minds about the election. Their answers to poll questions about which candidate they trust on specific issues are almost meaningless at this point. The bigger issue is how undecided and uncommitted voters feel.

Biden’s problem is that, on the broad issues of crime and policing, he appears to have a larger group of soft supporters — people who could flip — than Trump does. As Nate Cohn, a Times reporter who helped oversee the poll, told me, “There is definitely some Biden support with worry about crime.” Those worries span Black, Latino and white voters. To read more CLICK HERE

GateHouse: Contrived state laws used to stifle protesters

Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse Media
August 15, 2020

Are protestors criminals or are they civic-minded members of the community exercising their constitutional right to assemble and advocate?

The president thinks protestors are criminals and he has said as much. He called Minneapolis protesters “thugs” and has called for his supporters to “knock the crap out” of demonstrators he opposes. He said, “I think it’s embarrassing for the country to allow protesters.”

His disdain for protesters has encouraged legislation like Tennessee’s Driver Immunity Act. Drivers hate to be inconvenienced when protesters block streets. According to Vera Eidelman and Lee Rowland of the American Civil Liberties Union, ”[D]riving isn’t a right — it’s a privilege. Protesting, on the other hand, and specifically protesting in the streets, is a fundamental constitutional right.”

Apparently inconvenience “trumps” constitutional rights in Tennessee. In 2017, Tennessee enacted a law which provides that “A person driving an automobile who is exercising due care and injures another person who is participating in a protest or demonstration and is blocking traffic in a public right-of-way is immune from civil liability.”

In Tennessee, you might be able to avoid getting sued for running over a protester, but a driver who deliberately runs over anyone—protester or not—could face serious criminal charges.

David Alan Sklansky, a criminal law expert at Stanford Law School told Reuters “Homicide law is defined state by state, but I think there is a broad consensus, first that driving a car at a pedestrian can constitute deadly force, second that the use of deadly force is justified in self-defense only when a person reasonably believes that it is necessary to use deadly force in order to protect himself against death or serious bodily injury.”

Feel good “law and order” legislation like Tennessee’s driver immunity law has encouraged recklessness and lawlessness toward protesters in Seattle, Portland, Newport Beach and West Hollywood to name a few.

However, Tennessee continues to pursue protesters with zeal. This week, the state legislature passed a sweeping proposal that targets protesters. The bill was passed by a GOP House and Senate and now sits on the desk of Republican Gov. Bill Lee.

The bill would punish protesters who camp on state property—as protesters have outside the state Capitol since the killing of George Floyd—with a Class E felony. Class E felonies are punishable by up to six years in prison, and such convictions also result in the loss of a person’s voting rights.

According to the Tennessean, the bill also provides mandatory minimum sentences for rioting. It would also mandate that those arrested for charges such as vandalism of public property and other protest-related offenses be held for at least 12 hours without bond.

“We are using a bazooka to go after a house fly here,” said Tennessee Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro, a Democrat from Nashville, during Senate floor debate on the bill. He continued, “Are we really saying that a citizen of this state can be punished with a year in prison and have a felony record because they camped on public property?”

Criminal conduct during a protest should not be tolerated and those who engage in criminality should be prosecuted. The right to protest is not limitless. The government can impose restrictions on the time, place, and manner of peaceful assembly, provided they “are justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech [and] . . . are narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest.”

However, the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits federal and state governments from enacting legislation that would abridge the right of people to peaceably assemble. As far back as 1939, the Supreme Court agreed.
Legislation that seeks to stifle free speech by the threat of harsh penalties for contrived violations of the law serve no legitimate purpose and infringe upon longstanding, fundamental constitutional rights.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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Austin, Texas to cut police funding by $150 million

This week, the Austin, Texas City Council will consider one of the most substantial cuts to a major city’s police budget since George Floyd’s death, which sparked calls across the country to defund law enforcement and redirect that money to services like violence prevention, supportive housing, and substance use treatment, reported The Appeal.

Three City Council members have put forth a joint proposal to shrink the police department’s budget by nearly $150 million and reinvest those funds in services for the community. It would reduce the police department’s budget for the first time in over a decade. Advocates have called on the city to cut APD’s budget by at least $100 million; the joint proposal would do that, and move an additional $50 million from the Austin Police Department budget to a transition fund.

“Our primary response to problems as a local government is policing,” Councilmember Gregorio Casar told The Appeal. “Our community has come together like never before and demanded that change, and set a goal post of $100 million as a signal to that change.”

The vote comes after months of protest in Austin and demands from hundreds of community members to reduce APD’s $434 million budget, and reinvest that money into services that create safe and healthy communities. A session to vote on the budget begins on Wednesday, but the public comment period could push the vote itself off to Thursday or Friday.

Cities across the country have voted to cut police budgets in recent months. The Minneapolis City Council moved to disband its troubled police department in June, though the effort has since been stalled. The Los Angeles City Council voted to reverse a $120 million increase to the LAPD’s budget and cut an additional $30 million, while the New York City Council shifted $1 billion away from the NYPD. In Portland, Oregon, the mayor and superintendent agreed to remove police officers from the city’s schools and put the $1 million budgeted for school resource officers back into the community. Austin’s proposal would cut the police department’s budget by roughly a third, a larger percentage reduction than these other cuts.

The proposal put forth by Councilmembers Casar, Natasha Harper-Madison, and Mayor Pro Tem Delia Garza late last week combines many of the ideas council members have recommended throughout the budget process. Comments on the City Council message board seem to indicate a majority of the 10 council members support it: Councilmembers Leslie Pool, Ann Kitchen, Sabino “Pio” Renteria, and Jimmy Flannigan expressed their support online. Austin Mayor Steve Adler has also said he could support cutting $100 million so long as that move will be used to make fundamental changes. 

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AG Barr to testify before House Judiciary Committee today at 10 a.m.

Attorney General Bill Barr is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee today at 10 a.m. Here is what to expect:

The Justice Department’s independent inspector general has announced an investigation into the federal response to demonstrations, including the disputed and violent clearing of protesters from Lafayette Square near the White House last month before a photo opportunity for Mr. Trump in front of a church. The attorney general accompanied the president, and the White House initially said Mr. Barr had ordered the clearance, though he later said he had not given a “tactical” order, reported the New York Times.

Mr. Barr has since become the face of a Trump administration vow to send a surge of federal agents into cities to battle violent crime for an effort he is calling Operation Legend, which he has said would include 200 agents in Chicago and Kansas City, Mo., as well as three dozen in Albuquerque. Against the backdrop of the confrontations in Portland, Ore., the announcement received major attention.

Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, said she was prepared to challenge Mr. Barr on what she said was a double standard in supporting Americans protesting coronavirus-related stay-at-home orders while opposing those protesting police violence and racism.

 “The ways Barr has undermined that and moved toward simply satisfying the president’s needs is quite stunning,” she said.

Democrats will also press Mr. Barr on accusations raised in a hearing last month that he has politicized high-profile criminal and antitrust cases, including the decisions to scrutinize California’s emissions deal with automakers after Mr. Trump attacked it and to harass marijuana sellers in states that have legalized the substance.

They may also ask about Mr. Trump’s firing last month of Geoffrey S. Berman as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan. Mr. Berman has privately told congressional investigators that Mr. Barr unsuccessfully pressured him to resign.

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Judge refuses to stop federal arrests at Portland protests

A federal judge denied Oregon’s legal bid to stop federal law enforcement officer arrest tactics in Portland, reported Jurist. The State of Oregon filed suit following an investigation into federal law enforcement officers who had entered Portland following recent protests and riots over the George Floyd killing.

The State of Oregon alleged that unmarked federal officers had made arrests of protestors without probable cause. The state alleged First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment violations and sought a temporary restraining order to require that officers identify themselves, state the reason for an arrest, and cease arrests without probable cause.

Judge Michael Mosmon denied the restraining order for lack of legal standing and insufficient evidence. Judge Mosmon wrote:

The State has alleged that the purportedly illegal seizures by Defendants have caused an injury to its citizens’ rights to speech and assembly. In other words, the State must show that the illegal seizures—analogous to the chokeholds in Lyons—will occur again in the future. The State could try to show, for example, that all of Defendants’ seizures are illegal, or that they are under orders to fail to identify themselves or to make random arrests without probable cause. The state has shown none of this. It has presented no evidence of any official orders or policies and has presented no evidence that these allegedly illegal seizures are a widespread practice. Despite the broad language in the complaint, Oregon has shown—at most— that this type of seizure has happened twice.

Mosmon also stressed that evidence of direct orders for officers to violate due process could be used in future proceedings.

The state has not indicated whether it will appeal the decision.

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