The speedy trial, conviction and justifiably harsh sentencing of a loathsome squad of Antifa terrorists for their armed attack on a Texas ICE facility is a model for how the justice system should be handling these goons nationwide — if politics didn’t corrupt law enforcement in liberal areas.
Some trials are still ahead, but two federal district-court judges (Mark Pittman and Reed O’Connor) came down hard on the anarchists who carried out a coordinated attack on the Prairieland detention center last Independence Day, sentencing the leader — who shot a responding police officer in the neck — to 100 years in prison and several accomplices to anywhere from 30 to 70 years.
This case was the first time that the feds successfully brought terrorism charges against far-left revolutionaries, who openly agitate for the violent overthrow of the United States — but it won’t be the last.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) denounced the sentences as a “travesty and totally unjustified,” insisting that because “Americans hate the fascist Trump regime,” he is attacking his opponents with “brute force.”
At least she’s not denying that Antifa even exists: Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan) in 2020 called it just an “idea” and its documented violence a “myth.”
In fact, while Antifa nationally may be loosely organized, individual cabals still surveil, plan and carry out plots just as rigorously as any other terrorist cell or criminal conspiracy.
Crucially, the Texas attack was met by local officers, who apprehended the perps in a fine show of cross-jurisdictional cooperation.
Don’t count on that in the nation’s many sanctuary cities, where laws prohibit cops from working with the feds on ICE-related matters, even when rioters act out violently, and politicians even order police to stay away as violence escalates.
Thanks to stand-down orders by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, local cops largely ignored the recent, highly coordinated siege of the Delaney Hall holding facility.
Nor are all federal judges sure to match the Texas jurists’ support for law and order.
Because Senate rules grant members a virtual veto over the president’s judicial nominees in their home states, district courts in Blue America are much more likely to assume that leftist anti-government terrorists have their hearts in the right place, and even to buy the idea that, since they call themselves “antifascists,” anyone opposing them must be a fascist.
So beware how federal judges in Minnesota handle the Justice Department’s conspiracy case against 15 anti-ICE anarchists who sought to “impede or injure” federal officers in Minneapolis last winter.
Antifa thugs are at least open about their contempt for civilization and its norms; the left’s influence on liberal politicians and the courts they cultivate may actually wreak more chaos.
Domestic terrorists should be treated at least as harshly as criminal conspiracies like the Mafia, but today’s Democrats are all too often blinded by ideology to understand that it doesn’t matter what cause the violent embrace: They’re still menaces to society.
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