A dystopia is an imagined place, and the latest Lincoln Project ad, released Sunday night, rolls out like the trailer for a film about such a dark state. But, of course, Portland, Oregon, is a very real place, and the ad is based on a very real story unfurling right now, rendered in black and white and red with a pulp-noir sensibility.
“This is how it starts: A president out of control as polls forecast his downfall,” the narrator begins over an image of President Trump and a typically bad poll. “This is how it starts: In a small city far from the Beltway, shadowy men — no badges, no ID, deputized by a rogue attorney general — snatch so-called ‘enemies of the state’ off the streets. This is how it starts: Without a warning or a warrant, heavily armed paramilitary units shove their targets into unmarked vans and race away.”
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf gets a cameo, too, and the ad makes clear the federal incursion into Portland is designed for a national rollout: “Faceless enforcers say you don’t have the right to protest. Now Trump’s bureaucrats are promising to send their their thugs everywhere — your town, your neighborhood. This is how it starts, and how freedom dies — unless we stand up, unless we speak out, unless we demand justice.” Continue reading.
Vermont senator had asked attorney general about similar hypothetical during 2019 confirmation hearing
On Friday, President Donald Trump saved veteran GOP operative Roger Stone from federal prison by commuting his sentence. Attorney General Bill Barr, before the commutation, had said that he considered Stone’s prison sentence fair. But when CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang asked Barr to weigh in on the commutation, he had no comment.
A former prosecutor who worked on the 
The day before Attorney General William Barr complained about disrespect for the police, Harris County, Texas, District Attorney Kim Ogg announced that her office had identified 69 more convicted drug offenders who may have been framed by a veteran Houston narcotics officer. The skepticism that Barr decries cannot be understood without taking into account the sort of corruption that Ogg is investigating.
During his Senate impeachment trial, Democrats repeatedly asserted that President Trump is “not above the law.” But since his acquittal two weeks ago, analysts say, the president has taken a series of steps aimed at showing that, essentially, he is the law.
President condemned ‘fraudulent investigation’ into Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress and obstructing Trump-Russia inquiry