Trump’s Occupation of American Cities Has Begun

Protesters are being snatched from the streets without warrants. Can we call it fascism yet?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/opinion/portland-protests-trump.html

...federal agents “have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland,detain protesters, and place them into the officers’ unmarked vehicles” since at least last Tuesday. The protesters are neither arrested nor told why they’re being held.

There’s no way to know the affiliation of all the agents — they’ve been wearing military fatigues with patches that just say “Police”—but The Times reported that some of them are part of a specialized Border Patrol group

The Trump administration has announced that it intends to send a similar force to other cities; on Monday, The Chicago Tribune reported on plans to deploy about 150 federal agents to Chicago. “I don’t need invitations by the state,” Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said on Fox News Monday, adding, “We’re going to do that whether they like us there or not.”

Border Patrol agents..., however, [are] under federal authority, has leadership that’s fanatically devoted to Trump and is saturated with far-right politics.

...

“The people who are getting used to committing violence on the border are then brought in to commit violence against people in the interior.”-Timothy Snyder, Yale historian.

[Representative Joaquin] Castro, [Democrat of Texas] worries that since the agents are unidentified, far-right groups could easily masquerade as them to go after their enemies on the left. “It becomes more likely the more that this tactic is used,” he said. “I think it’s unconstitutional and dangerous and heading towards fascism.”

On Friday, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, tweeted about what’s happening in Portland: “Trump and his storm troopers must be stopped.”