DC Update! Democratic Mayors Sick Of Trump’s Fascist Invasion Crap
And old man yells at median.
The mayors of the cities Trump has sent the feds into have one thing in common besides Democratic mayors, they also have Duly Elected Incumbent Black ones. And they can all see right through him. What is weird is how so many other people can’t.
And so can the fragile white nationalists on TV! Federal invasion really tickles their jimmies!
Trump’s city takeovers are horrific fascist intimidation, but also the dumbest farce. The takeover of DC is no more about crime than his takeover of Los Angeles was about migrant caravans. It’s all about going through the motions of the racist purge that he has dog-whistled and foghorned and winky-winked at his followers ever since his first rant about Mexico “sending” rapists. It’s a chance to exact lawless terror on minorities the way Pete Hegseth fantasized about while he typed out his books with a fifth of whiskey!
And while the excuse to deploy 4,700 troops from the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles was that wild protests were putting federal property in emergency danger, the justification for sending DC is the emergency of street crime, especially against white men like Big Balls, and also aesthetics: Seeing the unhoused on the streets and the asphalt offends His Eye.
Here he is babbling about The Asphalt at his Kennedy Center cultural moment.
“We need a beautiful topping by a very talented asphalt-type person, somebody that does the job. When I get contractors I use great contractors.”
And The Medians, he is so mad about The Medians!
And in both Los Angeles and Washington, aesthetics matter way more than results, it’s a show of dramatic dictator day one tour de force!
And tour de farce, as shown in federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday, at a bench trial to decide if the regime violated the Posse Comitatus Act when it sent the federal troops to LA. There are still 250 or so left, standing around doing whatever, but the Department of Defense wants them to stay and issued a new activation order to deploy bored, expensive troops in California for another 90 days last week.
California National Guard Major General Scott Sherman had a brow-raising claim, that his superiors told him he was allowed to violate the law and arrest civilians because of some kind of “constitutional exception”:
Skeptical, Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who has been on the bench since 1997, asked Sherman to explain the phrase because he had never heard of it.
Sherman, who is not a lawyer, confessed that he didn’t know where it came from, except from up the chain of command.
“This was the advice that I was given was that we were allowed to do these four things because it was in line with what the President was directing, what the Secretary of Defense was directing.”
And then he got rebuked for asking questions, and accused of being disloyal to America.
And so in Los Angeles the military detained people in this way, even though they were not supposed to, such as the Marines restraining 27-year-old Army veteran Marcos Leao with plastic flexicuffs after he crossed some yellow tape while visiting the Department of Veterans Affairs. Another dictator level unlocked!
And it was also not a screaming emergency when the National Guard stormed MacArthur Park in the douchey-titled “Operation Excalibur,” because the park was at low risk from any kind of damage, being a park full of grass, a children’s summer camp, and people minding their own business. ICE just hoped that they might find some illegal immigrants picnicking there.
If the military rolling through is just for show purposes, backing up ICE fishing expeditions, it is not responding to an emergency. And if it’s not an emergency, it’s a violation of Posse Comitatus. A double-dog violation, since the governor and mayor didn’t want them there. If anything matters any more! But the DOJ’s argument is that there’s no civil way for the judge to be able to order the president to do anything, and also no criminal way, so there’s just no way, and that’s that.
This judge has already ruled against the administration, but a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked implementing his decision. Still, Breyer has yet to rule on the Posse Comitatus Act part, and he let California’s lawyers depose Trump officials and gather documents to argue the state’s case, so we can all hear about how the Feds were colluding behind our backs to take people’s rights away.
The police of Washington DC don’t have such legal issues, though. It is the one place in the country where the law allows a president to federalize the local police in an “emergency,” and the president can call in the National Guard whenever he wants. Except for on January 6, 2021, when it was entirely Nancy Pelosi’s job. And now Trump is claiming the “emergency” is crime, which is actually down and not up, everywhere except in the Oval Office, where the 34-times-felon resides.
Eesh, even the White House’s own statement, titled “FACT: Yes, D.C. Crime Is Out of Control,” insisting that Trump IS TOO invading DC because the crime is so bad, is such a dumb lie. It claims that Washington DC has the fourth-highest homicide rate. (It doesn’t, not even close. You’ll want to look at the red states for that.) So, isn’t the emergency more emergency in cities one through three? Oh, and look, the statistics are linked to Twitter posts instead of the government’s own data. The garbage-information ouroboros.
No, Trump is invading DC because he can, he likes all those butch men on the streets RRR GRRing at citizens. And he wants police to arrest “caravans of mass youth” on “motorbikes” that have “rampaged through city streets,” though driving a motorbike while being a youth is not a crime.
And just as in LA, he’s not even invading the parts of town where he claims the problem is. Since being deployed Sunday night, they have doop-de-dooped in packs around Georgetown, and strolled around the mall.
But, THIS beardo Chad is grateful. Hundreds of feds, millions of dollars, but worth it because HE has been liberated from having to see a person sleeping on a bench!
But a lady who sleeps on a bench is not grateful that the president is sending the military and federal agents after her for sleeping on a bench. She has a job, but lost her home in a house fire. And now Trump wants to shoo all of the unhoused out of DC and “throw them to the rats,” under threat of JAIL.
But the unhoused are in DC not to piss off beardo, but because that’s where they are from, and where the services that the regime claims they should have are located. If Trump doesn’t want to see people on the streets, give them a damn house! Much cheaper than putting them all in jail. And with the economy now hitting the skids, there’s going to be a whole lot more people without places to live, in DC and all over. All that’s keeping any of us from that bench is an affordable place to stay!
It’s another day in fascist-land. We abide. The land where sandwich guy is prosecuted, and January 6 rioters are not!
At least US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro seems to not be having much fun.
[CalMatters/ Washington Post archive link]
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"When I get contractors I use great contractors.”
"I just don't pay them."
That "officer" (I think) was lucky that it was only a footlong and not a club.