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Trump Is Normalizing the Unthinkable: Federal Troops in American Streets, Breaking the Law -- and Getting Away With It [View all]
https://hartmannreport.com/p/trump-is-normalizing-the-unthinkable-f4aThom Hartmann
The 2026 and 2028 elections may have just gotten a lot more distant. First, the backstory.
It was around 2 a.m. on July 15, 2020, when Mark Pettibone, then 29, was walking home from a relatively calm Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Portland. He hadn’t done anything more provocative than wearing a black shirt; no slogans, no mask, no glimmers of violence. Yet moments later, an unmarked minivan pulled up alongside him. Out jumped several armed men in camouflage, with no insignia, slipped a bag over his head and kidnapped him.
He was shoved into the van, blindfolded, driven to the federal courthouse, interrogated, and held — with no Miranda rights, no paperwork, no explanation — for nearly 90 minutes before being released without charge or citation.
No uniforms, no accountability, no transparency, yet a citizen was stripped of his rights and dignity in a blurry high-stakes operation. And around the same time in Washington, DC, Trump was trying to talk General Mark Millie into having the National Guard shoot at protesters in that city.
This was not some fringe vigilante action. It was federal agents wielding brute force under cover of Trump’s executive order, agents whose silence spoke louder than any badge. The ACLU of Oregon called it an unconstitutional kidnapping; legal scholars said probable cause was nowhere to be found.
Yet Merrick Garland decided it wasn’t worth investigating or prosecuting. Let’s just move on. And so here we are.
As Donald Trump this week levels attacks on Los Angeles — sending in federal forces to “restore order” amid unrest provoked by ICE’s illegal tactics — Portland’s secret‑police saga shouldn’t just echo, it should ring alarm bells. If you thought that unmarked vans and invisible state power were confined to dystopian fiction, Pettibone’s story proves they already stalk our cities.
Trump and his neofascist sidekicks sending the National Guard into Los Angeles may look, on the surface, like another “law and order” stunt from a man whose political brand depends on hate and fear. But beneath the posturing lies something far darker and far more dangerous to American democracy.
. . .
It was around 2 a.m. on July 15, 2020, when Mark Pettibone, then 29, was walking home from a relatively calm Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Portland. He hadn’t done anything more provocative than wearing a black shirt; no slogans, no mask, no glimmers of violence. Yet moments later, an unmarked minivan pulled up alongside him. Out jumped several armed men in camouflage, with no insignia, slipped a bag over his head and kidnapped him.
“I was terrified,” Pettibone told reporters, his voice trembling with the memory. “It was like being preyed upon.”
He was shoved into the van, blindfolded, driven to the federal courthouse, interrogated, and held — with no Miranda rights, no paperwork, no explanation — for nearly 90 minutes before being released without charge or citation.
No uniforms, no accountability, no transparency, yet a citizen was stripped of his rights and dignity in a blurry high-stakes operation. And around the same time in Washington, DC, Trump was trying to talk General Mark Millie into having the National Guard shoot at protesters in that city.
This was not some fringe vigilante action. It was federal agents wielding brute force under cover of Trump’s executive order, agents whose silence spoke louder than any badge. The ACLU of Oregon called it an unconstitutional kidnapping; legal scholars said probable cause was nowhere to be found.
Yet Merrick Garland decided it wasn’t worth investigating or prosecuting. Let’s just move on. And so here we are.
As Donald Trump this week levels attacks on Los Angeles — sending in federal forces to “restore order” amid unrest provoked by ICE’s illegal tactics — Portland’s secret‑police saga shouldn’t just echo, it should ring alarm bells. If you thought that unmarked vans and invisible state power were confined to dystopian fiction, Pettibone’s story proves they already stalk our cities.
Trump and his neofascist sidekicks sending the National Guard into Los Angeles may look, on the surface, like another “law and order” stunt from a man whose political brand depends on hate and fear. But beneath the posturing lies something far darker and far more dangerous to American democracy.
. . .
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