Unmarked Men In Black Dragged A Screaming Woman Out Of A Republican Townhall
And no one did a fucking thing to stop them.
I’m not going to dig really deep into this because, honestly, there’s nothing to dig into. It’s exactly what it looks like. Republicans have been holding a series of town halls and they have been disastrous. People, including Republicans, are furious at elected Republicans for sitting by while Elon Musk dismantles the federal government and Donald Trump plays golf.
Most of the town halls have been peaceful, if angry. But on Saturday, a town hall set up by the Kootenai Country Republican Central Committee got ugly:
…unidentified, plainclothes security personnel dragged a Post Falls woman from the Coeur d’Alene High School auditorium for heckling legislators.
Though the company that provided security for the event has been identified, town hall organizers and Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris have claimed no knowledge of the security personnel or who hired them.
Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White confirmed Sunday that the men who dragged Teresa Borrenpohl from the meeting worked for the private security firm LEAR Asset Management.
The video is incredibly disturbing.
This wasn’t even a town hall specifically about Trump and Musk, although I’m sure the topic came up. But Republicans got increasingly angry at dissenting voices like Borrenpohl until they had had enough.
Norris has tried to pretend he had no knowledge of the security arrangements but he sure knew who to call when he needed someone to violate Borrenpohl’s First Amendment rights.
We’re going to have to wait and see how this plays out but I promise you, no one will be charged with a crime. It’s never a crime when Republicans shit on the Constitution, you see.
Here are a few things to understand about what happened here:
No one did a fucking thing. They just watched a woman be dragged away from a public event by men who did not identify themselves. A lot of them cheered. Idaho is a deep red state and fascism is apparently A-OK over there. Until it affects them, of course.
Republicans are going to learn from this. They do not like to be questioned. They definitely do not like to be challenged. It won’t be long before more of them have private security, who are notoriously willing to violate the law, drag people away in utter disregard for their civil liberties.
Republicans will escalate. As they dig in deeper, desperate to hold on to power in the face of increasing public outrage against the Musk-led coup, the GOP, in red states at least, will start to outlaw protests. This is what every authoritarian party has done since forever. There are already a lot of plainly unconstitutional laws on the books trying to do this but expect a rapid increase in draconian anti-protest laws under the guise of “maintaining public order.”
During Trump’s first disastrous term in office, unmarked vans started rolling up on protesters. Unmarked “officers” would jump out, grab several people, and speed off. The whole thing violated so many laws, it’s hard to know where to begin. But no one paid a price for any of it. And as always happens, when there are no consequences, Republicans pick up right where they left off. I promise you, those vans will be back by the summer as the protests grow.
The only way this does not get worse is if Republicans learn there is a price to pay. That this kind of behavior will not go unchallenged.
You need to look in the mirror and ask yourself what you will do when the unmarked men come and start dragging protesters away right in front of you. Because today it’s Borrenpohl. Tomorrow it’s going to be you.
This is it. This is Germany in the 1930s and what you do will be recorded in the history books. Your children and grandchildren will look back and ask what you did. Will you be able to look them in the face?
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Lear Asset Management? Who the fuck are they? And since when is “private security” allowed to physically remove someone for speaking? The GOP rep was not in harm’s way. She did not have a weapon. She did not rush the stage. She should sue their asses—the GOP rep too—for assault. I hope there’s a lawyer who would take this on pro bono, because it sets a terrible precedent.
I think we need to plaster the faces of these gentlemen who are doing this and plaster it everywhere to find out who they are. The more light that we shine on this the better off we will be. If they want to do something like this then they damn well need to be identified.