Welcome to this episode of the award winning a Best of Left Podcast in which we shall

learn about the protests and counter-protests of Royal Indian Nation and recognize the conspiracy-laden fundamentalism of the far right that is fueling the violence.

Clips today come from Counter-Spin, last week tonight, democracy now, the young Turks, the Mukhric podcast and the Real News.

As we recorded this show on July 23rd, Demonstrations in Portland, Oregon show no signs of slowing protesters demanding an end to racist policing in the wake of and even before George Floyd's murder had been met with what local activists describe as typical aggression from Portland's police department, the indiscriminate firing of tear gas and other munitions into peaceful crowds.

Flashbang grenades, beatings with batons, but then came the footage. A man dressed in black stands apparently alone on a darkened sidewalk when two heavily armed men in camouflage walk up on him, hustle him off into an unmarked van and drive off, refusing to identify themselves to observers.

We've since learned this is part of an orchestrated effort by the Trump administration to deploy federal law enforcement agents to deal swat style with what they call violent anarchists.

What's more, they plan to replay those nightmarish scenes from Portland wherever they see fit. As acting Homeland Security Chief Chad Wolf says, quote, I don't need invitations.

Wolf also subsequently described federal agents as arresting demonstrators proactively. Alarm seems appropriate here to help us think about what we're seeing is author and legal scholar Marjorie Cohn.

She's Professor Emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and a former president of the National Lawyers Guild. She joins us now by phone from San Diego. Welcome back to counterspin Marjorie Cohn.

Thanks for having me, Janine. Well, these street pickups when you first see it, you think it's a movie. As I understand it, the line is that these federal agents see someone not necessarily anyone they've seen commit a crime.

They say they want to talk to that person, have a consensual conversation with them, and then they, the agents fear for their own safety. So they decide they want to have that conversation elsewhere, like the courthouse, and then, oh, you're free to go. This wasn't even an arrest at all.

Is that legal or constitutional? No, it's not in order to have a legal arrest. You need probable cause to believe that the person committed a crime. And these snatches by unidentified federal officials in unmarked vehicles, snatching peaceful protesters off the streets, transporting them to unknown locations without informing them of why they're being arrested and later releasing them with no record of their arrest.

Violates the law, and this proactive arrest that the Department of Homeland Security is intending to carry out, violates the Fourth Amendment, which requires that, as I said, an arrest be supported by probable cause. This reminds me of the movie Minority Report, where they're trying to predict who's going to commit a crime.

There's nothing in the law that allows proactive arrest. There have been lawsuits filed, and they basically allege violations of the First Amendment, Freedom of Speech and Press, the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. The Fifth Amendment, right to do process, and the Tenth Amendment, which says that power is not delegated to the feds, are reserved to the states.

And this is what is being litigated now.

One attorney Juan Chavez with the Oregon Justice Resource Center said, it's like stop and frisk meets Guantanamo Bay.

Well, federal law enforcement are permitted to go into states to protect federal property like courthouses and to prosecute federal crimes.

But policing protests, you know, just at the letter of the law, goes beyond that function.

Yes, it certainly does. And in fact, a lawsuit that was filed yesterday, no actually two days ago, on behalf of the First Unitarian Church of Portland, a public benefit corporation and two Oregon state representatives, alleges violation of the Tenth Amendment, and says that these abductions occurred outside the jurisdiction of federal law enforcement.

Those abducted were not attacking federal property or personnel, and they weren't on federal property at the time that they were abducted.

The ostensible or the stated reason for these federal goons to go into Portland and other cities as well, which is happening as we speak, is to protect federal monuments and statues.

Trump issued an executive order on June the 26th saying that his federal forces were going to protect these monuments.

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