Vox Sentences - Boogaloo Bois

Right-wing extremists face terrorism charges in Nevada; Iran releases an American prisoner detained in 2018.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Cameron Peters.

• On Wednesday, federal prosecutors in Nevada brought terror charges against three far-right extremists for conspiring to instigate violence at protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. [Washington Post / Derek Hawkins]
• The men were arrested Saturday in Las Vegas and are also facing state-level conspiracy and terrorism charges. All three were armed with Molotov cocktails that they reportedly planned to use at the protest. [AP / Michelle L. Price and Scott Sonner]
• Officials say that the men are affiliated with the extremist “boogaloo” movement, which originated as an obscure internet subculture and hopes to foment a second civil war and overthrow the government. All three have military backgrounds. [Las Vegas Review-Journal / Katelyn Newberg]
• Despite Saturday’s arrests, however, President Donald Trump and his administration have fixated on another group: antifa, or anti-facism, which Attorney General Bill Barr condemned on Sunday. [ABC News / Alexander Mallin]
• As NBC reports, there’s little evidence so far that members of extremist groups on the far left or the far right have successfully instigated violence or rioting at recent protests against police brutality. [NBC News / Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins]
• On Monday, in fact, one Twitter account posing as an antifa group and calling for violence was revealed to belong to the white supremacist group Identity Evropa. [Twitter / Ben Collins]
• Over the weekend, Trump tweeted that his administration would be “designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.” The idea is unlikely to go anywhere, however, because the US has no domestic terrorism law and federal government lacks the authority to make that designation. [NYT / Maggie Haberman and Charlie Savage]
• Some experts see Trump’s tweet as a cause for concern: According to Stanislav Vysotsky, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, branding protesters as antifa is “a way of trying to peel off mainstream support for these kinds of movements by painting them as radical.” [Wired / Emma Grey Ellis]

• On Thursday, Iran released American Michael White from prison after almost two years of detention. As the US does not maintain diplomatic relations with Iran, Swiss diplomats assisted in negotiating his release. [Washington Post / John Hudson]
• White was imprisoned on charges of insulting Iran’s supreme leader and committing a privacy violation, for which he received a 13-year sentence. He was released from prison on furlough earlier this year with coronavirus symptoms. [CNN / Vivian Salama and Jennifer Hansler]
• His release by Iran follows the US return of an Iranian scientist earlier this week. The deportation of Sirous Asgari on Tuesday sparked speculation that a prisoner swap would occur even before White’s release was announced. [NYT / Farnaz Fassihi]
• Despite the timing, however, the US denies that that was the case: According to acting DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, the US had been trying to deport Asgari, who was accused of stealing research secrets but acquitted, since last year. [Bloomberg / Glen Carey]

[Vox / Sean Collins]

• No more participation trophies: A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, will be removed "as soon as possible." [NPR / Bill Chappell]

• "I can’t breathe”: In March, a black man died in policy custody. On Wednesday, a medical examiner in Tacoma, Washington, concluded his death was homicide. [NYT / Mike Baker]

• The NBA is officially set to return on July 31 with just 22 teams playing. [Washington Post / Ben Golliver]

[Journalists of color at the Philadelphia Inquirer in a letter to newsroom leadership / Twitter]

What would it mean to build the state around principles of nonviolence, rather than reserving that exacting standard for those harmed by the state? [Spotify / Ezra Klein]