Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah

Charlotte, South Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina, Charlottesville, Virginia, Pittsburgh, PA, even Oklahoma City; these are just a few of the recent shootings and killings with assorted ties to white supremacy groups. In the coming months or couple of years, we may get the definitive word on what associations accused Kenosha killer Kyle Rittnehouse had or didn't have. One thing's for sure, if you mention Kyle's name to Trump voters, they cheer him. You can see it on their FB pages right along with other disgusting sentiments. Ten days ago at a Wisconsin GOP rally, Rittenhouse's mom got a frenzied welcome and standing ovation when she was introduced on the stage by conservative commentator and FOX "News" loon Michelle Malkin. Malkin also spoke to Kyle Rittenhouse and thanked him for his "courage."

So the first thing I wondered when I saw President Psychopath at Tuesday's "debate" where he gave aid, comfort, endorsement, and a marketing slogan ("Stand Back, Stand By") to The Proud Boys, was, what will be the next city, the next church, the next synagogue, or maybe a mosque, or urban school or polling place to receive the kind of assault that The Orange Menace To Society is attempting to incite? Who is the next pipe bomber? You know it's coming. It's not a matter of if but when. Someone out there thinks he's gotten Dear Leader's message loud and clear. Someone out there is preparing to act. Do I even have to mention the amount of bad cops out there who think they have permission from the highest levels to murder the next black man they see? That's become as American as apple pie, an apple pie laced with strychnine.

On Tuesday, the whole world saw Trump as the completely out of control, emotionally unstable white supremacist mental case that he is. What a sad night for our country. He might as well have been an old demented, screaming crazy man that showed up off the street in his bathrobe. That was sad enough but even sadder is that we've heard not one peep of condemnation from any republicans anywhere. While The Proud Boys rejoiced, ran with their idol's words, upped their recruitment efforts, and made t-shirts with the new Trump-minted slogan he gave them, no republicans got on national TV and objected to the Dear Leader's words. Why would they? It's been obvious for a long time that they're Proud Boys, too. They'd just rather have others do the shooting.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

The entire plane filled up with the looters, the anarchists, the rioters, people that obviously were looking for trouble...

Yeah, sure Donnie. Woman. Man. Snakes. Person. Thugs On A Plane.

Sure Donnie. You're speaking for a friend of course, you see Bad Bad Men In Black filling a plane. Lots of them. Black. Menacing looking. Black. Backpacks! Black. What else do you see, Donnie? Black. Black. Go ahead. Black. Please tell us more. Can we send you some inkblots? What's that, Donnie? You don't like Black ink? If "they" looked so obviously bad and as you said, "looking for trouble," how did all these "thugs" you see get past airport security? A whole plane full of "the looters, the anarchists, the rioters" in this day and age? What happened? How could this be? Did you put some mega donor in charge of the air marshals? Does that Louis DeJoy clown have a brother?

Yeesh! This man is nuts. That's not news. But nuts with mini-strokes? That's a real scary combo. The synapses are fried. Forget about who's a heartbeat away. Forget about that shattered, catatonic husk of maggot-brained ectoplasm named Pence. This big orange freak with the tiny hands IS the heartbeat. He is the heartbeat of this country. He is the heartbeat of this country in so many more ways than one. He is the heartbeat of this country, an irregular, fluttering heartbeat who's party loves his every word and action. A party that hangs on his every word. In more ways than one.

This country is also hanging. A new and tighter noose was placed around its neck on the Capitol steps on January 20, 2017. Since that darkest of days in our history, those steps have been slowly sinking under our feet so our body weight pulls the noose tighter. We're all strangling, even his blindest followers among us. The steps go lower and the noose tightens at the same rate. Our necks are burning. Putin is in the dark munching his vodka popcorn. Air is getting harder to come by. Our eyes are starting to water.

Crime Is Rampant In Cities With Republican Mayors

How does the most failed and hated president in U.S. history, who can't get beyond his mostly ignorant and brain-washed base, run for reelection? Short answer: fear and loathing plus racism, chaos and gaslighting... and domestic terrorism. Listen to this NPR report from Steve Innskeep with lifelong Republican and former Homeland Security Department assistant secretary of counterterrorism and threat preventionl Elizabeth Neumann who asserts, credibly, that the Trump regime is "creating the conditions for domestic extremism to flourish in the United States... and paving the way for even more violence." She told Innskeep that "It's his style. His style is chaos itself. And when you have chaos at the top of the federal government, that creates chaos throughout every other level of government. That means we cannot perform our security functions well. The first and primary job of a president, the first and primary job of the federal government, is to protect us."



AP reporters Steve Peoples and Zeke Miller wrote that "After struggling for much of the year to settle on a clear and concise reelection message, President Donald Trump appears to have found his 2020 rallying cry. Four years ago, it was 'Build the Wall,' a simple yet coded mantra to white America that nonwhite outsiders threatened their way of life. This week, Trump has re-centered his campaign on another three-word phrase that carries a similar racial dynamic: 'Law and Order.' For much of the summer, the Republican president flirted with the bumper-sticker slogan championed by Richard Nixon and George Wallace in 1968. But Trump sharply increased his focus on law and order after a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, multiple times last week as Blake’s three children watched, sparking protest-related violence.

And, of course, he's blaming Democrats-- particularly Democratic mayors and, by extension, Biden-- for the breakdown of his somewhat warped version or law and order. But let's put aside the kind of crime his regime is steeped in and just take his own idea of crime into account. Cities have crime-- everywhere in the world. That's hardly news. Tulsa and Oklahoma City both have violent crime rates that are very high-- 1040.83 violent crimes per million residents in Tulsa and 787.34 violent crimes per million residents in OK City, higher than violent crime rates in New York (538.90 violent crimes per million residents) and San Francisco (715.0 violent crimes per million residents). Tulsa mayor G.T. Byrum and OK City mayor David Holt are Trumpist Republicans. New York and San Francisco both have Democratic mayors. Tulsa also has an extraordinarily high property crime rate. So do Miami, Omaha and Fresno, which also have Republican mayors. Their property crime rates are significantly higher than Chicago's, Dallas', or Los Angeles', all of which have Democratic mayors.

No one in their right mind blames the high crime rates in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Miami, Omaha and Fresno on their Republican mayors. But Trump blames crime in even "safer" cities on Democrats. That's who Trump is and how he tries manipulating voters. If the election is decided on his own record-- as a kind of referendum-- he will lose and lose big. There are very few states were his job approval numbers are higher than his disapproval numbers. And nationally, he is drowning in a toilet of disapproval. A recent poll for Politico by Morning Consult asked registered voters if they approve of disapprove. 24% said they strongly approve, 17% said they somewhat approve, 10% said they somewhat disapprove and 46% said they strongly disapprove. More important in terms of the election, among independent voters 12% said they strongly approve, 21% said they somewhat approve, 17% said they somewhat disapprove and 45% said they strongly disapprove.

Yesterday, Utah Senator Mitt Romney (R) said that Trump's "comments and tweets over the past few days, including a retweet of a 2019 video clearly intended to further inflame racial tensions, are simply jaw-dropping." And not jaw-dropping in a good way.

And, according to the NY Times with Biden vigorously, pressing his argument that Trump is failing the country with his handling of the coronavirus, and his irresponsible plans to rush into dangerous school reopening, Trump needs voters to focus on his cockamamie, manipulative version of crime in the streets rather than an actual pandemic that is impacting peoples' lives (and deaths).

Reporting for Reuters after a new Ipsos poll came out yesterday, Chris Kahn, wrote that it isn't working for Trump. "Trump’s attempt to make civil unrest a central theme of his re-election campaign," he reported, "has yet to boost his political standing, as most Americans do not see crime as a major problem confronting the nation and a majority remain sympathetic to anti-racism protests."

[T]he poll showed the majority-- 78%-- remain “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the coronavirus. Nearly 60% said Trump is at least partly responsible for the protracted school and business closures due to the virus, as well as for the high number of coronavirus cases in the United States. More than 6 million Americans have been infected with the virus, more people than in any other country.

By contrast, most Americans do not see crime as a major priority and do not think it is increasing in their communities, the poll showed.

Only about 8% of American adults listed crime as a top priority for the country, compared with 30% who said it was the economy or jobs, and 16% who said it was the healthcare system.

"Fargo" Revisited by Nancy Ohanian

And 62% of registered voters, including 62% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans, said crime was not increasing in their communities.

According to the poll, 53% of American adults said they remain sympathetic to people out protesting against racial inequality, nearly unchanged from 52% in a similar poll that ran in late July.

While support for the protesters has declined overall since the immediate aftermath of the police killing in May of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which sparked a national conversation on race, the poll showed more than half of suburban Americans and more than half of undecided registered voters are still sympathetic to them.

Trump and his Republican allies tried to re-focus the country’s attention on crime in America during their convention last week, as new confrontations erupted following the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a crucial battleground that will help decide November’s election.

Trump also has attempted to stoke fears, especially among suburban white voters, about crime-ridden cities and falsely asserted that Biden would “defund the police.” Biden has rejected that position.

“No one will be safe in Biden’s America,” Trump said last week at the Republican national convention.

Biden has pushed back, accusing Trump of stirring up racist fears in the U.S. in hopes of reviving his campaign.

“The simple truth is Donald Trump failed to protect America. So now he’s trying to scare America,” Biden said in Pittsburgh this week.

Who Is Provoking Violence And Looting In The Nationwide Racial Justice Protests?

I keep hearing every elected official who talks about the protests-- and especially the looting and vandalism-- claim that the "troublemakers" are agitators from out-of-state. Which state? Someone is coming into California to rampage down Rodeo Drive and then Hollywood Blvd? I don't believe it-- and neither should you. Unless they're talking about right-wing/Trumpist domestic terrorists (self-described "Boogaloo boys"). You won't hear about it-- at least not about the the right-wingers-- on Fox News of course, but proof has been mounting that white extremist groups have infiltrated basically peaceful protests to instigate looting, property destruction and violence against police, purposely stoking some kind of race-based civil war. In fact, there are plenty of "bad apples" in various police forces who are criminal characters as well and don't belong doing police work.

Writing for the Washington Post, Isaac Stanley-Becker looked at this infiltration by agents provocateurs who are inciting riots. For example, "Police identified Brian Jordan Bartels, 20, of Allison Park, Pa., as having 'kicked off' the escalation in Pittsburgh, one of several examples of peaceful assemblies against police violence creating opportunities for pandemonium. While at heart the gatherings have been an appeal for racial justice, they also have attracted a diverse array of people with other grievances and agendas who have co-opted the moment, accelerating what has been a national unraveling as the country reels from a pandemic that has put more than 40 million people out of work."

In most American cities, people of all races appear to be participating in the violence, vandalism and looting, particularly in Minneapolis, where a crowd burned the police department’s 3rd Precinct building last week and vandals were seen smashing windows and stealing items from stores. Multiracial coalitions also have marched peacefully. But in some cities, local officials have noted that black protesters have struggled to maintain peaceful protests in the face of young white men joining the fray, seemingly determined to commit mayhem.

In footage that spread widely online, a man identified as Bartels, who faces charges of vandalism and rioting, wore a bandanna emblazoned with the symbol of the Animal Liberation Front, a leaderless international resistance movement that pushes for animal rights. In the footage, he raised his middle fingers to black protesters who begged him to stop. At Bartels’s home in a Pittsburgh suburb, officers found spray paint and firearms, according to an arrest warrant reviewed by the Washington Post.

Attempts to reach Bartels, who turned himself in to police on Monday evening, were unsuccessful.

As authorities intensified their efforts to quell the uprisings-- deploying tear gas and rubber bullets in aggressive spasms in many cities-- police officers were joined by some elected officials and protest organizers in accusing white activists and extremists of exacerbating the chaos by blocking roadways, destroying police property and lobbing bricks into businesses.

“We came together as Pittsburghers and supported a First Amendment right to gather and say more must be done,” Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto (D) told reporters over the weekend. “And then it was hijacked.”

Some local officials were even more blunt. After reviewing footage of the weekend’s events, Jenny Durkan, the mayor of Seattle, said she feared the black community would shoulder the blame for havoc others caused.

“It is striking how many of the people who were doing the looting and stealing and the fires over the weekend were young white males,” Durkan (D) said in an interview.

President Trump on Monday evening said in a Rose Garden address that he stands with demonstrators who condemn Floyd’s death, as peaceful protesters were cleared with flash-bang explosives and tear gas so he could pose for a photograph in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

“These are not acts of peaceful protest; they are acts of domestic terror,” said Trump, who earlier Monday encouraged governors to “dominate” the streets with the militaristic tactics already in use in parts of the country.

Violence had erupted in some of the early demonstrations starting last week, with protesters in Minneapolis setting several businesses on fire along with the police precinct.

But from Baltimore to Sacramento, black protesters also were filmed protecting storefronts and placing their bodies before police barricades to preserve principles of nonviolence, and to prevent backlash disproportionately aimed at them. Videos emerged, too, of them confronting white demonstrators who had usurped the mantra of “black lives matter,” which gave birth to a movement for racial justice and police accountability, in seemingly random acts of defacement.

“Don’t spray stuff on here when they’re going to blame black people for this,” a black woman admonished two vandals outside of a Starbucks in Los Angeles.

In East Liberty, a gentrifying neighborhood of Pittsburgh, a young black protester delivered a case of bottled water to a phalanx of police officers standing guard at a demonstration on Sunday outside of a Target store.

“With all this stuff going on, I just wanted to spread the positivity,” said Alexander Cash, 23, who lost his job at a nearby Residence Inn because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. “It doesn’t matter if it’s one or 45 cops standing there. I can walk up to them and still be peaceful.”

That sort of caution was being undermined by intentionally destabilizing acts, warned Tim Stevens, a longtime civil rights activist in Pittsburgh.

“People who do not have the social justice commitment at heart, people who really don’t care about George Floyd-- they care only about an opportunity to cause disruption-- how many of those people were in Pittsburgh over the weekend?” he asked. “How many were out across America?”

Similar questions have become acute from Austin, where a racial justice group on Sunday canceled a planned assembly for fear of violent escalation by unaffiliated activists, to Fargo, N.D., where police questioned four men carrying assault rifles to a protest site in a bid to protect businesses. In Denver, police officers commandeered firearms from anti-government gun enthusiasts who self-identify as “Boogaloo boys,” part of a far-right militia movement.

“These are people who are agent provocateurs,” Chas Moore, the executive director of the Austin Justice Coalition, said of the extremists joining the protests. He canceled his group’s demonstration, originally planned for Sunday, after the chaos of Saturday night. “These are extremists and anarchists, not right or left. They want complete annihilation of the system, and they’re at the forefront of the fires and the breaking of vehicles.”

Others warned against tagging certain bad actors for responsibility, especially after Minnesota officials at first tried to lay blame for damage on out-of-state protesters, allegations that failed to find support in arrest records. Over the weekend, Melvin Carter, the mayor of St. Paul, Minn., walked back comments initially asserting that “every person” detained in protests came from other states. In fact, data showed nearly all of those arrested gave addresses in Minnesota.

Durkan said the age profile of those arrested in Seattle skewed young, and she pledged to examine the demographics more closely. Officials in Pittsburgh and Austin said they did not break arrest data down by race, making it difficult to discover whether claims of culpability were reflected in on-the-ground enforcement efforts.

“It’s very easy for the government to create this binary of good protesters and bad protesters, and it always fits their whim,” said Rashad Robinson, the president of the racial justice group Color of Change. The dilemma, Robinson said, is how to welcome new faces to the fold without inviting chaos: “We are in a really complicated moment, and we have a lot more questions.”

The complexity was deepened when President Trump, with Attorney General William P. Barr’s backing, faulted anarchists and left-wing activists for the upheaval without furnishing any evidence.

On Monday, the president’s allies trumpeted news of the charges against Bartels, a day after the president said he would designate an anti-fascist collective known as antifa as a “terrorist organization,” though he has no apparent legal authority to do so.

A former friend of Bartels who corresponded with him for several years before they had a falling out in May said Bartels never once mentioned antifa, some of whose adherents favor aggressive tactics.

The friend, a 17-year-old who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared online harassment, said Bartels was militant about veganism but otherwise espouses views that do not fall neatly along ideological lines. Another teenager who moved in the city’s pop-punk scene with Bartels said the 20-year-old seemed to loath establishment forces, no matter their partisan makeup. But neither understood why Bartels would have smashed a police vehicle in broad daylight, as police accuse him of doing.

Similar scenes of destruction appeared in numerous cities.

In downtown Austin, a crowd of several hundred protesters massed outside Austin Police Department headquarters on Sunday evening. With their numbers increasing, protesters eventually streamed over a concrete embankment and onto Interstate 35, a thoroughfare that slices Austin along racial and economic lines.

The crowd was a diverse mix of black, white and Hispanic demonstrators, but it was the young white protesters who seemed to push the limits. As the crowd walked south to an exit, white protesters were spray-painting the asphalt and a concrete median.

One white woman was observed applying an adhesive to a traffic cone in an attempt to adhere it to the roadway while a black protester walked by, turning his head in apparent surprise. Later in the evening, white protesters threw plastic water bottles at police, drawing rebuke from some black members of the crowd.

“The police are targeting black protesters out here with rubber bullets,” said Maredith Drake, 43, who had been offering first aid to injured protesters all weekend. “We think they feel like they’ll be less accountable if they shoot a black person instead of a white one.”

You don't usually hear something about the political fray from former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But yesterday, writing for The Atlantic, former chief Mike Mullen wrote about his reaction to seeing Trump's ugly stunt at St. John's in a powerful essay, I Cannot Remain Silent-- Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so. I imagine there are a lot of military officers who feel the exact same way. "It sickened me, yesterday," he wrote, "to see security personnel-- including members of the National Guard-- forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president's visit outside St. John's Church. I have to date been reticent to speak out on issues surrounding President Trump's leadership, but we are at an inflection point, and the events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent. Whatever Trump's goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces. There was little good in the stunt... We must ensure that African Americans-- indeed, all Americans-- are given the same rights under the Constitution, the same justice under the law, and the same consideration we give to members of our own family. Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so. Too many foreign and domestic policy choices have become militarized; too many military missions have become politicized. This is not the time for stunts. This is the time for leadership."

And just a few hours ago, Trump's own handpicked former Defense Secretary , James Mattis, finally weighed in: "Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens-- much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside." Go get 'em, MAD DOG! Your country needs you now more than ever before!

This afternoon, the Washington Post reported that a growing number [of] far-right extremists who once organized mainly online have been inserting themselves into the real-world protests roiling much of the nation, sowing confusion about the nature of the protests and seeking attention for their causes. They’ve appeared, sometimes carrying assault rifles, at protests in Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia and dozens of other cities, often wearing Hawaiian shirts-- a seemingly goofy uniform that, within the ranks of their movement, signals adherence to a violent, divisive, anti-government ideology. This increasingly visible spillover from radical online forums has alarmed researchers, who for months have tracked surging support for groups advocating armed rebellion as their conversations have spread from fringe platforms such as 4chan and Gab to mainstream forums on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Twitter and YouTube. The largest groups have hundreds of thousands of followers... Some far-right groups have purposefully sown confusion by impersonating left-wing activists, adding chaos to already turbulent days of protests in which local officials have blamed unnamed outsiders and left-wing groups for the mayhem."

Writing for RightWingWatch.org Monday, Kyle Mantyla noted that "MAGA 'life coach' and proudly amoral right-wing broadcaster Brenden Dilley said during his livestream program today that he and millions of other gun-loving Americans are just waiting until President Donald Trump 'gives us the green light' to take to the streets and start gunning down activists who have been protesting all over the country following the police killing of George Floyd."

Now That Rep. Matt Shea Been Expelled From The Washington State GOP Caucus For Domestic Terrorism, Perhaps Trump Can Appoint Him To A Judgeship

No one in the Spokane area was surprised to read last week that one of their state legislators is a dangerous fascist freak who wants to overthrown the government. DWT has been covering Matt Shea for years, though mostly noting that if you were to sctach the surface of most Republicans these days, Matt Shea is what you would find. He's certainly not very different from congressional sociopaths like Matt Gaetz, Gym Jordan, Devin Nunes, Liz Cheney, Clay Higgins, John Ratcliffe, Debbie Lesko, Steve Scalise, Steve King...

Officially exposed by the state legislature as a domestic terrorist and expelled from the Republican caucus, Shea took to the pages of Facebook and started whining like a stuck pig (Trump): "Like we are seeing with our President this is a sham investigation meant to silence those of us who stand up against attempts to disarm and destroy our great country. I will not back down, I will not give in, I will not resign. Stand strong fellow Patriots."

Chad Sokol has been following this madman's career for years and warning his benighted constituents about him on the Spokesman-Review. Apparently his crackpot constituents-- east of Spokane to the Idaho border-- are as crazy and un-American as he is. It's a completely rural district (91.8% white) with no cities or towns-- but lots of compounds where crazy people on meth and pain killers. Even after Shea was exposed as a neo-fascist terrorist, he won reelection with 57.7% of the vote. This is Trump-Country! Yeah... and this is the whole 108 page independent report issued to all members of the state legislature. After it was released, Sokol wrote that "Leaders of both parties called for Shea’s resignation and said the findings had been forwarded to the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office. 'He absolutely should resign,' said Republican Minority Leader J.T. Wilcox, of Yelm. 'His role as a House Republican is over.'"

Matt Shea isn't all that different from any garden variety Republican under 60 years old

The House hired the Rampart Group, a Seattle firm headed by a former FBI agent, to conduct the investigation in July. The probe involved interviews with more than two dozen witnesses and drew on troves of documentary evidence, including private texts and emails that have been leaked by Jay Pounder, a former Shea confidant and bodyguard.

The report largely corroborates previous news stories about Shea’s involvement in the far-right “patriot” movement, his preoccupation with military-style prepping and reconnaissance, his belief in an imminent civil war and government collapse, his conspiracy theories about Muslims and liberals and his dream of achieving a Christian theocracy.

But the report also reveals new details about Shea’s involvement in standoffs with federal agents in Nevada, Oregon and Idaho, and it offers an official determination that Shea has sought to intimidate political opponents and condoned acts of violence by his supporters.

In the days leading up to the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, the investigation found, Shea was among a group of state officials who participated in several “preplanning” phone calls with Nevada rancher Ammon Bundy. Shea was operating as chairman of the Coalition of Western States, or COWS, a group that included lawmakers from several other states, including Idaho state Rep. Heather Scott.

The report also describes how Shea “authored and circulated an operations plan” for militia members to use during the standoff and how he sent one of his most trusted associates, Anthony Bosworth, to participate.

The Malheur standoff ostensibly began as a protest of the criminal sentencings of two ranchers who had been convicted of intentionally setting fires on public land. The 41-day standoff ended only after dozens of protesters were arrested and one, LaVoy Finicum, was shot and killed.

“The action was portrayed as a spontaneous act, but this investigation has obtained information that the armed takeover was meticulously planned in December 2015 by conspirators that included Representative Shea,” the report states.

That’s contrary to Shea’s previous characterizations of his involvement in the standoff. He told the Legislative Ethics Board in 2016 that his visit to the refuge was merely a “fact-finding” mission aimed at ensuring a “peaceful” resolution.

The report also details Shea’s involvement in the 2014 occupation of federal land near Bunkerville, Nevada, which began after Ammon Bundy’s father, Cliven, refused to pay cattle grazing fees. And it reveals that Shea took part in a third armed confrontation in Priest River, Idaho, in August 2015, which has not been widely reported.

According to the report, Shea called on supporters to gather in Priest River to block federal officials from seizing firearms from an elderly veteran. A health care professional had determined the man should not possess guns after he suffered a stroke, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs planned to seize them “pursuant to VA regulations for individuals receiving VA benefits,” the report states.

About 100 people, including Shea, stood outside the man’s home and prevented a VA employee from entering, according to the report. Many were armed, though no one was hurt.

Speaking later at a rally in Priest River, Shea described the VA’s actions as “bureaucratic terrorism.” According to the report, he told his supporters, “We are telling the federal government they are going to have to come through us to get to this veteran.”

The final section of the report provides a damning “risk assessment” of Shea. It notes that he “has suffered no negative repercussions to his actions” and draws political power from his activities in the patriot movement.

“With angry armed insurgents called into action against elements of law enforcement, every situation instigated or planned by Representative Shea carried with it significant risk of bloodshed and loss of life,” the report states. “ … Representative Shea presents a present and growing threat of risk to others through political violence.”

Before the report was made public Thursday, Shea’s attorney, Mark Lamb, issued a statement calling the investigation an unprecedented look into “lawful communications between a member of the House and citizens of this country.” The statement also asserted Shea had been “denied any opportunity to review and respond to its results,” though the report says he declined to meet with investigators.

Lamb, who has indicated he plans to file a lawsuit over the investigation, did not respond to messages seeking further comment Thursday evening.

The report prompted House Republican leaders to expel Shea from their caucus and strip him of his committee assignments, including his ranking position on the Environment and Energy Committee. His name and picture disappeared Thursday from the House GOP website.

The six-term lawmaker will have to find a new office, won’t receive assistance from caucus staff and won’t be allowed into caucus meetings to discuss legislation and strategy when the next session begins, said Wilcox, the minority leader.

Rep. Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane, said he was “very disturbed by the details of this report” and agreed with Wilcox that Shea should resign.

But if Shea does not resign voluntarily, it would be premature to talk about expelling him from the Legislature, Wilcox said. That, he said, would sidestep the will of voters in the 4th Legislative District.

Attempts to reach other Spokane-area Republicans, including Shea’s fellow 4th District lawmakers, Sen. Mike Padden and Rep. Bob McCaslin, for comment Thursday were unsuccessful.

“The inquiry into Rep. Matt Shea’s conduct displays an obsession with conspiracy theories and violence that is incompatible with public office,” Lindsay Schubiner, program director at the progressive Western States Center in Portland, said in a statement. “The Washington House of Representatives must act immediately to hold him accountable. Shea’s egregious and threatening behavior warrants removal from office.”

Expelling Shea would require a two-thirds vote in the House. Although Democrats have a majority, the move would require at least some Republican votes. Only one lawmaker has been expelled from the Legislature in the history of the state. Nelson G. Robinson was ousted in 1933 for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl.

If Shea resigns or is expelled, Republican precinct committee officers would nominate three possible replacements, and the Spokane County commissioners would choose one from that list to serve in the position until next November’s election.

House Speaker Designate Laurie Jinkins, of Tacoma, said Democrats would work with Republicans and “review and digest” the report before agreeing on the next step.

Both Wilcox and Jinkins, who previously served as chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee when Shea was the ranking Republican on that panel, said the investigation had nothing to do with Shea’s political views.

“We respect Rep. Shea’s right to free speech and his personal beliefs, but those ideals are not what this is about,” Jinkins said in a statement. “This is about a state lawmaker who, according to the investigative findings, engaged in an act of domestic terrorism rather than choosing political or legal avenues to change laws and policies he disagrees with.”

Lori Feagan, a Spokane Valley nurse practitioner who plans to campaign against Shea as a Democrat in 2020, called the report “incredibly disturbing.”

“We must put our community’s safety and our future over party loyalty,” Feagan said in an email. “I’m grateful to Republican leadership for acknowledging that Matt Shea’s extremism is unacceptable and unwelcome. Now that his true character has been more fully revealed, I have confidence that our voters, both Republican and Democrat, will send the same message next year. Once we know better, we must do better.”

Scratch The Surface Of Half The Republican Legislators In The Country And You'll Find... Matt Shea (R-WA)

Rep. Matt Shea (R, of course)

Between Spokane and the Idaho border you'll find Washington's 4th legislative district. It's very rural. There's got to be a town there but I can't find one on the map, although... there was a post office of sorts in a town called Drygoon and in 1902 they changed the name from Drygoon to Colbert in honor of a postmaster named Harry Colbert. But I'm not certain if it's inside the district or not. Like I said, it's very rural. The state Rep from the 4th, Matthew Shea, is 45. He's beyond conservative. When his wife Lisa divorced him, she applied for an application of protection because he considered her a possession, not a possession like a lamp but a possession like the way it was in the Old Testament. Her court papers say he was very abusive, physically and emotionally and that he "insisted she walk on his left side because his sword, if he had one, would be on his right side." Refusing to get a job, he hosted a hate talk radio show on Patriot Radio twice a week. In 2008 he was elected to the state legislature, where he defines the far outer fringes of a Republican Party whose uneducated and drugged-up base is consumed by insane conspiracy theories.

Why should Matt Shea matter to anyone outside of eastern Washington? Well... last year, Rep. Shea admitted he had distributed a 4 page manifesto that strongly smacks of right-wing domestic terrorism, The Biblical Basis for War, and certainly makes it clear that he and his pals have been promoting violence against people who don't adhere to his extremist-- many would say psychotic-- ideology or religious beliefs. This past April, the House Republicans finally removed Shea as their Caucus Chair-- for advocating murdering non-Christians.

Shea was in the news again over the weekend. The Spokane Spokesman-Review. Chad Sokol reported that "Shea and some of his closest supporters have made physical preparations for a holy war, one that would help them establish their long-envisioned 51st state, their Redoubt, their Christian homeland," which he's named Liberty. "Leaked emails published this week reveal that Shea has had close ties with a group that conducted 'patriotic and biblical training on war for young men.'

In addition to running “background checks” on liberal activists and supporting military-style training for boys and young men, Shea has in recent years sought to purchase GPS tracking devices, compiled dossiers on local progressive leaders and kept a blacklist of suspected informants in his network. He also plotted to establish a “provisional government” in the event of a collapse and boasted about his efforts to “turn back the tide” of those who practice Islam in the United States.

Shea also distributed a list that purported to include the names and phone numbers of every law enforcement officer working in Washington state, saying it would help to “confirm or deny legitimacy” of investigators who made contact. He and his associates used email servers and messaging apps designed with extra layers of encryption in an attempt to shield their identities. He signed messages “V” or “V/B”-- short for his code name, Verum Bellator, which is Latin for “truth warrior.”

Shea, who rarely speaks to the news media, did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story.

“He was a paranoid dude,” recalled Jay Pounder, a whistleblower who once worked on Shea’s informal security detail. “He was always scared that the government was listening. He was always scared that if a black van pulled up, the doors would fly open and they’d scoop him away. And he always said that he would not go down without a fight.”

In a statement Saturday, the Spokane chapter of the NAACP responded to the revelations of the past week, saying Shea “uses his platform to promote hate and violence” and calling for his removal from office.

“Every moment he occupies a seat in our state Legislature emboldens extremists and erodes the legitimacy of our sacred institutions,” the NAACP said. “Anything short of the expulsion of Matt Shea from the Washington state House of Representatives is a threat to our community, a threat to our collective safety and an implicit endorsement of white supremacy.”

Pounder, who worked for Shea for several years, said that Shea outfitted him with various electronic tools designed to detect hidden recording devices and disrupt transmitters.

“He gave me a bug sniffer,” Pounder said. “He gave me a cellphone jammer that plugs into a cigarette lighter.”

Emails show that in July 2016, Pounder, using the code name Fox, presented Shea with a short list of Ebay links-- a selection of GPS devices that might come in handy for tracking perceived adversaries.

“He was thinking that, at some point in the future, there would be concerning people that need to be tracked,” Pounder recalled.

...Idaho state Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, emailed Shea in May 2017, including an attachment of more than 60 pages of scanned newsletters and other documents related to water use and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

“This packet is from a private meeting I went to and is full of valuable information on key federal operatives that are working collectively in the Northwest out of multiple locations,” Scott wrote. “Please take the time to review and learn some of the names and connections as I believe the information will be very valuable. This information is somewhat sensitive so please be careful who you choose to share it with.”

The packet included a biography of Elaine Willman, who has called for abolishing the sovereignty of Native American tribes and appeared with Shea at a “New Code of the West” conference in Whitefish, Montana, in October 2018.

Shea forwarded Scott’s message to Pounder, writing, “Ms. Willman is one of us. The rest need to be put on our list. We need to talk at your earliest convenience.”

Crazy or dangerous? Or both? Shea, an ally of Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), prophesizes he will be elected president (of the U.S.) and that his assassination will lead to a civil war. You tell me, does this crackpot manifesto of his look like a call to prepare for violence and civil war? I don't think you can put someone in prison for this stuff-- or even in a mental institution. It's up to his constituents to remove him from office, though. I have a feeling many of them are very much like him though.

BIBLICAL BASIS FOR WAR

1. God is a Warrior.

2. When is the time for war? When God says its time...Prayer Council.
3. Fight to win so you don’t have to fight again.

4. 4 Things to stay within God’s will:

a. Holy Cause;

b. HolyLeader;

c. Holy Army; and

d. HolyCamp.

5. 4 Ways To Know It's Time To Fight

a. God reveals His will to the leader;

b. LeaderinquiresofGod...PrayerCouncil;

c. God puts it on the hearts of the people; or

d. Godstartsthefight.

6. Things For A Holy Army

a. Sacrifice/Worship/Prayer;

b. Circumcision/Saved;

c. Vow (consecration to the Lord);

d. Trumpets/Ark;

e. Atonement/Money; and

f. Praise to God Before/During/After.

7. 5 Facts of War:

a. War is a fact of life.

b. GodiswithusandthebattleisHis.
c. Numbers are inconsequential.

d. Armamentsareinconsequential.

e. Isaiah 57:1 – Why Righteous Men are Killed...

8. 4 Qualifications

a. 18 years old or older;

b. AblebodiedMan;

c. Single Minded in Battle; and

d. StableHome.

9. 5 Exemptions from Service:

a. Training Family-- New Home;

b. Newlyweds-- NewWife;

c. Farmer-- New Crops;

d. Scared-- FearMeansaLackofFaith(OffertoLeave);or

e. Priests-- Duty to Ministry in Temple.

This fucking nut case goes on and on and on and I'm getting drowsy inputting it all, so I'll just include a few more highlights. Libery won't declare war on the rest of Washington or the rest of the U.S. if they agree to 5 demands:

• Stop all abortions
• No same sex marriage
• No idolatry or occultism
• No communism
• Must obey Biblical law

"If they do not yield-- kill all males.

There's this crazy section of the manifesto about how to divide up all the booty and loot they take from Jews and other non-believers and another part about how to biblically deal with tyranny, some of it overtly anti-democratic like, "God doesn’t use majorities. The majority is usually wrong." He also asserts that assassination is not murder and that you must "Prepare your horse for battle, but the battle is the Lord’s." And something about "Abad and Shamar," who I thought were whales at the San Diego Aquarium.

Matt Shea-- a member of the state legislature... and a Republican Party leader.

Trump's White Nationalism Is A Threat To The Safety Of Every American

When Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton heard-- through the grapevine-- that Trump was thinking of going to Dayton to comfort the victims of the white nationalist mayhem he had caused, she joked that if Dayton was lucky Trump would direct AirForce One to fly to Toledo instead. That would be a long shot-- he'll be there, and in El Paso, today. The Washington Post's John Wagner reported that his "appearances that will not be universally welcome as the two cities grieve from weekend mass shootings that left 31 dead and many others injured and rattled. After hiding out in his rat-infested Bedminster golf resort all weekend while his white nationalist supporters ran amuck, Kellyanne Conway lied to the media, claiming he's wanted to go there since he heard of the massacres and suggested his "itinerary would be similar to other visits in the wake of mass shootings or natural disasters. 'He’s goes, trying to help heal communities, meeting with those who are injured, those loved ones who have survived the innocents who have lost their lives so senselessly and tragically,' she said. 'He meets with local law enforcement, federal law enforcement. He meets with medical professionals. He thanks first responders.'" That's today's script.

Several past and present Democratic officials urged Trump not to visit El Paso, a city of about 683,000 with a largely Latino population, in the aftermath of Saturday’s anti-immigrant attack at a Walmart Supercenter that left 22 dead.

Officials are still investigating but believe the alleged gunman posted a manifesto that echoed Trump’s harsh rhetoric on immigrants, notably describing his attack as “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

“This president, who helped create the hatred that made Saturday’s tragedy possible, should not come to El Paso,” former congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) tweeted late Monday afternoon. “We do not need more division. We need to heal. He has no place here.”

The words of O’Rourke, a presidential candidate, echoed those earlier in the day of Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX), whose district includes the El Paso Walmart targeted in the massacre.

During a television appearance Monday, she urged the president and his team “to consider the fact that his words and his actions have played a role in this.”

“From my perspective, he is not welcome here,” Escobar said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “He should not come here while we are in mourning.”

El Paso Mayor Dee Margo (R) said at a Monday news conference that Trump will visit his city on Wednesday. He said he would welcome Trump in an official capacity and ask him “to support our efforts with any and all federal resources that are available.”

But Margo also cautioned Trump against invoking his previous rhetoric to talk about the border city.

“I will continue to challenge any harmful and inaccurate statements made about El Paso,” Margo said. “We will not allow anyone to portray El Paso in a way that is not consistent with our history and values.”

Adolpho Telles, chairman of the El Paso County Republican Party, said during a television interview Wednesday that he welcomes Trump’s visit.

“Clearly it is going to help with people healing, and this is a time of healing,” Telles said on CNN.

He accused Democrats of “making this a political event for their benefit.”

White House officials say Trump is also planning to visit Dayton, where another gunman killed nine people early Sunday.

Asked during a CNN interview Tuesday morning if he wants Trump to visit his home state, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) noted that he represents a different area but said that Trump “would not be welcome in my hometown.”

Ryan, another Democratic hopeful whose congressional district includes a large swath of northeastern Ohio, called Trump “a polarizing figure.”

“He finds a million ways to divide us,” Ryan said. “He’s got to get beyond that.”

Trump, meanwhile, took to Twitter on Tuesday to push back against a tacit rebuke from former president Barack Obama.

In social media posts on Monday, Obama called on the country to reject words “coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders” that feed fear and hatred and normalize racist sentiments.

In his tweet, Trump quoted co-host Brian Kilmeade on Fox News’s Fox & Friends as pointing out that it was unusual for past president to speak out about the current occupant of the Oval Office in the wake of mass shootings.

“Did George Bush ever condemn President Obama after Sandy Hook,” Trump quoted Kilmeade as saying. “President Obama had 32 mass shootings during his reign. Not many people said Obama is out of Control. Mass shootings were happening before the President even thought about running for Pres.”

That's probably not the way Greg Miller was looking at it when he wrote, also for the Post, Far-right Violence Spurs Calls To Revise Security Priorities. He noted that the country "continues to employ a staggering arsenal of armed forces, unmanned drones, intelligence agencies and sweeping domestic authorities to contain a threat-- Islamist terrorism-- that has claimed about 100 lives on American soil since the nation mobilized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. No remotely comparable array of national power has been directed against the threat now emerging from the far right, a loose but lethal collection of ideologies whose adherents have killed roughly the same number of people in the United States, post-9/11, as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State combined. The disparity is a source of growing alarm for officials and experts, some of whom now say the United States is overdue for a realignment of national security priorities as violence on the far right escalates."

The 22 murdered in El Paso Saturday were part of a spate of massacres incited by Trump's white nationalism "directed at targets selected for racial or religious reasons, including shootings at synagogues in San Diego and Pittsburgh... The prospects for a change in course, however, appear limited-- complicated by legal constraints, toxic American political currents and the amorphous nature of an adversary that has no dis­cern­ible structure or Osama bin Laden-like leader and has burrowed into corners of the Internet the way al-Qaeda once hid in the mountain redoubts of Afghanistan. The grim statistics associated with these two strains of extremism have begun to converge. The numbers of people killed in attacks linked to Islamist radicals or the far right in the United States since 2002 are virtually equivalent-- 104 versus 109, respectively, according to data compiled by the think tank New America .

Protecting the public from the most pressing terrorist threat “has been our governing principle for many years now,” said Lisa Monaco, who served as the top counterterrorism adviser to President Barack Obama. Given the surge in attacks linked to the far right, she said, “we need to prioritize our resources and focus on this threat.”

In some ways, the opposite has occurred under President Trump.

Last year, the administration downgraded the position that Monaco previously held, meaning that the top counterterrorism adviser in the White House no longer reports directly to the president.

The administration has also curtailed or disbanded a Department of Homeland Security program that had been created to counter violent extremism by working with regional authorities and organizations to identify those vulnerable to radicalization, whether by Islamist groups or the far right.

The main obstacle to mobilizing against the white supremacist threat, officials said, may be political. Trump on Monday denounced the alleged white nationalist sentiments of the suspected killer in El Paso. But his presidency has come to be defined by policies that are aligned with aspects of the white nationalist agenda and his penchant for fanning racial animus.

“This both makes the mobilization more necessary and interferes with that mobilization,” said Dan Byman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University and a former staff member of the 9/11 Commission. Trump’s words and actions, he said, amplify the danger by emboldening those with radical, racist views, while his signals of tolerance toward such groups-- including his comments after violence in Charlottesville-- undermine his subordinates’ ability to agree upon and organize around the threat.

Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Russian interference in U.S. politics has also contributed to the far right’s rise, experts said. Since at least 2015, Moscow’s destabilization efforts have included sweeping online operations aimed at sowing racial division in the United States by promoting the positions of white nationalists.

A social media study by researcher J.M. Berger concluded that far-right networks online are dominated by intersecting themes: “support for U.S. President Donald Trump, support for white nationalism, opposition to immigration (often framed in ­anti-Muslim terms).”

The latter is an area in which the response to 9/11-- with its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and multibillion-dollar investments in border security aimed at blocking entry to radicalized Muslims-- may have fostered xenophobic attitudes that contributed to the rise of the far right.

There are indications that U.S. national security agencies are beginning to shift toward the far-right threat. FBI Director Christopher A. Wray recently testified that the bureau had made about 100 domestic terrorism arrests in the past nine months and that “a majority of the domestic terrorism cases we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence.”

But others said the almost singular reliance on the bureau to disrupt far-right networks-- with little or no involvement of other agencies-- underscores the extent to which the government has failed to adapt.

Nicholas Rasmussen, who served three years as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said that attacks linked to al-Qaeda or the Islamic State-- including the Boston bombings and the night club shooting in Orlando-- were invariably followed by “all-hands” meetings at the White House. Among those assembled were often the heads of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Treasury and State departments.

“But I suspect that didn’t happen this weekend at the White House,” Rasmussen said. “If it had happened in the Obama or Bush White Houses, I’m not sure it would have either. Because as soon as you hear ‘domestic,’ everybody reverts to ‘Well, the FBI has the ball.’ ” He added: “The FBI is hands down the best investigative law enforcement agency in the world, but asking them to take on this problem on their own makes no sense.”

A National Security Council spokesman declined to say whether any Cabinet-level meetings had taken place at the White House in the wake of the latest shootings, citing policy against such disclosures.

How Does It Feel To Have Someone In The White House Working Against The Best Interests Of The Country And Its Citizens?

Can anyone deny that for Putin, the Russian investment in the election of Trump, is the gift that keeps on giving? In his NY Times column yesterday, Republican pundit David Brooks observed that "The Trump era has been all about dissolving moral norms and waging vicious attacks. This has been an era of culture war, class warfare and identity politics. It’s been an era in which call-out culture, reality TV melodrama and tribal grandstanding have overshadowed policymaking and the challenges of actually governing." As David Graham pointed out in his piece for The Atlantic Monday, The Worse Things Are, the Better They Are for Trump, the last moves by the satanic pig-fucker Putin put in the White House "suggest his goal is not to fix the system, but to exacerbate turmoil for political gain... Trump and Lenin share a strategic instinct. Lenin reportedly said, 'The worse, the better'-- meaning that conditions that were more miserable for the people were likely to help his political aims. Trump’s approach to immigration and health care, both in the past few days and throughout his presidency, evince a similar understanding of power."

A friend of mine, an independent who has never contributed politically except twice to Bernie, once in 2016 and once this year, always tells me that if Trump cleans up the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) problem, he'll be reelected. I've been telling him for over 2 years that Trump hasn't the tiniest interest in cleaning up the MS-13 problem, only of exacerbating it so he can use it to scare his low-IQ base.

Graham continued that last week Señor Trumpanzee announced plans to end assistance to the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, or as Fox & Friends put it, "3 Mexican countries." Señor T on Friday: "No money goes there anymore. We’re giving them tremendous aid. We stopped payment." That's about $450 million, including money to support law-enforcement efforts against gangs. "The actual cash is a minimal amount-- a little less than 8 percent of the $5.7 billion Trump demanded for his border wall when he shut down the government in December, and less than 2 percent of the $25 billion the administration estimates the wall would cost overall. The fact that the aid numbers are small doesn’t justify spending them per se, but there’s a strong consensus among Latin America experts that these cuts are counterproductive. It’s common to talk about push and pull factors in immigration. Pull factors are things that draw migrants to a new country: the promise of better work, for example. Push factors are those things that drive migrants to leave home: unstable politics, high crime, poor economies. Trump has worked to reduce one pull factor by trying to make it harder to get asylum, but he has limited options beyond that, because no president wants to make the economy worse in order to deter immigration (though Trump has been willing to risk hurting the economy to install protectionist tariffs). But Trump’s decision to cut aid to countries that are major sources of immigrants to the United States seems likely to only increase the push factors, driving more people to attempt the journey as conditions in their home countries stagnate or worsen."

Many of Trump’s decisions on border issues seem designed not to solve any problem. This includes Trump’s standing threat to close the border with Mexico; his decision to end DACA, a program that he has said achieves goals he favors; and most prominently, his decision to separate unauthorized immigrant families arriving at the border. None of these do anything to solve or reduce what Trump has called a crisis at the border. In fact, they are likely to only worsen the crisis. Separations, for example, became a costly and distracting circus, taking up already short space in detention centers and then necessitating a major effort to reunite families and restore the status quo ante when courts predictably rejected the policy.

Along similar lines, it’s more politically useful for Trump to be in a lengthy fight about building a border wall than it is to have actually built it. If and when the wall is built, it will become clear that it isn’t a panacea for immigration, but in the meantime, it’s a useful political wedge. The more migrants are coming toward the United States, the more Trump can warn of an “invasion” and inflame nativist fears that he thinks will help him win reelection. Trump isn’t really interested in solving immigration. A permanent crisis is more useful to him.

The same dynamic holds true on Obamacare. Last week, the White House told a federal appeals court that the Affordable Care Act should be thrown out entirely. Trump then announced that he was calling on Congress to produce a replacement for the law. The decision was reportedly made over the objections of Trump’s attorney general and secretary of health and human services, and it has received a chilly reception from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

When the GOP controlled Congress in 2017 and 2018, it tried at length to repeal Obamacare and failed, and there’s no chance a Democratic House will be amenable to rescinding or replacing the law. In the absence of legislative movement, Trump has worked to weaken the ACA throughout his presidency. He has cut back on outreach and advertisement, slashed subsidies, supported repeal of the individual mandate, and enabled so-called association health plans, which a judge struck down last week, calling them “clearly an end-run” around the law.

The cynicism of Trump’s latest move on the ACA runs deep. The administration still doesn’t have any plan for what it actually wants to do on health care. Meanwhile, Axios's Jonathan Swan reports that the president doesn’t expect to win in the courts: “Trump has privately said he thinks the lawsuit to strike down the Affordable Care Act will probably fail in the courts, according to two sources who discussed the matter with the president last week.” For Trump, it’s a political win-win. Either he gets Obamacare thrown out, or judges rule against him, giving him another chance to rail against the judicial system, delegitimizing it and further undermining the rule of law.

None of these steps would make any sense if Trump’s goal was to improve health care, just as cutting aid to the Northern Triangle would make no sense if the president wanted to reduce immigration. But increasing turmoil is the point, since the worse things are, the better things are. For Donald Trump, at least.

Babies in Cages by Nancy Ohanian

In the file of "purposely making things worse for political gain, let's also look at a development Betsy Woodruff reported on Tuesday for the Daily Beast: Homeland Security Disbands Domestic Terror Intelligence Unit. This is a win-win in Trumpworld: a wink and a nod to his neo-Nazi support base and a way to make a bad problem worse. What could be more Trumpian? "The Department of Homeland Security has disbanded a group of intelligence analysts who focused on domestic terrorism," reported Woodruff. "Numerous current and former DHS officials say they find the development concerning, as the threat of homegrown terrorism-- including white supremacist terrorism-- is growing. 'It’s especially problematic given the growth in right-wing extremism and domestic terrorism we are seeing in the U.S. and abroad,' one former intelligence official told the Daily Beast."

The group in question was a branch of analysts in DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A). They focused on the threat from homegrown violent extremists and domestic terrorists. The analysts there shared information with state and local law enforcement to help them protect their communities from these threats.

Then the Trump administration’s new I&A chief, David Glawe, began reorganizing the office, which is the DHS component that has a place in the Intelligence Community. Over the course of the reorganization, the branch of I&A focused on domestic terrorism got eighty-sixed and its analysts were reassigned to new positions. The change happened last year, and has not been previously reported.

“We’ve noticed I&A has significantly reduced their production on homegrown violent extremism and domestic terrorism while those remain among the most serious terrorism threats to the homeland,” said one DHS official.

Former officials pointed to a spate of domestic terror attacks in recent years as evidence that DHS erred by shuttering this branch. From the massacre that left 11 people dead at a Pittsburgh synagogue to a shooting targeting Republican members of Congress in June 2018 to bomb threats that a deranged Trump fan directed at prominent Democrats and CNN, violent attacks informed by homegrown hatred have left Americans increasingly terrorized.

...Nate Snyder, a former DHS official who focused on violent extremism, said the department’s move undercuts Trump administration claims that it takes domestic terror seriously.

“You hear the secretary and this administration say how domestic terrorism is a clear priority and how resources will be bolstered, but you can’t say that and then all of a sudden get rid of the unit that’s there to detect threats and share information with our first responders, law enforcement, and federal partners,” Snyder said. “You can’t have it both ways.”

All Aboard! by Nancy Ohanian