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Private family ceremony for Floyd due to take place in Houston on Tuesday
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Lawrence Douglas has written for us today about something that may have escaped your attention with all the news that has been around in the last few days – Trump’s former personal lawyer, John Dowd, describing citizens engaging in peaceable protest as “terrorists”.
Trump’s presidency has largely inured us to overheated rhetoric. We’ve grown accustomed to Trump and his allies vilifying journalists as “enemies of the people” or characterizing officials trying to hold him to account as treasonous criminals. All the same, Dowd’s brandishing of the term “terrorist” represents a frightening rhetorical escalation at a perilous time in the life of our nation.
In labeling protesters as terrorists, Dowd engages in something far more ominous and shocking than mere rhetorical overkill. He is effectively erasing the difference between Americans peaceably exercising their constitutional rights and Isis insurgents laying down roadside explosives.
Related: In case you missed it, Trump’s former lawyer compared protesters to terrorists | Lawrence Douglas
Away from the #BlackLivesMatter protests and coronavirus outbreak, there is still some business as usual politics going on in DC. This morning the Senate permanent subcommittee on Investigations has released a bipartisan report which states that three Chinese telecoms firms were allowed to operate in the US without appropriate oversight for nearly two decades.
The report calls on the Federal Communications Commission to conduct a full review of China Telecom Americas, China Unicom Americas and ComNet USA – claiming that there has not been an adequate assessment of what national security threats they might pose.
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