Trump has crossed a major line in the move towards police-state America by sending in federal thugs of the Border Patrol, US Marshals' SErvice and Federal Police to Portland over objections of the state governor and the mayor, writes TCBH! journalist Dave Lindorff

::::::::

By Dave Lindorff

One of the most clear signs of a fascist takeover of a nation or society is when words start to lose their meaning.

Take Portland Oregon. How's your geography? Does Oregon share a border with any foreign country? The answer of course is no. The nearest foreign border is with Canada and that border lies 300 miles north of Portland. And yet for the past week or more, unidentified armed, military-clad men in camouflage uniforms from the federal Customs and Border Protection Service (CBP), armed with weapons like assault rifles, guns that shoot so-called "rubber" bullets (actually hard supposedly "non-lethal" projectiles with a very thin plastic coating that can cause serious bruising, loss of an eye and, in certain circumstances depending on what part of the body they hit, death),and wearing no identification numbers of even organizational insignia have been brutalizing and arresting protesters in that city.

This armed federal "police" force, which has pushed aside Portland's own police, has according to a report in the Nation magazine, been deployed in Oregon over objections the state government on orders of President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security.

The justification for they CBP's presence and its brutal arrests in Portland is President Trump June 26 Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence. When Trump issued that order he said it "authorized the Federal Government to arrest anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such Federal property in the US with up to 10 years in prison."

But a president doesn't make the law. Under the US Constitution, the president "is responsible for the execution and enforcement of the laws created by Congress." It does not say that the president makes the laws.That is what dictators do.

Like many of this president's executive orders (and of executive orders signed by his two predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, it must be added!) this executive order vastly exceeds the president's Constitutional authority.

But the use of Border Patrol forces, and the secretive way they have been operating, refusing to follow basic guidelines for police which require identification to guard against illegal behavior and unnecessary violence and brutality by individual officer, demonstrates how far down the road of a police state this country has moved over the last 19 years.

It was not that long ago that the country was transformed overnight into a garrison state following the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon with passage by Congress, after no hearings, of a still-in-effect Authorization for Use of Military Force that launched the so-called "War" on Terror"

For the rest for this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, six-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site, please go to: https://thiscantbehappening.net/watching-constitutionally-protected-freedoms-die-in-oregon/

Authors Website: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net

Authors Bio:

Dave Lindorff, winner of a 2019 "Izzy" Award for Outstanding Independent Journalism from the Park Center for Independent Media in Ithaca, is a founding member of the collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper www.thiscantbehappening.net. He is a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006).