A black Texas man was viciously attacked in a racially motivated road rage incident.
DeVonta Brown stopped to buy coffee at a McDonald's drive-through in McKinney on his way to work Monday when the driver of a truck drove the wrong way to cut him off, and Brown said he screamed racial slurs at him for honking, reported WFAA-TV.
"You could see it in his eyes," said Brown, who recorded the confrontation on his cell phone. "You could see the hate in his eyes."
Brown got out of his car to confront the man, who was riding with a passenger in a tree service truck, and the white man took off his shirt and charged.
The man, later identified as Chris Taylor, head-butted Brown in the temple and spit on him -- and then called police.
"I know," Taylor said, as Brown urged him to call officers to the scene. "N*ggers never admit to nothing."
Taylor, who owns Chris Taylor Tree Service, was arrested later that day and charged with assault.
Brown said he's encountered racism plenty in his life, but he said that was the most blatant case he's experienced.
"Just trying to make it home to my wife is a challenge every day," Brown said. "Enough."
A California sheriff's deputy who was working the scene of a protest is under investigation for wearing a patch with symbols depicting what the Orange County Sheriff's Office describes as "extremist groups."
Image that surfaced online this Wednesday show a deputy wearing a patch with the symbols of the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, which are known to be right-wing anti-government militias, Voice of OC reports.
“We are aware of photos and video regarding an Orange County Deputy Sheriff wearing patches on his uniform that are associated with extremist groups,” Sheriff Don Barnes’ office said in a statement. “This deputy’s decision to wear these patches, and the implication of his association with an extremist group, is unacceptable and deeply concerning to me."
The deputy has since been placed in administrative leave pending an investigation.
As Voice of OC points out, the Oath Keepers describe themselves as “a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to ‘defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’ ”
The Three Percenters describe themselves as a national organization of Americans “committed to standing against and exposing corruption and injustice." They deny being anti-government or a "militia."
The secretary of the U.S. Army was forced to come out and remind soldiers that even if they're called up supplement police forces in cities around the U.S. that they still must abide by their oath to uphold the Constitution.
In a Twitter statement Thursday, Ryan McCarthy posted a video of himself speaking to troops saying that peaceful protests are fine and that the soldiers are there to "protect that ideal."
"Every Soldier and Department of the Army Civilian swears an oath to support and defend the Constitution. That includes the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances," he said in the tweet.
The tweet came as President Donald Trump was attacking the protesters, saying, "you would think that the killers, terrorists, arsonists, anarchists, thugs, hoodlums, looters, ANTIFA & others, would be the nicest, kindest most wonderful people in the Whole Wide World. No, they are what they are - very bad for our Country!"
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Thursday lashed out at Gen. James Mattis, President Donald Trump's former Defense secretary.
Writing an op-ed in The Atlantic on Wednesday, Mattis highlighted the president's tendency toward fascism and authoritarianism. It prompted Graham to tell the general he doesn't know what he's talking about.
"To General Mattis, I think you're missing something here, my friend. You're missing the fact that the liberal media has taken every event in the last three-and-a-half years and laid it at the president's feet," Graham said on Fox News, according to Axios.
Graham claimed that the president, who was reportedly rushed to the presidential bunker to protect him from the protesters, is under siege nonstop.
"You don't quite understand that from the time President Trump wakes up until he goes to bed, there's an effort to destroy his presidency," Graham lamented. "It is so fashionable to blame President Trump for every wrong in America."
He went on to acknowledge that Trump does hold some blame, but most of the blame is mere propaganda.
"I'm not saying he's blameless, but I am saying that you're buying into a narrative that I think is, quite frankly, unfair," Graham said.
A police shooting in the California city of Vallejo has a community on edge, according to a report from NBC Bay Area.
Sean Monterrosa, 22, was kneeling when a Vallejo police officer shot and killed him. The shooting happened while police were trying to stop looters from invading a local Walmart.
"This individual appeared to be running toward the black sedan, but suddenly stopped, taking a kneeling position, and placing his hands above his waist, revealing what appeared to be the butt of a handgun," Vallejo Police Chief Shawny Williams said.
But Monterrosa was carrying a hammer, not a gun.
"Due to the perceived threat, one officer fired his weapon five times from within the police vehicle through the windshield, striking the suspect once," Williams said.
Monterrosa's death comes in the wake of another shooting that rocked the community last year: the police killing of 20-year-old Willie McCoy, who was an African American rap artist asleep in his car at a Taco Bell drive-thru when six Vallejo police officers shot him to death.
Former House Republican Congressional Committee Investigative Counsel Sophia Nelson this week published a scathing column about her former party in which she encouraged Americans to simply give up hope that it will ever properly serve as a check on President Donald Trump.
In her latest Daily Beast column, Nelson called the GOP "hopeless" and declared that "the party of Lincoln is dead, dead, dead" after so many of its members stayed silent in the wake of Trump's widely panned photo-op stunt at St. John's Church in Washington D.C.
In fact, Nelson went so far as to say that GOP senators shouldn't be forgiven even if they start properly attacking Trump right now.
"Republican senators cannot redeem themselves," she wrote. "That ship sailed during the impeachment trial, when Republican senators blocked witnesses... The Party of Lincoln is long gone. It is dead. It was murdered by Donald Trump and a cadre of Republican members of Congress, governors, and surrogates across the land."
Nelson then says that Trump's loss in the 2020 election will likely lead to a "civil war" inside the party.
"There will be a fight for the soul of a new party," she predicted. "And if the people who form the new party are as tone-deaf and clueless as the old ones on issues of race and gender equity, then nothing will be new."
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum fears President Donald Trump and his Republican allies might complete their authoritarian transformation by stealing November's election.
Applebaum appeared Thursday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" to discuss her latest column for The Atlantic, where she warns that Republicans have been complicit in Trump gathering authoritarian powers over democratic institutions -- and they may soon finalize that process.
"What would come next?" Applebaum said. "In a lot of liberalizing countries or countries that cease to be democracies, what comes next is the attempt to steal an election, and what I hope all Americans will be focused on over the next several months is will Trump and will the Republican Party collaborate in an attempt to steal this election?"
"Will they try to change the rules?" she added. "Will they mess around with distance voting? Will they, you know, exacerbate the problems caused by the pandemic to prevent people from voting? That's the thing that's going to happen next."
Applebaum admitted she had little faith that Trump or the GOP were willing to risk losing the White House or their grip on the U.S. Senate.
"Do they value democracy in America enough to allow a real election to go through and to allow themselves to lose?" she said. "I think there will be a few people that will break out of it. I'm doubtful as to whether we can rely on the party leadership."
Former President Jimmy Carter has issued a statement in response to the police killing of George Floyd, and the subsequent nationwide protests. But the nation's 39th President also took a silent swipe at President Donald Trump, and his handling of the protests.
"We need a government as good as its people, and we are better than this," Carter, who is now 95, writes.
It is a stern rebuke to the nation's 45th President, whom Carter does not mention by name.
Carter's comments come in the wake of criticism in the handling of the nationwide protests by former President George W. Bush, who also issued a silent rebuke to President Trump. Bush called for law enforcement to "protect" the protestors and asked: "How do we end systemic racism in our society?"
Former President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter say their "hearts are with the victims’ families and all who feel hopeless in the face of pervasive racial discrimination and outright cruelty. We all must shine a spotlight on the immorality of racial discrimination."
On Wednesday former President Barack Obamaheld a town hall on the killing of George Floyd and the protests, calling for police reform and focusing on what Americans, especially young Americans, can do.
This week Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced he opposes President Trump's desire to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would pave the way for U.S. Military troops to police American cities.
Former Trump Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Wednesday broke his silence by saying Trump is a danger to the Constitution, and compared his methods to Hitler's.
Here is President Carter's full statement:
Rosalynn and I are pained by the tragic racial injustices and consequent backlash across our nation in recent weeks. Our hearts are with the victims’ families and all who feel hopeless in the face of pervasive racial discrimination and outright cruelty. We all must shine a spotlight on the immorality of racial discrimination. But violence, whether spontaneous or consciously incited, is not a solution.
As a white male of the South, I know all too well the impact of segregation and injustice to African Americans. As a politician, I felt a responsibility to bring equity to my state and our country. In my 1971 inaugural address as Georgia’s governor, I said: “The time for racial discrimination is over.” With great sorrow and disappointment, I repeat those words today, nearly five decades later. Dehumanizing people debases us all; humanity is beautifully and almost infinitely diverse. The bonds of our common humanity must overcome the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices.
Since leaving the White House in 1981, Rosalynn and I have strived to advance human rights in countries around the world. In this quest, we have seen that silence can be as deadly as violence. People of power, privilege, and moral conscience must stand up and say “no more” to a racially discriminatory police and justice system, immoral economic disparities between whites and blacks, and government actions that undermine our unified democracy. We are responsible for creating a world of peace and equality for ourselves and future generations.
We need a government as good as its people, and we are better than this.
"The numbers of U.S. military security forces in D.C. right now is just ridiculous. This is pure intimidation. Trump is very afraid. The longer we stay in the streets, the more frightened he gets."
As President Donald Trump faces growing criticism from veterans and some ex-military leaders—including his former Defense Secretary Gen. Jim Mattis—for deploying U.S. troops against peaceful protesters, busloads of soldiers arrived in the nation's capital on Wednesday in what critics warned is part of the White House's effort to intimidate and squash nationwide demonstrations against the police killing of George Floyd.
More than 10 tour buses filled with troops pulled up in Washington, D.C. Wednesday afternoon after Pentagon chief Mark Esper—who just hours earlier balked at Trump's threat to use active-duty forces to confront protesters—reversed his order sending soldiers home from the capital region following a meeting at the White House.
"It is unclear if Esper met with President Donald Trump," the Associated Pressreported.
The buses arrived as demonstrations in the nation's capital and across the country continued to grow even in the face of brutality from police and members of the National Guard.
"The numbers of U.S. military security forces in D.C. right now is just ridiculous. This is pure intimidation," Tim Shorrock, correspondent for The Nation, tweeted in response to a video of troops lining up in the capital. "Trump is very afraid. The longer we stay in the streets, the more frightened he gets."
"This is what authoritarianism looks like," added journalist Ben Norton. "After decades of waging war across the planet, the U.S. empire is waging war directly on its own people."
The busloads of U.S. troops reached D.C. after Mattis—who has been largely silent about Trump's abuses of power since resigning from his Pentagon post in December of 2018—released a statement condemning the president's use of soldiers to "violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens" in order to "provide a bizarre photo-op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside."
"We must reject any thinking of our cities as a 'battlespace' that our uniformed military is called upon to 'dominate,'" Mattis wrote, quoting the words of Esper and Trump, respectively. "We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution."
As Common Dreamsreported Tuesday, more than 300 veterans have signed onto an open letter urging troops to "do the right thing" and refuse orders to deploy against protesters.
"Today you have to decide whether you are loyal to the values you swore to uphold or to the commanders who would order you to turn on your neighbors for demanding justice," the letter reads. "You cannot be loyal to both."
In an Instagram post, Brees said he shouldn’t have called the anthem protests disrespectful to the American military, and he acknowledged that they are actually about protesting the treatment black Americans receive at the hands of law enforcement officials.
Many Trump fans in Brees's Twitter replies, however, encouraged the Saints quarterback to stay the course and continue criticizing teammates who kneel during the anthem.
The Pentagon plans to spend billions on vaccine development, medical supplies and other efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic -- but some of that spending has been questioned as inappropriate.
Critics say the Department of Defense has spent too slowly after President Donald Trump invoked wartime production powers to address the pandemic, and some have questioned whether money was spent on relevant materials, reported the Washington Post.
Only 15 percent of the $10.5 billion funding the department received under the Cares Act has been placed under contract, the newspaper reported, although the Pentagon's spending report was delivered a month ahead of its congressional deadline.
“The fact that this spending is happening now, five months after this crisis started, suggests the Defense Department is woefully unprepared for real biological warfare,” said Bill Greenwalt, who served as acquisitions chief in the George W. Bush administration.
The Pentagon plans to spend hundreds of millions on projects that appear unrelated to COVID-19, including submarine missile tubes, space launch facilities, body armor and golf course staffing.
But the department also intends to play a leading role in developing a vaccine and treatments for the virus, and expects to buy 7.5 million doses of a vaccine, when one is developed, for military service members and their families.
The Pentagon is funding development of three possible vaccines in its own medical labs, and the spending plan includes $4.4 billion in coronavirus care and basic equipment for military hospitals.
The plan also shows $22 million for a project to create wearable monitoring devices to measure disease symptoms and track contagious individuals, and the Pentagon plans to deploy the artificial intelligence unit Project Maven, which rapidly analyzes drone footage, to create an algorithm-based surveillance system to track the pandemic's spread around the world.
A substantial portion of the funding -- at least $668 million -- will go to correct pre-existing problems in the military supply chain, and watchdogs see that spending as a giant payout to military defense contractors that has little value in fighting the pandemic.
“With millions of people out of work and small business owners across the country worried they will not be able to weather this storm, we should be focusing our efforts at helping them rather than giving handouts to defense contractors,” said Dan Grazier, of the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.
New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees on Thursday issued a formal apology after he criticized fellow NFL players who protested police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem.
In an Instagram post, Brees said he shouldn't have called the anthem protests disrespectful to the American military, and he acknowledged that they are actually about protesting the treatment black Americans receive at the hands of law enforcement officials.
"In an attempt to talk about respect, unity, and solidarity centered around the American flag and the national anthem, I made comments that were insensitive and completely missed the mark on the issues we are facing right now as a country," Brees wrote. "They lacked awareness and any type of compassion or empathy."
Brees also said that "it breaks my heart to know the pain I have caused."
The civil unrest seen across the United States following the killing of George Floyd brings to the fore the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous observation that “a riot is the language of the unheard.”
Taken from his 1968 speech “The Other America,” King condemned the act of rioting, but at the same time challenged audiences to consider what such actions say about the experience of those marginalized in society.
“Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention,” King said.
In other words, peace cannot exist without justice. This conviction has deep roots in Christian thought, it can be traced to the authors of the Bible and early Jewish and Christian communities.
As scholars of biblical texts and religion and culture, we believe that understanding how, often violent, unrest informed both early Christianity and the foundational stories of the United States itself can guide us in this current period of turmoil.
Israelite injustice
Deep rooted dissatisfaction with prevailing social injustice and actions against such inequity isn’t new. It would have been a familiar theme to the people who wrote the Bible and it is reflected in the texts themselves.
Unrest lies at the heart, for example, of the biblical story about the origins of ancient Israel. As recounted in the books of Genesis and Exodus, Abraham’s grandson Jacob travels to Egypt for food in a time of famine. After Jacob’s descendants are made slaves, Moses delivers Israel from bondage and leads them back to the promised land.
Here, the event that sparks liberation is Moses’ witnessing of the oppression of the Israelites. The book of Exodus details how they left Egypt with gold and silver procured in somewhat uncertain circumstances from their Egyptian neighbors. The manner of this acquisition would be a topic of discussion in biblical interpretation for centuries, for fear that it looks like plunder.
However, both ancient Jewish and ancient Christian sources viewed these goods as “fair wages,” in the words of the scholar James Kugel – just repayments for the Israelites’ years of slave labor.
Archaeological evidence points to a generally different origin story for the ancient nation of Israel – though one also of social unrest. According to some scholars, the settlement stemmed from the rebellion and regrouping of people who fled the collapse of large, urban areas in the southern Levant, modern-day Israel and Palestine.
The biblical impulse toward social justice appears especially in the prophets of the Old Testament, such as Amos and Isaiah whose call for justice and equality is a constant theme. It is little wonder, then, that they were cited in the context of the modern-day civil right’s movement. King cited prophets from the Bible repeatedly in his “I Have a Dream” speech. When he talked of “justice” rolling “down like waters, righteousness like an everflowing stream” and “crooked places” being “made straight,” he is pulling directly from the Books of Amos and Isaiah.
Early Christian unrest
The New Testament also attests to experiences of social unrest in early Christianity.
In the Book of Matthew, Jesus is quoted as saying, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” And in confronting money changers in the Temple of Jerusalem, Jesus overturns the tables and whips the money changers for their unjust actions.
To some this might provide justification for the destruction of property. Others, however, observe that Jesus claims that the Temple belongs to “my father’s house” – meaning his family – and as such cannot taken as justification for destroying someone else’s possessions.
Caravaggio’s depiction of Christ driving money changers out of the temple.
It is clear from many passages that the religious movement had a primary concern to care for the oppressed and that in that context, unrest can sometimes be justified.
Nonetheless, some parts of the Bible have been used to justify the quelling of social unrest. Jeff Sessions, former attorney general of the United States, recently appealed to Romans 13 when claiming that enforcement of strict immigration reform was the rule of law: “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.”
Biblical scholars dispute this interpretation, noting that the word “law” appears only once in Romans 13, when Paul states that “love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Civil religion and unrest
Biblical passages have been used by American politicians for as long as there has been a United States.
As historian James Byrd has argued, the American revolutionaries claimed the apostle Paul gave Christians the license to resist tyrants using violent means.
In addition to drawing on the Bible, the Founding Fathers also produced a new sacred cannon to justify unrest in the event of injustice – founding stories referred to by scholars as “civil religion.”
Think, for instance, of the Boston Tea Party dumping tea into the harbor in a protest against an unjust tax. The national narrative sees this as heroic.
The fact that injustice requires action is similarly supported by the Declaration of Independence. It frames the relationship between Britain and the colonies as one of “repeated injuries and usurpations” which the colonists have tried to solve, only to be “answered only by repeated injury.”
Repeated injustice, then, was grounds for revolution.
