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      Attorney general will defend aggressive US response to Portland protests

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      US attorney general William Barr will defend the aggressive federal law enforcement response to civil unrest in America in a highly anticipated hearing on Tuesday, arguing that “violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests” sparked by George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police.Barr will tell members of the House Judiciary Committee that the violence taking place in Portland, Oregon, and other cities is disconnected from the death of Floyd, which he described as a “horrible“ event that prompted a necessary national reckoning on the relationship between Black men and law enforcement.“Largely absent from these scenes of destruction are even superficial attempts by the rioters to connect their actions to George Floyd’s death or any legitimate call for reform,” Barr will say of the Portland protests, according to a copy of his prepared remarks released by the Justice Department on Monday.Barr will also touch on other controversies that have shadowed his tenure, including his handling of the investigation into Trump campaign ties to Russia, which he derisively refers to as “the bogus ‘Russiagate’ scandal”.According to his prepared remarks, Barr will try to differentiate recent protests in cities like Portland and Seattle and the demonstrations that erupted following the death of George Floyd in May.The attorney general will acknowledge to lawmakers that Floyd’s death struck a chord in the Black community because it reinforced concerns that Blacks are treated differently by police. But he will also condemn Americans who he says have responded inappropriately to Floyd’s death through what he said was rioting and anarchy.Civil unrest escalated in Portland after federal agents were accused of whisking people away in unmarked cars without probable cause. The US agents, drawn mainly from border patrol, were dispatched to the city by Donald Trump ostensibly to protect the courthouse. But they have succeeded in inflaming the situation.Washington DC was stunned in June when peaceful protesters were violently cleared from the streets by federal officers using tear gas ahead of a photo op by Trump in front of a church, where Barr had accompanied him.The attorney general has defended as necessary the broad use of law enforcement power to deal with the situation, but the department’s internal watchdog has opened investigations into use of force and other tactics by agents in both cities.The hearing on Tuesday marks Barr’s first appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, bringing him face-to-face with a panel that voted last year to hold him in contempt and is holding hearings on what Democrats allege is politicization of the Justice Department under his watch. It comes during a tumultuous stretch in which Barr has taken a series of actions cheered by Trump but condemned by Democrats and other critics.Barr makes reference in his prepared statement to that antagonistic relationship, saying that “many of the Democrats on this committee have attempted to discredit me by conjuring up a narrative that I am simply the president’s factotum who disposes of criminal cases according to his instructions. Judging from the letter inviting me to this hearing, that appears to be your agenda today.”Beyond the federal response to the demonstrations, Barr is also expected to be pressed in detail about his intervention in criminal cases arising from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.The hearing will provide Barr with a forum to offer his most detailed account to date for his actions in the criminal cases, which he has said were taken in the interests of justice and without political pressure.Those include the Justice Department’s decision to drop the prosecution of former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn (a request now tied up in court) and his firing last month of the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, whose office oversaw investigations into allies of the president.Barr also pushed for a more lenient sentence for Trump ally Roger Stone, prompting the entire trial team’s departure. That decision was at the center of a separate hearing before the same committee last month, when one of the prosecutors alleged that politics from Justice Department leadership had influenced the handling of the sentence.In the past, Barr has said that Flynn, who pleaded guilty as part of Mueller’s probe to lying to the FBI, should never have been charged and that the original sentencing recommendation for Stone – also charged in the Mueller investigation – was excessive. Barr’s opening statement does not delve into the details of the case, though he will insist Tuesday that Trump has not attempted to interfere in those decisions and has “played a role properly and traditionally played by presidents”. More

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      'These are his people': inside the elite border patrol unit Trump sent to Portland

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      ‘These are his people’: inside the elite border patrol unit Trump sent to Portland

      Federal officers use chemical irritants and projectiles to disperse Black Lives Matter protesters on 24 July 2020, in Portland.
      Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

      Bortac, a quasi-militarised outfit equivalent to the Navy Seals, has been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan
      by Ed Pilkington

      Main image:
      Federal officers use chemical irritants and projectiles to disperse Black Lives Matter protesters on 24 July 2020, in Portland.
      Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

      In January 2011, James Tomsheck, then a top internal affairs investigator inside US Customs and Border Protection, attended a meeting of about 100 senior CBP leaders in a hotel in Irvington, Virginia.
      Amid the sanitized splendor of the hotel ballroom, he vividly recalls hearing the nation’s then highest-ranking border patrol agent, David Aguilar, laying out his vision for the future. Border patrol, the former CBP deputy commissioner said, was to become the “marine corps of the US federal law enforcement community”.
      Another leading CBP figure remarked that border agents were not required to adhere to the same constitutional restraints on the use of force as other law enforcers. “We are not cops,” he said.
      Fast forward to this month, when Tomsheck absorbed with mounting foreboding the images of federal officers – led by border patrol agents – wielding teargas and flash bangs against protesters in Portland, Oregon.
      As news circulated of demonstrators being shot in the face with “less lethal” munitions, and of unidentified masked agents in camouflage strong-arming civilians into unmarked vans, the nightmare scenario Tomsheck had heard expressed by his bosses almost a decade ago – of border patrol becoming a nationwide militarized force operating outside constitutional constraints – was becoming real.
      “Border patrol has always seen itself as a militarized force, and that aspiration is now being enabled by the current administration,” Tomsheck told the Guardian.
      On Thursday, Trump ramped up his threat to send border patrol agents into US cities to tackle what he claims is an epidemic of violence and anarchy sweeping urban areas. He told Fox News he was prepared to send in 75,000 federal officers, warning: “We’ll go into all of the cities, any of the cities. We’re ready.” More

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      Tom Cotton calls slavery 'necessary evil' in attack on New York Times' 1619 Project

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      The Arkansas Republican senator Tom Cotton has called the enslavement of millions of African people “the necessary evil upon which the union was built”.Cotton, widely seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, made the comment in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published on Sunday.He was speaking in support of legislation he introduced on Thursday that aims to prohibit use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project, an initiative from the New York Times that reframes US history around August 1619 and the arrival of slave ships on American shores for the first time.Cotton’s Saving American History Act of 2020 and “would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts”, according to a statement from the senator’s office.“The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project … is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable,” Cotton told the Democrat-Gazette.“I reject that root and branch. America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it.”He added: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as [Abraham] Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”Nikole Hannah-Jones, who was awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her introductory essay to the 1619 Project, said on Friday that Cotton’s bill “speaks to the power of journalism more than anything I’ve ever done in my career”.On Sunday, she tweeted: “If chattel slavery – heritable, generational, permanent, race-based slavery where it was legal to rape, torture, and sell human beings for profit – were a ‘necessary evil’ as Tom Cotton says, it’s hard to imagine what cannot be justified if it is a means to an end.“Imagine thinking a non-divisive curriculum is one that tells black children the buying and selling of their ancestors, the rape, torture, and forced labor of their ancestors for PROFIT, was just a ‘necessary evil’ for the creation of the ‘noblest’ country the world has ever seen.“So, was slavery foundational to the Union on which it was built, or nah? You heard it from Tom Cotton himself.”Cotton responded: “More lies from the debunked 1619 Project. Describing the views of the Founders and how they put the evil institution on a path to extinction, a point frequently made by Lincoln, is not endorsing or justifying slavery. No surprise that the 1619 Project can’t get facts right.”In June, the Times was forced to issue a mea culpa after publishing an op-ed written by Cotton and entitled “Send in the troops”. The article, which drew widespread criticism, advocated for the deployment of the military to protests against police brutality toward black Americans.Times publisher AG Sulzberger initially defended the decision, saying the paper was committed to representing “views from across the spectrum”.But the Times subsequently issued a statement saying the op-ed fell short of its editorial standards, leading to the resignation of editorial page director James Bennet. More

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      Portland: protesters bring down fence as confrontation with Trump agents rises

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      Portland

      Protests in cities across US as White House seeks confrontation
      ‘White as hell’: are protests eclipsing Black Lives Matter?
      ‘Made-for-TV fascism’: how Trump’s ploy could backfire

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      1:57

      Portland protests: why Trump has sent in federal agents – video report

      The confrontation between protesters and federal paramilitaries in Portland escalated early on Sunday morning, when demonstrators finally broke down a steel fence around the courthouse after days of trying.
      The federal agents fired waves of teargas and “non-lethal projectiles” to drive back thousands besieging the courthouse to demand Donald Trump withdraw the paramilitaries, ostensibly sent to curb two months of Black Lives Matters protests. The city police, who had largely withdrawn in recent days, declared a riot and joined federal agents in making arrests.
      Portland is now the focal point of nationwide protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. But many other cities are affected.
      In Seattle, in neighbouring Washington state, authorities said rocks, bottles and fireworks were thrown at officers who used flash bangs and pepper spray. The police chief, Carmen Best, told reporters she had not seen federal agents the Trump administration sent to the city.
      In Oakland, California, after a peaceful protest, a courthouse was set on fire. In Aurora, Colorado, a car drove into a Black Lives Matter protest and a demonstrator was shot. In Richmond, Virginia, a dump truck was set on fire and police appeared to use teargas to disperse protesters.
      In Portland, authorities erected the steel barrier around the federal courthouse after two earlier fences were swiftly torn down. The latest barrier was held in place by large concrete blocks and proved impregnable for several days.
      Early on Sunday, protesters attempted to bring it down with teams pulling on ropes, but the ropes broke. Then they used a chain, a section of the fence gave way, and the rest was toppled to huge cheers before the crowd was driven back by teargas and rubber bullets.
      “Fuck the feds,” shouted a young woman in a helmet and gas mask who declined to give her name. “You want war? We’ll give you war. We will win.”
      More than 5,000 people, one of the largest crowds to date, turned out for the protest on the two-month anniversary of Floyd’s death at the hands of a police officer.
      But support for the latest Portland protests has also been driven by the president deploying federal agents to the city dressed in camouflage and using unmarked white vans to snatch protesters off the streets, a tactic the mayors of several major cities called “chilling” in a letter to the Trump administration. More

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      'White as hell': Portland protesters face off with Trump but are they eclipsing Black Lives Matter?

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      The Observer

      Portland

      ‘White as hell’: Portland protesters face off with Trump but are they eclipsing Black Lives Matter?

      On another night of confrontation with federal agents, activists said their message was in danger of being forgotten
      America ‘staring down barrel of martial law’ – Oregon senator
      ‘Made-for-TV fascism’: how Trump’s ploy could backfire More