Morning Briefing: Chicago Mayor to Form Task Force on Removal of Police With Connections to Extremist Groups
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced the formation of a task force to remove CPD officers with 'ties to extremist and anti-government groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.'
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Morning Briefing: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson will “form a task force to examine how to rid the Chicago Police Department of officers with ties to extremist and anti-government groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers,” and the announcement comes “eight months after the city’s Office of the Inspector General recommended in a report last year that the mayor convene a task force.”
The mayor’s announcement comes days after Alderman Matt Martin proposed an ordinance that “allows for the city’s Human Resources department and Office of the Inspector General to investigate and discipline city employees” that have connections to extremists groups.
“Extremism is on the rise, and so, we think that this is the right time to move forward with this prohibition, to make sure that if you are seeking to attack and overthrow government that you aren’t simultaneously collecting a government check,” Martin said.
Patriot Front, the neo-fascists White Nationalist group, was reportedly seen marching in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, and the group was also “seen on the grounds of the Iowa Statehouse” and the group displayed banners that included phrases such as “Deport Invaders: Keep America, American."
In New Haven, Connecticut, local law enforcement has reportedly “connected the nine neo-Nazi agitators who showed up on State Street earlier this month to two white supremacist regional groups”: the Nationalist Social Club (NSC-131) and the Atlantic Nationalist Club.
In Seattle, Washington, local law enforcement is reportedly investigating a suspected hate crime after a group of men allegedly repeatedly targeted “queer bar in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, yelling homophobic slurs and firing a water bead gun at people standing outside,” and police officers were “sent to other LGBTQ establishments in the area to inform them of the situation.”
Must Reads
Gabriel Sherman writes that “in private, Republicans talk about their fear that Trump might incite his MAGA followers to commit political violence against them if they don’t rubber-stamp his actions. ‘They’re scared shitless about death threats and Gestapo-like stuff,’ a former member of Trump’s first administration tells me… From the moment Trump descended his golden escalator in June 2015 to announce his first run for president, he injected menace into his political rhetoric. On the campaign trail he talked about wanting to punch protesters in the face… When protests erupted after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd in 2020, Trump called protesters ‘thugs’ and said: ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts.’ The phrase echoed a remark made in the 1960s by a Miami police chief associated with stoking racial tensions in the city (Trump claimed he wasn’t aware of its origins). In a September 2020 debate against Joe Biden, Trump refused to condemn white supremacist violence and told the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by.’ January 6 further catalyzed GOP fear of Trump-inspired violence. Romney told his biographer, McKay Coppins, that an undercurrent of anxiety thwarted Republican efforts to formally punish Trump for his role in inciting the riot. [Vanity Fair]
Radley Balko writes that “Kash Patel could do a lot of damage at the FBI without overhauling the bureau much at all. FBI agents currently have extensive powers to open investigations, interrogate the friends and family of targets, and send informants to manipulate people, all based on nothing more than conduct agents deem to be ‘radical’ or ‘extreme.’ Much of the time, the conduct that attracts suspicion — participating in a protest, converting to Islam, writing for a radical website — is protected by the First Amendment, or at least ought to be. And despite the protests from people like Patel, the brunt of these abuses have fallen disproportionately on civil rights groups, Muslims, and left-leaning activists rather than on militias, white supremacists, or right-wing parent groups. The grim reality is that Patel won’t need to remake the FBI from scratch. He’ll just need to marginally redirect the agency’s focus from unconstitutionally harassing groups the right has traditionally loathed, to unconstitutionally harassing groups that Trump loathes personally. Over the course of months of reporting, former FBI agents and those who study the intelligence community have told Rolling Stone that on some level, MAGA is correct: The FBI is desperately in need of reform. But Trump and Patel are the last people who should do the reforming.” [Rolling Stone]
Elie Mystal writes that “the orders and actions of Donald Trump and his copresident Elon Musk are all part of a piece. The most obvious goal is to establish authoritarian, single-party control in the United States of America, and we know that because they wrote down their plan in Project 2025 and have been executing that plan every day since they took office. But we should understand why they want such power. It’s not just so they can win the culture wars; Trump and Musk are misogynists and provable racists, but their hatred of women and Black people (and gay people and trans people and Latino people and Muslim people and truth and science and journalism and fact-based reality) are all just their means to an end. The thing Trump and Musk value most of all is money. Their entire regime is best understood as a criminal junta whose end goal is to redirect the wealth of the nation into their own pockets. They are running a kleptocracy, and they’ve figured out that facism is actually the quickest path to riches. They’re the encapsulation of Alan Rickman’s portrayal of Hans Gruber, the villain in Die Hard, taken to its logical conclusion. They talk like megalomaniacal populists, but they’re really just common thieves—or, well, exceptional thieves, given their success rate.” [The Nation]
What to expect from Radical Reports: Morning Briefing provides a daily round-up of reporting on the Radical Right; Extremist Links offers a weekly round-up of extremists activities including the white supremacist and militia movements; Narratives of the Right delivers weekly analysis of the current narratives in far right online spaces and promoted by right-wing media; and Research Desk provides monthly highlights research and analysis from academia on the Radical Right.
I support Mayor Johnson’s plan. As a resident of this city, I can tell you that Chicago cops are not my faves. If any of them are right wingers, then get rid of them!
What took so long?