Trump Threatens Insurrection Act, Media Forgets Its Own History
Donald Trump, according to The Hill, is once again threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops in Portland. This isn't a hypothetical. In 2020, federal agents, unmarked and uninvited, unleashed tear gas and snatched protestors off the streets of Portland, Oregon (source: Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2020). The "news" here isn't the threat; it's the media's collective amnesia.
Instead of framing this as a repeat performance of authoritarian federal intervention against constitutionally protected protest, The Hill presents it as a fresh "threat." One might wonder if the distinction between 'threat' and 'established pattern of behavior' is simply too nuanced for modern journalism. How many times does a dictator-aspirant have to do something before it stops being a
'threat' and starts being, well, just what he does?