From the beginning, the administration of Donald Trump has shown nothing but contempt for citizens engaging in their right to peaceful protest, political opponents voicing their grievances, and journalists doing their jobs. The flagrant promotion of the crudest forms of racism, xenophobia, and jingoism by Trump and his associates is even more sinister considering the funds and militarized police apparatuses at their disposal. Such are the hallmarks of a regime doing all it can to usher in a police state.
“By doing so much to sow racial division and discord in the country, [Trump] gives people permission to act outrageously.”
The line between the roles of the U.S. military, which is often called “the world’s police force,” and domestic law enforcement has been blurring more with each passing year. Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, policing has become a matter of “homeland security,” opening the door for draconian measures initially implemented by Congress and the administration of George W. Bush. This led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, along with such agencies under its umbrella as U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2003.
There has been, for decades, a bipartisan consensus in favor of strengthening law enforcement and the prison-industrial complex. American politicians are fond of deploying rhetoric that evokes the imagery of warfare in the fight of “good versus evil” to inflate the budgets of the U.S. military and law enforcement, advancing politically motivated crusades with phrases like “The War on Terror” and “The War on Drugs.” Trump has taken up this mantle, declaring war on those who oppose his policies and methods.
Trump inherited many of the tools needed to facilitate the violations of citizens’ rights from previous administrations and Congresses, tools he is now using as instruments of repression under the guise of “law and order.”
The murder of George Floyd, forty-six, at the hands of the Minneapolis police on May 25 saw a popular resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, with widespread protests against racism and police brutality. On August 23, Jacob Blake, twenty-nine, was shot seven times in the back by a police officer in front of his children in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and left paralyzed.
“With law enforcement, what we have witnessed the past several months since George Floyd’s death is what has been happening in Black and brown communities all across the country for decades,” says Justin Mazzola, Amnesty International USA deputy director of research, in an interview with The Progressive. “It’s just been brought to light by their response to protests against police violence.”
In response, Trump continues ramping up the rhetoric against so-called subversives and anarchists such as Black Lives Matter and antifa supporters, whom he sees as a national security threat. “If the Democrat Party wants to stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters, and flag burners, that is up to them,” he declared in his nomination acceptance speech in August. “But I, as your President, will not be part of it.”
In fact, Trump has pursued his own brand of subversion, in actions that reveal he is more than willing to deploy the tactics of a dictator. On June 1, in Washington, D.C., demonstrators assembled at Lafayette Square and were attacked and cleared out by agents from the D.C. National Guard, the Federal Bureau of Prisons Special Operations Response Team, the Secret Service, and the U.S. Park Police. This coordinated assault on protesters and bystanders occurred so that Trump could deliver a speech from the White House Rose Garden before crossing the street to St. John’s Church for his photo op with a Bible.
According to an Amnesty International USA report, “The World Is Watching: Mass Violations by U.S. Police of Black Lives Matter Protesters’ Rights,” released on August 4, the police and military officers at this event “misused a variety of crowd-control agents and threw U.S.-manufactured Stinger Ball grenades, which contain pepper spray and explode in a concussive ‘flash bang’ effect, throwing rubber pellets indiscriminately in all directions. Bureau of Prisons personnel also deployed pepper balls against retreating protesters.”
In remarks delivered from the Rose Garden while these violations of the First Amendment were taking place, Trump warned governors and mayors across the country to use “overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled.” Invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 (last invoked by President George H.W. Bush in 1992 after the acquittal of the four police officers who brutalized Rodney King sparked riots in Los Angeles, California), he said he would “deploy the United States military, and quickly solve the problem for them.”
In July, as Black Lives Matter protests continued raging on the streets of Portland, Oregon, secretive police agents sent to the city by the federal government escalated tensions by arresting protesters, throwing people into unmarked vehicles, and refusing to provide identification.
“Once the classic method of lynching was the rope. Now it is the policeman’s bullet. To many an American, the police are the government, certainly its most visible representative.”
The agents were officers from the Department of Homeland Security, the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, and the U.S. Marshals Service Special Operations Group, working under the authority of the Protecting American Communities Task Force. Their presence drew comparisons to the repression under the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested in 1998 for various human rights violations.
Trump’s politicization of federal agencies extends to such actions as his targeting of sanctuary cities, harassing migrant human rights defenders at the border, and denying access to asylum seekers at ports of entry.
“What we have seen in the past three years at the federal level is that agents feel emboldened and that their restraints by prior administrations have been removed,” Mazzola says. “The Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice have used their authority to go after people who oppose or expose the administration’s policies. In contrast, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has absolved itself from investigating and holding accountable law enforcement agencies that have demonstrated a pattern or practice in violating their local residents’ civil rights.”
The administration compounded these concerns with its launch of Operation Legend on July 8, which combined federal and local law enforcement resources with a surge of hundreds of federal agents to “combat the disturbing uptick in violence” in American cities. The operation began in Kansas City and was later expanded to Albuquerque, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Memphis, and St. Louis.
If Trump’s treatment of civilians as enemy combatants is a signpost for a police state in the making, so is his hostile relationship with the press.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a research project co-headed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Committee to Protect Journalists, has documented hundreds of incidents where journalists have been harassed, threatened, injured, or arrested while covering the recent Black Lives Matter protests. Media personnel have been subjected to tear gassings, pepper sprayings, encounters with rubber bullets or other projectiles, and instances of equipment or newsroom damage.
“More attacks on journalists and violations of press freedoms were reported across one week in early June than in the entirety of the Tracker’s three-year existence,” the Tracker’s Managing Editor Kirstin McCudden says. “I said then it was unprecedented in scope and scale, and now, as we end another month of national protests against police brutality, reported aggressions against the press continue to rise.”
As of mid-September, the group had documented 241 cases in which journalists were subjected to some form of aggression since March 26, the day after George Floyd was murdered. These included 183 assaults, fifty-six arrests, forty-three equipment damages, and eight equipment search and seizures.
“It’s important to note that in 2019, nine journalists were arrested in the course of their work,” McCudden said in an interview in late August. “In the last three months, more than 100 have been reported arrested or detained while covering national protests.”
As Trump rails against the alleged lawlessness of Black Lives Matter protesters, he fails to condemn white supremacists and praises anti-lockdown demonstrators, even when they are carrying assault weapons at public gatherings and provoking violence.
“To say that Trump gives a pass to militias is putting it mildly,” says Suffolk University professor of law emeritus Michael Avery. “No one from Black Lives Matter or any other group has done anything as brazen as those who walked into the Michigan legislature carrying arms in order to intimidate the governor and the legislature to try to force the end of the legislative session.”
The violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 at the “Unite the Right” rally between an amalgamation of white supremacists, pro-Nazi and pro-fascist elements, and counter-protesters has proven to be only a test run for the conflicts that have arisen in the years following. Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides,” displaying unabashed sympathy for the white supremacists.
In a report released August 27, the Brennan Center for Justice detailed the widespread infiltration of police departments by officers with ties to or membership in white supremacist and rightwing militia groups. The FBI and other agencies have been well aware of the “active links” between law enforcement and these groups for several years, but very little is done to rout them out.
“Explicit racism in law enforcement takes many forms, from membership or affiliation with violent white supremacist or far-right militant groups, to engaging in racially discriminatory behavior toward the public or law enforcement colleagues, to making racist remarks and sharing them on social media,” writes the report’s author, retired FBI agent Michael German.
There have been numerous cases during Black Lives Matter protests where local police treated protesters with brute force while treating “counter- protesters” including Trump supporters, white supremacists, militia members, and others provoking violence with kid gloves.
“We appreciate you guys, we really do,” a Kenosha police officer told a group of militia members, including seventeen-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who flocked to Kenosha after the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Rittenhouse later shot three protesters, killing two of them. He fled the scene carrying an assault rifle, walking past police vehicles as members of the crowd shouted that he had just gunned people down.
As noted in the Brennan Center report, “The affinity some police officers have shown for armed far-right militia groups at protests is confounding given that many states, including California, Illinois, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington, have laws barring unregulated paramilitary activities.”
The cultish legion of Trump supporters within the Make America Great Again (MAGA) “base,” combined with allies in the white supremacist movement who are inspired to take the law into their own hands, has added another troubling dimension to the situation.
“Trump has had an enormous effect on the role of police in America, directly and indirectly,” Avery, the retired law professor, says. “From Trump’s remarks to police to those who attend his rallies. By doing so much to sow racial division and discord in the country, it gives people permission to act outrageously.”
In June, more than 600 civil and human rights organizations led by the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Human Rights Network joined the families of George Floyd and other high profile victims of police brutality in urging the United Nations to “swiftly convene a special session to investigate the escalating situation of police violence and repression of protests in the United States.”
Floyd’s brother Philonise pleaded to the U.N. Human Rights Council to take action in a video message delivered in Geneva, Switzerland: “I am my brother’s keeper. You in the United Nations are your brothers’ and sisters’ keepers in America, and you have the power to help us get justice for my brother George Floyd. I am asking you to help him. I am asking you to help me. I am asking you to help us, Black people in America.”
This was not the first time the international community has been called on to charge the U.S. government with crimes of systemic racism. In 1951, the petition “We Charge Genocide” was presented to the United Nations by the Civil Rights Congress, documenting “crimes of federal, state, and municipal governments” in the United States perpetrated against Black Americans. Signatories called on the General Assembly to “receive this indictment and act on it” based on the U.N. Charter and the Genocide Convention.
“Once the classic method of lynching was the rope,” the petition stated. “Now it is the policeman’s bullet. To many an American, the police are the government, certainly its most visible representative.” The document presents evidence suggesting that the killing of Black Americans “has become police policy in the United States and that police policy is the most practical expression of government policy.”
Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita of Thomas Jefferson School of Law, tells The Progressive that Trump Administration officials “have aided and abetted the commission of crimes against humanity by state and federal ‘law enforcement’ officials who have injured and killed anti-racism protesters.”
The International Criminal Court was established by a treaty known as the Rome Statute, after being adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rome on July 17, 1998. The ICC prosecutes officials for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes of aggression. Under the Rome Statute, crimes against humanity include murder, intentional infliction of serious bodily injury, and persecution based on race or political belief. The crimes must be committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population.
However, there is a jurisdiction hurdle. “Since the United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, officials can’t be prosecuted in the ICC,” Cohn says. “But other countries could bring U.S. officials to justice for these crimes under the well-established doctrine of universal jurisdiction. This is unlikely, however, since the U.S. government has historically threatened other countries that investigate U.S. officials under universal jurisdiction.”
On June 11, the administration once again showed its contempt for America’s judicial accountability in the eyes of international law by leveling economic sanctions against ICC investigators looking into possible war crimes committed by U.S. personnel in Afghanistan, and extending visa restrictions for investigators and their family members. Accompanying the executive order, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “We cannot, we will not stand by as our people are threatened by a kangaroo court.”
As the November 3 election nears, there is growing concern that Trump will either engage in massive fraud in order to get re-elected, or refuse to leave office if he is not. He has demonstrated his totalitarian tendencies with his efforts to undermine the U.S. Postal Service, to impede the mailing of absentee ballots. He has suggested postponing the election due to COVID-19 (although this didn’t stop his efforts to prematurely reopen the country).
On August 20, Trump appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program. Describing his plan to prevent “voter fraud” at the polls in November, he said, “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement. And we’re going to have hopefully U.S. attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody and attorney generals.”
Elsewhere, Trump has refused to say whether he will accept the election results, should he not win.
In a year where so much has gone wrong, it seems as though things can’t possibly get any worse. But Trump’s signature brand of lawlessness suggests that things could indeed devolve further into chaos.
“We are in an extreme situation,” Avery says. “These are real things to worry about.”