From Newsgroup: alt.home.repair
Thomas Matthew Crooks wrote:
tRUMP has expanded his military campaign against the United States by >deploying armed troops to yet another major metropolitan area, announcing
on Monday that he is sending the National Guard into Washington, D.C., to >oliberateo the city.
The D.C. operation, launched two months after the start of his Los Angeles >crackdown, broadens a police-state-style domestic campaign that some
senior
Trump administration officials describe to Rolling Stone as a oshock and >aweo show of force, a reference to the foreign war in Iraq that Trump has >pretended to oppose.
ItAs only going to get worse.
The president and his top government appointees are publicly stressing
that
this will not end with D.C. and L.A., that other military options are very >much on the table. The facts, the laws, and data do not seem to matter: >Trump and his team believe he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, >including using the U.S. armed forces for domestic political purposes as >well as intimidating his enemies. His team is privately putting together >plans for him to do just that.
ADVERTISEMENT
oMake no mistake, this is just the beginning,o U.S. Attorney for the >District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro u a staunchly pro-Trump former Fox News >host whom the president tapped specifically to ocrack skullso u said
Monday
night.
At a press conference Monday announcing that the federal government had >seized odirecto control of D.C.As police department and that the National >Guard would soon occupy the city, Trump warned that if he and his
officials
decide they oneed to,o he will deploy military forces to other Democratic >cities, too. The president named a few, including Chicago, Oakland, and >Baltimore. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat whom Trump attacked by >name, compared TrumpAs use of the military to the Nazis tearing apart >GermanyAs constitutional republic, per the Chicago Tribune.
ADVERTISEMENT
Trump has long yearned to unleash the military on American soil for his >political agenda, and the D.C. and L.A. deployments this summer are
critical stepping stones in his increasingly authoritarian governmentAs >vision for punishing his enemies Democratic area of the country, carrying >out his brutal immigration agenda, and making life hell for unhoused
people. Trump said on Monday that federal forces will work to remove >ohomeless encampments from all over our parks,o and that the unhoused will >not be oallowed to turn our capital into a wasteland for the world to
see.o
EditorAs picks
The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far
The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
100 Best Movies of the 21st Century
One of TrumpAs biggest regrets from his first term in the Oval Office, >according to former and current senior Trump advisers, is that he didnAt
use military forces and other federal assets to crack down harder than he >ultimately did in the summer of 2020. As the Covid-19 pandemic raged, and
as racial justice protests spread throughout the country, one of the >presidentAs big ideas was to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters near the >White House. One reason this didnAt happen is that his Secretary of
Defense
at the time was not in love with the idea.
Rolling Stone reported in October 2024 that Trump and his team have been >plotting a second-term takeover of the D.C. police for a long time u >regardless of the actual level of unrest or street crime. The plotting >extends far beyond the nationAs capital.
In recent months, according to government officials and other sources with >knowledge of the situation, administration staff and lawyers have crafted >detailed plans and menus of options for Trump to feed his desire for >replicating and proliferating his militarized crackdowns u on immigrants
and citizens alike u to different Democratic strongholds. National Guard >troops are already mobilizing in D.C., and Trump has privately said, >according to two sources familiar with the matter, that if he sees
something that he feels crosses his line (like if street protests in the >city grow too big or if he deems them a threat suddenly), he will gladly >order larger numbers of troops to nationAs capital, as he did in Los
Angeles earlier this year.
Related Content
Trump Is Honoring KissA Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. TheyAve Criticized >Him in the Past
Stephen King Compares Donald TrumpAs Presidency to aa Horror StoryA
New Analysis Finds Trump Family Has Raked in $3.4 Billion Off the
Presidency
Jimmy Kimmel Says He Obtained Italian Citizenship to Flee aUnbelievablyA
Bad Trump Administration
Trump has insisted to administration officials that itAs ridiculous that >troops like National Guard members are not allowed to conduct various
forms
of domestic law enforcement, sources add. The president and his >administration to some extent have had their hands tied on this due to the >Posse Comitatus Act u which prohibits using the military for domestic law >enforcement u though that isnAt stopping them from actively exploring ways >around the law. oThere are ways things were done, and thatAs not always >going to be how they should be done now or tomorrow,o a senior Trump >administration official tells Rolling Stone.
ADVERTISEMENT
The senior administration official, as well as other Trump officials, note >that it is a priority of the presidentAs that these kinds of military >deployments u in L.A., and now D.C., in times of relative calm u become >normalized in American political culture. Trump has long believed he
should
be able to wield the might of military forces on American soil in ways
more
commonly associated with authoritarian states. He now has a government >stacked full of loyalists who want to help him realize this goal. oHeAs >gonna do more of them,o another Trump administration official says, >referring to siccing the military on deep-blue cities, using crime and >immigrants as justification. oHe promised he would do this, and now heAs >following through on those promises.o
Administration figures are speaking openly about potentially expanding the >use of federal forces into cities across the nation. oYou look at Los >Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and New York u theyAre also facing record
numbers
of homicides and violent crimes. ItAs natural for us to look at
Washington,
D.C. u if we can really clean this up and we can get rid of this plague of >crime and violent activity thatAs happening in our nationAs capital u
could
that be a blueprint and a model for other communities around the country?o >Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the
Department
of Homeland Security, said Tuesday on Fox Business. oItAs something I
think
President Trump wouldnAt shy away from. WeAll have to stay tuned.o
Trump and his administrationAs justification for his D.C. operation u that >homelessness and violent crime in the nationAs capital have spiraled out
of
control, following the recent assault of a Department of Government >Efficiency lackey and Elon Musk protogo known as oBig Ballso u appears >entirely pretextual. Public data show that violent crime in the district, >whose political leaders did not request any help from Trump and whose >residents and voters largely despise him, has dropped significantly >following post-pandemic spikes in violence that occurred in both urban and >rural American communities. (The administration is claiming that the crime >data is fake, because the official position of the government is that any >credible economic data or other stats that contradict Trump and the GOPAs >feelings should be purged and demonized.)
There are, of course, actual ways to aid the homeless in D.C. and to help >protect residents in the impoverished, higher-crime areas of the city.
Trump and his administration are not interested in working to solve these >issues. When asked on Tuesday about addressing the root causes of crime, >Pirro scoffed and said sheAs onot concerned about why they commit crimes,o >only punishing them when they do.
ADVERTISEMENT
Addressing the root causes wouldnAt include sending in the National Guard
or federal agents for TrumpAs oshock and aweo spectacle for the cameras,
and sources say the spectacle-addicted president regularly checks in with >how his military deployments are playing on TV u including on his favorite >network, Fox News. Right-wing media, lawmakers, and members of his >administration have been mobilizing this week to push the presidentAs >narrative that military action is needed to address D.C.As crime problem, >casting the city as a hellscape of violent crime where it is not safe to >walk the streets.
oPresident Trump is saving our nationAs capital after Democrats turned it >into an absolute hellhole,o the Republican National Committee hysterically >claimed in an email blast to the media on Monday. oResidents are being >brutally beaten, murdered and losing loved ones. D.C. residents do not
feel
safe so President Trump will be declaring a Crime Emergency and mobilizing >the D.C. National Guard.o
Good to see that Trump doesn't give a shit about the safety of red state idiots even though evidence points to red states being violent sewers with soaring murder rates.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3274797-we-have-a-murder-problem-in- america-especially-in-red-states/
For the last two years, the nation has been awash in news accounts about soaring violent crime and murder in cities and states run by Democrats.
That narrative is ubiquitous, particularly in conservative media, where Democratic mayors are routinely called out and excoriated for turning a
blind eye to crime. That story is half right and half u to be charitable u lazy and wrong.
LetAs dispatch with the part that is correct. We have a murder problem in America, with homicides up sharply in recent years reversing long-term
trends. In addition, many cities with Democratic mayors and governors have experienced dramatic murder spikes.
Now, for the rest of the story. In a report Third Way recently released, we found that murder was much more prevalent in red states than blue states. ThatAs right. In 2020, homicide rates were a stunning 40 percent higher in
the 25 states that former President Donald Trump won compared to the 25 won
by current President Joe Biden. Of the 10 states with the highest 2020 per capita murder rates in America, eight of them not only voted for Trump in
2016 and 2020, they voted Republican in every presidential election this century.
Mississippi u a state that neither conjures up weak on crime images nor Democratic officeholders u topped the charts with a 2020 murder rate twice that of blue Illinois, thrice that of bluer California, and four times that
of bluest New York. The red states of Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama and Missouri rounded out the top five and each had murder rates at least six
times Massachusetts, four times New Jersey and just shy of twice that of Michigan. These blue states are home to the ocrime-is-out-of-controlo
cities you read about daily u Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, Newark and Detroit. They generate the headlines, the outrage and the
political backlash.
Yet, media coverage is essentially mum about Lexington, Kentucky, which has set back-to-back murder records, has a homicide rate twice that of New York City and has a Republican mayor. Tulsa and Oklahoma City have Republican mayors, a Republican governor and murder rates that dwarf that of Los
Angeles. Jacksonville was the murder capital of Florida in 2020 with its Republican mayor, governor and a stratospheric homicide rate that if it
were matched in New York City wouldAve added more than 1,000 murders that year.
And to top it off, the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy PelosiAs (D-Calif.)
San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthyAs (R- Calif.) Bakersfield, the largest city in Kern County and one with a
Republican mayor u with overwhelming Trump support and not a whiff of flirtation with defund the police movements. In fact, the murder capital of California for six years running is sleepy Kern County, 130 miles from Los Angeles and 306 miles from San Francisco, the two California locales most often associated with the crime-is-out-of-control national headlines that
have dominated U.S. crime and political coverage.
The causes for crime and murder are complicated and intersectional and so
is its relationship to political party. Since four out of five murders are
by firearms, higher homicide rates tend to be in places with extensive gun ownership. Meanwhile, firearms purchases have exploded with Americans purchasing an unprecedented 80 million guns in the last two years. Add to
that gun owning households are twice as likely to be Republicans. Taken together, this could conceivably explain some of the bias toward more
lethal crime in red states.
Mostly, however, crime is ripe for another type of bias: toward
demagoguery. The Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown
Jackson were punctuated with GOP attacks labeling her soft on crime despite endorsements from the Fraternal Order of Police and nationAs police chiefs. Ironically, some of the most outrageous attacks came from Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who represent states with murder rates
among the worst in the nation.
This underscores that there is rarely a national crime discussion in
America that is civil, inquisitive and holistic. And that is what makes the media slant that focuses almost exclusively on urban blue state crime as inexplicable and frustrating as it is lazy and off.
If the yardstick is homicide, Republicans do a far better job of talking
about stopping crime than actually stopping it u and it seems much of the press seems to buy it.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2