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      Notorious former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio loses bid to win back seat

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      Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff notorious for his abusive policing and hardline anti-immigration tactics, has lost his bid to win back the post he held for 24 years.An early Donald Trump supporter and proponent of the racist theory that Barack Obama was not born in the US, Arpaio lost the Republican primary for Maricopa county sheriff to a former aide, Jerry Sheridan. Sheridan will face off against Democrat Paul Penzone in the November elections.This is Arpaio’s second failed attempt to return to politics since Trump pardoned him in 2017, months after he was convicted of criminal contempt of court for violating a judge’s order to stop racially profiling Latinos. In 2018, he finished last in a three-way race for a Senate nomination in Arizona. This latest defeat likely signals an end to the 88-year-old’s political career.But Sheridan, a 38-year veteran of the sheriff’s office, has promised to carry on Arpaio’s legacy of harsh, anti-immigrant policing. Arpaio’s legacy also lives on in Trump. “Sheriff Joe” was a precursor to Trump, said Chuck Coughlin, a Republican consultant in Arizona, in a recent interview with the Guardian. Arpaio, who called himself “America’s toughest sheriff”, became infamous for his reality star showmanship and anti-immigration crackdowns long before Trump. “He birthed that nationalism narrative that Trump is now using,” Coughlin said.As the sheriff of Phoenix from 1992 through 2016, Arpaio created the “Tent City” jail that he compared to a concentration camp, where inmates were forced to work in chain gangs in Arizona’s 120F heat. His department racked up $147m in taxpayer-funded legal bills, and botched the investigations of more than 400 sex-crimes complaints.But he’s most well-known nationally for his anti-immigration tactics. Embracing a national program that allowed his officers to act as immigration agents, he invited camera crews along on raids. A federal judge in 2013 found that his department racially profiled Latinos, and his traffic patrols targeted immigrants.Voters eventually tired of his hardline tactics and voted him out in 2016. His campaign this year vastly outspent Sheridan’s, but to no avail. Though Sheridan has vowed to carry on some of Arpaio’s signature policies if elected, he has indicated he’ll do so without bombast and theatrics. Sheridan, like Arpaio, was found guilty of civil contempt of court for disobeying an order to stop racial profiling but was not charged criminal contempt.Penzone, who unseated Arpaio in 2016, is still regarded as the favored candidate in November. Political strategists believe that Arpaio’s fall from power in Arizona could foretell Trump’s fate in November.Arpaio’s nationalism, as well as Arizona’s infamous “show me your papers” law, which gave law enforcement sweeping powers to target Latinos, galvanized a generation of progressive activists – many of whom have been elected to serve into local and state office. “The state is becoming more diverse, and it’s becoming more Latino – and it’s becoming younger,” said Marisa Franco, the co-founder of the social justice advocacy group Mijente, in an interview with the Guardian. “It awakened an electorate that’s, I think, more justice-minded.”Moderate Republicans are also disassociating from the diehard nationalism that Arpaio – and Trump – represent, according to Coughlin. “All of our research shows that a majority of Republicans want real immigration reform,” he said. “[Trump has] a weapon in a way that doesn’t appeal to most Arizonans.”Agencies contributed reporting More

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      Trump badly miscalculated in Portland – and even he knows it | Cas Mudde

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      Trump overestimated how much voters fear ‘antifa’ – and underestimated how terrible his ham-fisted authoritarianism would lookOpponents of Donald Trump often describe him as a “political genius” who has a cunning understanding of the anxieties and fears of American society, and is able to create and use crises to his favor. The current standoff in Portland shows, yet again, that this is not the case. While his alleged fight against antifa will satisfy some of his far-right supporters, it increasingly risks further alienating the so-called “moderate” Republicans – which seems mostly used to describe better-off pocketbook Republican voters – who are already feeling uneasy over his Covid-19 handling and the economic fallout of the pandemic.An almost ignored aspect of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is that Trump failed to use it to push through his authoritarian agenda by increasing executive powers, weakening the powers of other institutions, like Congress, and marginalizing dissent, for instance by banning demonstrations. Almost all other countries implemented a more repressive approach to Covid-19, including those governed by progressive parties (like Spain), while most far-right governments used it to push through draconian repressive measures (such as Hungary and India). Continue reading… 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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      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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      This is what happens when the War on Terror is turned inward, on America | Hamilton Nolan

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      A strange and necessary ingredient of America’s descent towards fascism is that it will have little impact on the majority of people. As militarized federal agents are deployed into major cities to snatch protesters and charge them with harsh federal crimes for daring to deface the ruling party’s monuments, most Americans will continue living their normal lives with no discernible changes, at least for the time being. People wake up and eat breakfast and spend their days doing mundane tasks in fascist countries, too.If there was ever a tipping point, we are past it. Trying to stare hard at the daily news to determine the exact point at which we slip into fascism is like staring at a baby to see when it turns into an adult. By the time you perceive it, it’s already happened. It is important to understand that the crackdown phase that we are now in – the unaccountable government forces, the riot police, the teargas, the targeted political prosecutions that will come next – are not something new, but something old. This isn’t about Donald Trump. This is about America, baby. This is what we do.Trying to determine when we slip into fascism is like staring at a baby to see when it turns into an adult. Once you perceive it, it’s already happenedTrump, a fool ruled by impulse rather than strategy, did not build the fearsome machine of government oppression that is now being aimed at his political opponents. This machine was systematically assembled and lovingly tended to by generations of presidents before him – Democratic, Republican, Whig. Trump is only broadening its aperture. All of these tools have been sharpened on the bones of Native Americans and Black people and immigrants and Muslims overseas. America has always needed someone to oppress. Mostly so that we could steal their stuff, but also so that the rest of us didn’t turn against one another. This country has managed to avoid a class war by giving poor white people an array of minorities to abuse, a trick that has benefited rich white people for centuries. We have used injustice not just as a way to get ahead, but as a release valve. Our leaders have long calculated that it is safer to subjugate and mistreat a minority of the population than to risk dissatisfaction in the majority. In doing so, the government has become very adept at creating enemies and wielding power against them in flagrant shows of force.These are trivial observations, basic facts that will only be disputed by those who are destined to land on the side of fascism anyhow. The question is what they mean for our present moment, which is distinguished not by the existence of government oppression but by its direction. We are finding out what happens when the war on terror is turned inward on ourselves. In addition to the federal agents already in Portland, more are coming to Chicago, Albuquerque, and Kansas City; that may well be just the beginning of a national rollout. “Protecting federal property” and “maintaining law and order” are twin fig leaves wafting in a cloud of teargas. The Department of Homeland Security has effectively become a White House-controlled paramilitary and domestic surveillance service unaccountable to anyone except Trump and his loyalists. (If we’re being honest, this moment has been inevitable since DHS was panic-created in the days after the September 11 attacks. If there is any more fascist word than “homeland”, I haven’t heard it.)The basic logic behind gun control is that if there are a bunch of guns lying around, sooner or later someone will get shot. The same holds true for the security state. If you build it, it will eventually come for you. Cloaked in the banality of federal bureaucracy, we have tolerated the creation of a terrifying set of powers that now rest in the small hands of a man who has been waiting his entire life to take revenge on each and every enemy who has slighted him. Barack Obama sat in the White House for eight years and did nothing to dismantle this bureaucracy of soldier-cops. He was too busy using it in foreign drone wars. It’s too seductive to have that power, when you are the one who controls it. Now a worse president has it, and it will be turned, at last, against a bigger chunk of us than ever before.The trick now is convincing that tranquil majority that their interests are more aligned with the protesters than with the cops in fatiguesEvery new outrage is a test of what we will tolerate. If the government can roll out troops to a large swath of major cities and shoot the eyes out of protesters with rubber bullets all under the guise of stopping some kids from spray-painting some courthouse, it is a fairly good indicator that the spirit of the broader American public will not rouse itself to stand in the way of fascism’s tightening grip. In a nation this big, you can make 100 million people official Enemies of the State and still leave a comfortable majority blissfully unaffected. The trick now is convincing that tranquil, all-American majority that their interests are actually more aligned with the protesters wielding spray-paint outside the courthouse than with the militarized cops in fatigues.That shouldn’t be an impossible task. When there is actual justice being done inside the courthouses, the protesters and the storm troopers will both disappear. More