Susan Rice’s Considerable Past Fossil Fuel Investments

One of the finalists in Joe Biden’s “veepstakes” is a longtime investor in fossil fuels, financial disclosures reveal.


Walker Bragman
Aug 7






This report was written by Walker Bragman.

Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, reportedly one of two finalists in Joe Biden’s vice presidential search, had millions invested in fossil fuels and energy companies as recently as 2015. The revelations come as Biden has faced renewed questions about his commitment to environmental policies that would combat climate change.

A financial disclosure form obtained by TMI reveals that Rice had investments in at least five such companies, including as much as $100,000 in TransCanada, which is behind the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Rice also had over $1 million invested in pipeline firm Enbridge as well as more than $2 million split between fossil fuel companies Cenovus, Encana, and Imperial Oil -- all companies with significant involvement in developing the tar sands of Alberta. The investments netted as much as $237,000 in dividends that year.

In addition, Rice reported significant holdings in Canadian banks which fund pipeline projects, according to the disclosure.

A veteran of multiple Democratic administrations, Rice has a traditionally impressive resume on paper. She worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Co. before serving as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under Bill Clinton, UN Ambassador under Barack Obama and National Security Adviser. But her record has made her a controversial candidate for VP. Pledged delegates for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have urged Biden to avoid naming her to the ticket, and have also urged him to remove a number of other foreign policy hawks from his team. Among other things, the delegates cited her past support for military intervention in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

On Friday, environmental advocates criticized Rice’s past fossil fuel investments in a Politico report. In 2012, when Rice was a candidate to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, environmentalists took aim at her for the holdings, even circulating a petition urging Obama not to select her.

Even then, Rice, whose net worth with her husband was estimated to be between $23.5 million and $43.5 million, had significant investments in Canadian energy interests, including as much as $600,000 in TransCanada. She also owned stock in Enbridge, Encana, Cenovus, and Suncor, along with other fossil fuel companies like Chesapeake Energy, Devon Energy, Royal Dutch Shell, Iberdrola, ATP Oil & Gas Corp., and energy utility TransAlta.

Rice would hardly be the first person with fossil fuel ties that Biden has brought onboard this cycle. Biden’s climate adviser, Heather Zichal, previously served on the board of a natural gas company, Cheniere Energy. One of his fundraisers, Andrew Goldman, co-founded a liquid natural gas company. Meanwhile, his national co-campaign chair, Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond, is a vocally pro fossil fuel Democrat. Topping the list, however, is fossil fuel lawyer and former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who Biden tapped to help with his Latino outreach.

Throughout the election cycle, Biden has attempted to thread a difficult needle, maintaining support from his big donors while assuaging the doubts of his party’s left flank -- particularly on the issue of climate change.

During the primary, the former VP promised no new fracking on multiple occasions despite releasing a climate plan in June 2019 containing language explicitly allowing for “new oil and gas operations.” After the primary, Biden was quick to establish a policy task force with his former rival Sen. Bernie Sanders which led to him making a number of concessions on his climate plan.

But early last month, Biden walked back his previous statements on fracking, telling an interviewer that “fracking is not going to be on the chopping block.”

The United Auto Workers: A criminal conspiracy against the working class

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/07/pers-a07.html



7 August 2020

On Monday, General Motors submitted court documents showing that Fiat Chrysler gave United Auto Workers officials tens of millions of dollars in previously unreported bribes as part a massive criminal operation.

Private investigators working for GM have uncovered evidence of offshore bank accounts in Switzerland, Panama, Singapore, Lichtenstein and the Cayman Islands set up for the benefit of top UAW officials, including four of the last five UAW presidents. The secret accounts were part of a sophisticated scheme by Fiat Chrysler to funnel millions of dollars in illegal payments to union officers for their services in betraying workers.

These revelations point to a scale and extent of corruption within the UAW even greater than the findings of the federal investigation into bribery and kickbacks. So far, that investigation has led to the conviction of more than a dozen people, mostly UAW and Fiat Chrysler management officials.

The list of UAW officials now serving jail time includes former UAW President Gary Jones and former UAW vice presidents Joe Ashton and Norwood Jewell. Acting UAW President Rory Gamble is also under federal investigation for taking kickbacks.

GM launched the investigation as part of an attempt to reopen its lawsuit against FCA, claiming the payments to the UAW gave its rival an unfair advantage in contract negotiations. If GM felt it had to go to the courts, it is because the UAW’s corruption grew to such an extent that it undermined its own corporate interests.

The new court filings include evidence that Ashton served as a direct agent of FCA on the GM Board of Directors as part of a scheme codenamed Operation Cylinder aimed at forcing GM into a merger with FCA.

However, the real victim of this conspiracy was not GM, but the workers, who suffered devastating job losses and concessions.

Revealed in these documents is the fact that the UAW is not simply an agent of management in the exploitation of the working class, but direct participants and beneficiaries.

The bribery operation took place on a vast scale, with millions of dollars funneled through a sophisticated system of hiding transactions. The people doing this were not amateurs. For an operation of this size and sophistication, corruption is an inadequate term.

These documents expose the UAW as a criminal syndicate. If they are able to carry out crimes on this scale, who knows what else they are capable of? Suffice it to say that in 2018, a 21-year-old worker named Jacoby Hennings walked into a UAW office to make a complaint and did not walk out of the plant alive.

Criminality emerges from the very social being of this organization. These bribes were not an accident, a wart on an otherwise healthy organization. A whole system of oppression and exploitation finds its expression in these crimes.

As early as 1984 the Workers League, forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party (US), pointed to the development of corporatism in the UAW, warning of a parallel to Mussolini’s labor syndicates in fascist Italy. At that time, the UAW openly embraced the principle of union-management collaboration.

This led to the setting up of various joint programs and joint training centers, starting in the mid- to late 1980s, that served as a conduit for the funneling of corporate cash into the coffers of the UAW to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Corporatism grew naturally out of the nationalist and pro-capitalist program of the unions. Under conditions of the increasingly globally integrated character of production, the national-based strategy of achieving reforms proved worthless. In response, the UAW served up racist anti-foreigner demagogy combined with unbridled support for American capitalism. The UAW suppressed strikes and any form of resistance by workers to increased exploitation.

During the 1980s the UAW and other unions—the United Steelworkers, United Mineworkers, Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers—isolated and betrayed one strike after another and agreed to massive concession contracts. By the early 1990s, it was clear that a qualitative change had taken place in the relation of the unions to the working class.

The Workers League concluded that the unions could no longer be called “workers organizations.” The Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, writing in the 1930s, said of the leaders of the old American Federation of Labor, “Should these gentlemen … defend the income of the bourgeoisie from attacks on the part of the workers; should they conduct a struggle against strikes, against the raising of wages, against help to the unemployed [in other words what the UAW and all unions do today] then we would have an organization of scabs, and not a trade union.”

This is precisely the role of the UAW and the unions as a whole today. They are in the truest sense “an organization of scabs.”

For exposing this reality, the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party have come under relentless attack by all the middle-class groups of the pseudo-left such as the Democratic Socialists of America, Jacobin Magazine and Labor Notes.

Those who talk about the UAW and other unions as working-class organizations not only show themselves as completely removed from reality, but also display their indifference to the plight of workers who find themselves under the thumb of these gangsters.

All of the middle-class apologists for the unions stand exposed by the UAW’s corruption. They have their own insidious relationship with this system of exploitation. In an objective sense, it serves their interests.

The new exposures further confirm the urgent need to build independent workplace and factory committees under the democratic control of workers.

The UAW is collaborating with the auto companies to suppress opposition to the return to full production at North American auto plants in the midst of a deadly pandemic, even as management has abandoned the most minimal safety protocols. This has led to hundreds of infections, with the actual count being covered up by management and the UAW. More than two dozen workers have died at plants operated by the Detroit automakers.

Workers should recall the fact that the temporary shutdown of North American auto production last March only came about through wildcat actions taken by workers in the US, Canada and Mexico in defiance of the unions.

The fight to build independent rank-and-file safety committees at plants and workplaces must be expanded. Workers should follow the initiative taken by autoworkers in the Detroit area at Fiat Chrysler Jefferson North Assembly, Sterling Heights Assembly, Toledo Jeep and the Ford Dearborn Truck Plant, where safety committees have already been established.

A national and global network of these committees must be built uniting autoworkers with logistics workers, transportation workers, teachers, service workers and all sections of the working class to prepare a general strike for safe workplace conditions and the shutdown of non-essential production until the pandemic is contained.

The fight against the homicidal policy of the ruling class in relation to the pandemic requires a fight against capitalism. It means a confrontation with the Trump administration and the whole corporate-backed two-party political setup in the US.

In this struggle, workers confront in the gangsters in the UAW their bitterest opponents.







Shannon Jones

The DNC Convention Is a Smoke & Mirrors, Big Money Bonanza

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ0YhnfPnGg&feature

New US unemployment claims top 1 million for 20th straight week

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/07/unem-a07.html



As Senate adjourns for weekend
New US unemployment claims top 1 million for 20th straight week
By Jacob Crosse
7 August 2020

Data published by the US Labor Department on Thursday showed that for the 20th straight week more than 1 million workers filed unemployment claims for the first time. Unlike in previous weeks, the workers who filed last week will not be eligible to receive the enhanced federal unemployment benefit of $600 a week that expired last week along with a partial federal moratorium on evictions.

Thursday’s report did little to prompt movement between the Democrats and Republicans toward an agreement on a fifth coronavirus stimulus bill. This is despite over 30 million workers losing out on the enhanced benefits last week, while over 23 million are facing eviction in the next two months, according to the Aspen Institute.

Instead, the negotiations, with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on one side and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer on the other, ended the same as on previous days: without an agreement, much less a date for a possible vote.

Without the possibility of an agreement before Friday, senators from both parties adjourned for a three-day weekend.

“We’re still a considerable amount apart,” Meadows told reporters after another day of dithering. Pelosi, talking out of both sides of her mouth, said she could see “light at the end of the tunnel,” but that the two sides were “very far apart—it’s most unfortunate.”

Making clear the willingness of the Democrats to agree to a cut in benefits, Schumer expressed “disappointment” over Thursday’s talks and blamed the Republicans for being “unwilling to meet in the middle.”

The 1.19 million new unemployment claims for the week ending July 25 were slightly down from the 1.43 million claims the previous week. However, the figure is still nearly double the pre-pandemic record of 695,000 claims set in 1982. Overall, roughly 55 million unemployment claims have been filed since mid-March.

Currently, there are an estimated 5.4 million job openings, while over 31 million people are collecting some form of unemployment pay. The few jobs that are available are mostly low-paying and carry a high risk of contracting the virus.

Research conducted by the California Policy Lab found that “more than half (57 percent) of recent unemployment claims” are from workers who are resubmitting or reopening their claims after they had returned to work but were then let go again.

This important statistic shows the falsity of claims by Republicans and some Democrats that the now expired federal supplement to state unemployment benefits enacted in March as part of the CARES Act corporate bailout is an “overpayment” and creates a “disincentive to work.” Workers are not as a rule refusing to return to previously held jobs, despite legitimate concerns about the risk of COVID-19 infection. Rather, the jobs are not there, as businesses continue to close while the virus spreads out of control across the country.

The research conducted by the California Policy Lab coincides with findings released Monday by Cornell University, which found that 31 percent of workers who returned to work after being laid off or furloughed at the start of the pandemic have since been laid off a second time. An additional 26 percent of workers surveyed reported that even though they had been called back to work, their supervisor or boss warned that they could be laid off again.

As with all aspects of the coronavirus crisis, the working class and poor are being made to suffer the brunt of its effects, including joblessness. Recent analysis conducted by economics professor Peter Ganong at the University of Chicago concluded that workers in the lowest income quintile, that is, the bottom 20 percent, have experienced three times as many job losses as higher-paid workers in the top quintile.

In addition to Thursday’s new unemployment claims report, the Department of Labor released data showing that over 16.1 million people are currently collecting traditional unemployment benefits from their state. The ending of the federal supplement means a reduction in weekly income for millions of workers of between 60 percent and 80 percent, depending on the state where they reside.

Oklahoma has the highest drop-off. The average Oklahoma worker will see an 85.6 percent reduction in wages without the federal enchantment. Louisiana is second, with a 75.4 percent reduction, while jobless workers in Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida will receive at least 70 percent less in benefits.

Reporters from the World Socialist Web Site spoke to Rick, an unemployed child care worker from Michigan. He said: “I was first put on a leave of absence from my job working in early childhood education in March. It was originally not intended to last very long. I remember my bosses and coworkers being very blindsided by the whole situation.

“It’s been very difficult to remain sheltered in place for this long. I am fairly certain that I will not be able to be rehired at the same job that I left in March.

“In June, I tentatively accepted an offer to return to the job on a limited basis by the end of July, with the hope that COVID cases would stay low. When they began increasing again in early July, I called and told them I was uncomfortable with returning to work at that time. My employer said she understood and that many of my coworkers had also said they wished to wait for a few more months before returning.

“I have fears now that I will be removed and will have to reapply to work there again. This will basically wipe out all the pay raises I’ve received while working there and force me to start all over again. We’re already too low-paid as it is.

“This brings up the $600 expanded benefits. With those, I at least had financial support that I needed if the pandemic continues to remain a problem. Before the pandemic, I would try to limit myself to spending about $10 a day on any items beyond gas for my car or bills.

“Working in child care, there had been weeks when my bank account would run out days before my paycheck arrived. I would bum food from the kitchen at my job. Some of my coworkers actually brought food from home and would share.

“When the first expanded payments came in, I found myself able to actually fill my cart at the grocery store. I would go early in the morning to avoid the crowds and maintain healthy social distancing. Remarkably, I could participate in society somewhat more easily during the pandemic, simply due to actually having some money to spend.

“What really gets me about them saying this benefit is a disincentive to work is that I didn’t create this pandemic. They did. They failed us and want to tell us that we’re the ones being overpaid!

“It’s not easy having to remain inside during the summer, losing contact with friends and coworkers. Not to mention the children. I can hope that I’ll be able to at least last a few more months until it’s safer to look for work. I can only hope.

“I’ve had fights with family because they refuse to take the coronavirus seriously. I don’t know if at this point I’ll even retain all my job skills when I go back because it’s been nearly six months of waiting. I certainly don’t enjoy life being put on hold. Now they want us to risk dying as well. The crisis this has created won’t go away with a return to work. Everything is changed.”

“A nationwide strike is what needs to be done.”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/07/educ-a07.html



Angry educators and parents across the US protest the reckless return to classrooms
By Nancy Hanover
7 August 2020

Protests continue daily across the US as teachers, school workers and parents rally against the bipartisan demand for a return to classrooms, as coronavirus cases hit five million and deaths top 162,000. The Socialist Equality Party’s statement calling for a nationwide general strike and elaborating a political perspective to mobilize the working class against the homicidal return to work and school is being widely discussed and shared across dozens of Facebook groups and other social media. Educators and workers everywhere will not, and cannot, accept this implicit death sentence.

As schools reopen, COVID-19 spreads immediately. Schools in Corinth, Mississippi, opened last week, but had one case by Friday. As of yesterday, 116 students have been sent home to quarantine. Corinth held daily temperature and symptoms checks, as per the CDC guidelines, yet could not prevent wide exposure. Similar spread has been recorded as schools opened in Gwinnett, Georgia, southwest Kansas, and Greenfield, Indiana.

The depth and breadth of opposition to Wall Street’s lethal edict to return to work and school, however, has mostly been ignored by the national mainstream media. It briefly covered a few of the union-backed National Day of Resistance rallies but has deliberately downplayed the growing social opposition. The latest polling numbers show only 16 percent of parents support Donald Trump’s demand for five-day-a-week face-to-face instruction, with 56 percent saying it would not be safe to send children back to school in their communities for in-person learning.

This article can only give a snapshot of some current developments in this developing movement. Not mentioned below are many other rallies this week, including in central Ohio; south Salt Lake City, Utah; Long Beach and Stockton, California; Columbia, Missouri; and Orland Park, Illinois.

On Thursday, hundreds of teachers, staff, parents, and students protested at a meeting of the Jefferson Parish School Board (Metairie), representing the largest school district in Louisiana with some 50,000 students. One teacher, David Fields, had his hands painted red to symbolize the lives that would be lost due to the reckless reopening. He carried a sign drawn like a bullseye, which read, “Dead custodians. Dead students. Dead Principals. Dead Teacher Aides. Dead Parents. Dead Bus Drivers.” Written in the center was “Blood on your hands,” indicting the school board.

The meeting, ostensibly to gather public testimony, was abruptly shut down in the face of public anger. The board had confirmed that a “handful” of employees in the district tested positive for COVID-19 after teachers and staff returned to campuses August 3. One teacher spoke bluntly: “Let me explain something. I contracted the virus at the same time as my student’s mother. I am here. She is not. You do not understand the guilt that sits on my heart and on my mind every single day I go to work. What if I did something wrong?” Responding to community pressure, Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee-Sheng said that she has requested the board consider postponing the start by three weeks.

On Thursday, hundreds of Reno, Nevada teachers were expected at a rally against plans to reopen Washoe County schools on August 17. English teacher M.J. Ubando said, “Someone needed to do this. I'm not thrilled that it's me, but I had to really ask myself who I wanted to be in this moment,” reported the Reno Gazette. She had COVID-19 in April and spent weeks recovering, barely able to do simple chores. “People are going to die and I guess they are OK with that?” she emphasized, stating that if she lost her job for speaking out, it was worth it. Her husband added, “Many of us are the working class, and with opening schools, it is just going to get worse.”

On Thursday, teachers marched in Lansing, Michigan to demand Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer suspend all in-person education. Whitmer, who has been “fully vetted” as a possible vice-presidential pick by Joe Biden, is fully implicated in the big business drive to return to work. At the behest of the Detroit Three, she allowed auto plants to resume manufacturing in mid-May. Rachel Cain, a Grand Rapids teacher, attended the rally at the state capitol, bringing a black, tombstone-shaped sign, inscribed, "Here lies Ms. Cain. Last year she bought school supplies with her paycheck. This year she bought the economy with her life."

On Wednesday, hundreds of Georgia teachers parked outside Gwinnett County School's headquarters and blasted their horns for hours to protest the return to school buildings. Gwinnett is the state’s largest school district and was the site where nearly 300 school employees either tested positive or had direct exposure to COVID-19 and were forced to quarantine, just one day after in-person pre-planning. There are 17,781 positive cases in Gwinnett County, with 1,996 hospitalizations and 240 deaths, as of last Sunday.

Yesterday in Florida, a hearing was held in the Florida Education Association lawsuit against Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ order requiring schools to reopen for face-to-face instruction. The July 6 order required all brick and mortar schools to provide five-day-a-week schooling and open in August unless state and local health officials direct otherwise.

Florida now has had more than 510,000 COVID-19 cases, the highest per capita infection rate in the US, and more than 7,745 deaths. Teachers have been staging protests around the state for weeks, including in Pasco County, Duval County (Jacksonville), Hillsborough County (Tampa), and Escambia County (Pensacola). With some schools slated to open next Monday, the union hearing authorized a change in venue, a delaying tactic.

“My husband and I are both teachers, and we have three children, two with severe asthma, and the oldest also has immune issues,” a Florida educator wrote on Facebook. “This is not right. My district isn’t even allowing me to choose between being a mom and a teacher. The choice is, do you want a job or not. Like living on one teacher’s salary for a family of five is even possible... I’m not even allowed to struggle financially to keep my family safe with the comfort that I have a position to come back to after 16 years of loyal service.”

DeSantis, an outspoken Trump supporter and school privatizer, has long aligned himself with the government’s attempt to destroy public education. Florida has seen possibly the most aggressive drive in the nation for virtual charter schools and privatization. No doubt, the state’s demand for a return to school aims to both force workers back onto the job and continue to bleed public schools of resources through declining enrollment.

In Missouri, Republican Governor Mike Parson has issued no overarching state policy regarding reopening, but infamously stated last month, “These kids have got to get back to school… And if they do get COVID-19, which they will—and they will when they go to school—they’re not going to the hospitals.” His bald admission that children will inevitably be infected, together with the claim that none will be seriously ill, has sparked great anger. It flies in the face of the well-documented and growing number of serious illnesses and deaths among young people, not to mention the long-term health implications of the virus which are still being investigated. On Monday, two Florida teenagers died from the coronavirus.

On Saturday, teachers protested in Kansas City, Missouri, after forming the Facebook group Missourians for Educational Change. Kansas City teacher Andrew Rexroat told local media channel KCUR, “We talk about the potential trauma of kids missing about three months of school. We’re not talking about the trauma of a kid potentially losing a loved one because of COVID.” Teachers waved signs that read, “Science, not politics,” and “Online until decline.”

St. Louis Public Schools teacher Grace Hogan drove four hours to attend the rally, noted KCUR. She told the crowd that teachers have to speak up because “there is no number of acceptable deaths.” She added, “For decades now, we have taught teachers that it is their job to put themselves between students and a bullet. So here we are. It’s a little bit slower, it looks a little bit different than all the drills they made us run. But this is where we are, and we will stand here and persist and insist on a better plan.”

Nevertheless, on Monday, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft doubled-down on the return to school, stating, “At some point, we need to just put our heads down and say we’re gonna get through it, and we definitely need to send our kids back to school.”

Provocatively emphasizing the homicidal character of the demand to reopen schools, he added that he didn't “know a father alive that wouldn’t risk getting COVID, even risk dying, to make sure that his children had the greatest foundation for success for their life they could have.”

Missouri has seen 1,266 deaths from COVID-19, with 1,193 new cases reported Tuesday, bringing the total to 54,080 since the outbreak began.

Missouri resident Joanna Martinez wrote to the World Socialist Web Site Educators Newsletter to express her outrage. “I am a parent of two students, and they plan to reopen schools in the area on August 24. I'm seriously concerned about my children’s well-being and that of the staff.

“There is no requirement for the staff or the students to wear a mask. The rooms are not big enough to practice social distancing. There are not enough safety precautions in place to assure my children will be safe while attending school.

“They are not offering homeschooling online, half days. There are no precautions, no plan, nothing at all. It’s got a bunch of parents here just freaked out. They’re looking into parents signing a death waiver. I talked to my mom, who is a nurse. She told me she would not sign that paper and wouldn’t blame me if I didn’t want to send my kids back. It’s very dangerous.

“My frustrations are beyond limits, and my fear is indescribable. Our children need an education, but their safety is number one. The county and district seem to be selfishly putting that last. They say not many children have been affected, but that’s just because they closed the schools. Once they open, it’s going to be a disaster.

“I think that a nationwide strike is what needs to be done. I do not believe that it’s safe for schools to open right now. If they do reopen, we will see a significant jump in positive cases and possible death increase with young children. I feel they are completely neglecting the well-being of the students, staff and parents for their own personal gain and it’s disgusting.

“I just hope more people will put their foot down and stand up for the children and teachers.”

The SEP’s statement urges educators and all workers to form rank-and-file safety committees, to contact us for assistance in organizing your struggle, and to sign up for the World Socialist Web Site Educators Newsletter to follow nationwide and international developments in education.



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For a nationwide general strike to halt the drive to reopen schools! [5 August 2020]

Mike Pence BASHES John Roberts

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiI9Cvf8Ycs&feature

US Homeland Security chief defends police-state crackdown, announces federal paramilitaries to remain in Portland

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/07/wolf-a07.html



By Barry Grey
7 August 2020

In testimony Thursday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Chad Wolf, aggressively defended the violent crackdown on anti-police brutality protesters in Portland, Oregon by paramilitary units of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), an agency of DHS.

Wolf also announced that the “full augmented DHS law enforcement posture” would remain on alert in Portland indefinitely, despite an agreement with state and local officials to draw back the militarized federal immigration police and allow Oregon state troopers to police protesters rallying daily outside the Hatfield Federal Courthouse in downtown Portland.

Wolf denounced the Democratic mayor of Portland and governor of Oregon as well as the Democratic-controlled Portland City Council, all of whom publicly opposed the deployment of the federal police by President Trump and repeatedly demanded their removal. He presented an Alice in Wonderland version of events, according to which violent and criminal mobs of left-wing terrorists and Antifa-linked anarchists attempted night after night to destroy the courthouse and violently attacked the CBP paramilitaries.

In Wolf's telling—echoed by the Republican majority on the committee—his forces were “abandoned” by local and state authorities, who, by implication, were complicit in rampant mob violence.

He also attacked the Portland City Council for “prohibiting local police cooperation and ‘information sharing’ with “federal law enforcement,” i.e., Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and CBP agents who arbitrarily detain immigrants and jail or deport them.

He denounced the media coverage, which documented to some extent the brutal attacks on peaceful demonstrators carried out by CBP police, including a specially trained fascistic unit called BORTAC, using tear gas, flash-bang grenades, truncheons and “impact munitions.” At least one demonstrator, 26-year-old Donavan LaBella, was critically wounded when a paramilitary officer shot him in the head and cracked his skull.

Wolf specifically defended the chilling practice carried out in Portland of seizing protesters blocks away from the courthouse, trundling them into unmarked vehicles and taking them to secret locations to be interrogated, without probable cause and in many cases without any charges being laid. This trademark of military dictatorships and fascist regimes he called a “common de-escalation tactic.”

He boasted that his agents had arrested 99 Portland protesters on federal charges and added that “the next 30 days will see a lot more activity in terms of charging people.” The Washington Post reported Thursday that the charges include assaulting a federal officer, arson, damaging federal property and operating a drone in a restricted area. There are 24 felony and 45 misdemeanor charges, carrying prison sentences of up to 20 years.

The police-state assault on protesters in Portland is an extension of the Gestapo-style campaign against immigrants being carried out by Trump and his fascistic aide Stephen Miller, in which Wolf's immigration police have served as Trump’s personal militarized force. In February, the White House confirmed that it was deploying BORTAC to conduct immigration roundups in cities, such as Portland, where local governments have ordered local police not to fully comply with federal immigration officials.

So-called “sanctuary cities” where these special tactical units, which have served in Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have been deployed include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco and Newark.

Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, Republican from Wisconsin, set the tone for the rest of the Republicans on the panel in his opening remarks. He named two police officers killed in the course of the nationwide, multiracial protests against racism and police violence that erupted in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25. He then cited DHS to claim that 277 attacks on police and federal officers occurred “during those ‘peaceful protests’ that started in May.”

This grotesquely distorted presentation of the protests—which were savagely attacked by local police and National Guard troops—was conflated with statistics showing an increase in urban crime during the pandemic to claim that the protests have unleashed “anarchy” and an out-of-control crime wave on the country.

This narrative, which echoes that of the White House, is aimed at justifying the imposition of dictatorial rule, based on the military and the police, including fascistic forces being encouraged by Trump both inside and outside the repressive organs of the state. It is the response of a ruling class discredited by its catastrophic handling of the coronavirus pandemic, following decades of self-enrichment, war and attacks on working-class living standards, and terrified of the growth of popular opposition and hatred for capitalism.

The Democrats are no less petrified at the prospect of a mass movement of the working class. Their response to the wave of protests has been to align themselves even more closely with the military, the FBI and the CIA, while seeking to hijack the protests and channel them behind a racialist narrative. The Democratic Party and allied media, led by the New York Times, interpret every issue—from the pandemic, to unemployment, to police killings—almost entirely as manifestations of racism, concealing the basic class divisions in society that underlie racial discrimination, and working to divide the working class.

None of the Democrats at Thursday’s hearing raised the fundamental threat to democratic rights posed by the police-state policies of DHS and the Trump administration, which were defended across the board by Wolf. They were silent on Trump’s attempted coup on June 1, which preceded the crackdown in Portland and deployment of federal police to many other cities. On that day, Trump threatened to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act and deploy active-duty troops across the country to crush the protests against police violence.

He was stopped at that point by the military brass, which considered such a move premature and unprepared, and likely to set off a mass popular uprising that could spiral out of control. But as the World Socialist Web Site warned, the danger of an anti-constitutional coup d’etat remained, and the authoritarian plotting centered in the White House continued.

The ranking Democrat on the committee, Michigan Senator Gary Peters, meekly criticized Wolf for undermining public trust in the DHS through his “heavy-handed” tactics, and said the “singular focus on protecting federal property is distracting the department from addressing the threat posed by domestic terrorism” He demonstratively did not defend the state and local Democratic officials in Oregon who were attacked by Wolf. Nor did he defend the protesters from the DHS head’s slanders.

Kamala Harris of California, reportedly at the top of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s list for vice president, along with former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice, also failed to defend the protesters. She focused her questions on suggestions that Wolf was acting in concert with Trump and tailoring his provocative policies to Trump’s reelection campaign.

Just in the week preceding Thursday’s hearing, the Washington Post revealed that DHS’s Office of Intelligence Analysis had drawn up open source intelligence reports on two journalists who covered the protests in Portland and created “baseball card” dossiers on dozens of arrested protesters.

The Nation obtained a copy of a DHS intelligence report showing that Wolf’s department was targeting activists, branding them as “Antifa,” and attempting to tie them to a foreign power, a prelude to indicting them as terrorists. The leaked report named several individuals who had fought with the Kurdish YPG militia against ISIS during the period when Washington was allied with the YPG. This documented the plans to use the post-9/11 “anti-terror” laws to criminalize domestic political opposition on the left.

And on July 30, officers of the US Border Patrol, an agency of CBP and DHS, raided a camp set up by the migrant aid group No More Deaths in Arizona, 11 miles from the US-Mexico border, and arrested one of the activists.

Neither the anti-terror surveillance of protesters nor the raid on immigrant aid activists were raised by any of the Democrats on the committee.