Tag: Trump using federal forces against American citizens

Fox News Judge: Trump Is Destroying Freedom In Portland

Two weeks ago, this column offered a brief history of the freedom of speech in America. The essence of the column was that all public speech is lawful when there is time for more speech to challenge it and that the remedy for hate speech is not censorship, but more speech.

Last week, this column addressed the unconstitutional behavior of federal agents in Portland, Oregon, most of whom are out among peaceful demonstrators interfering with free speech, travel and assembly.

Also last week, a newspaper in New Jersey, the editors of which might have disagreed with the essence of this column — that the First Amendment requires the government to protect political dissent and prohibits interfering with it — published my column with the two and a half most important paragraphs removed. Continue reading.

Oregon governor announces “phased withdrawal” of federal agents from Portland

Axios logoThe Trump administration has agreed to a “phased withdrawal” of Customs and Border Protection and ICE agents from Portland, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) announced on Wednesday.

Why it matters: The news comes after weeks of violent clashes between protesters and federal law enforcement deployed by the Trump administration to protect Portland’s federal courthouse.

  • Democrats have accused federal law enforcement of escalating violence against civilians and detaining protesters in unmarked vehicles.
  • Attorney General Bill Barr, echoing other Trump top officials, said Tuesday that protesters’ nightly attacks on the courthouse are “an assault on the government of the United States.” Continue reading.

More federal agents dispatched to Portland as protests rise in other cities

Washington Post logoThe Trump administration is sending more federal agents to Portland, Ore., already the site of aggressive policing tactics that activists and city officials across the country say are inspiring more-violent clashes and re-energizing protests.

The U.S. Marshals Service decided last week to send more deputies to Portland, according to an internal email reviewed by The Washington Post, with personnel beginning to arrive last Thursday night. The Department of Homeland Security is also considering a plan to send an additional 50 U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel to the city, according to senior administration officials involved in the federal response who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

Such moves would mark a significant expansion of the federal force operating at the Portland federal courthouse — there were 114 federal agents there in mid-July — though it is unclear how many existing personnel could be sent home after the arrival of at least 100 reinforcements, according to internal Marshals emails. Continue reading.

The echoes of Hong Kong in Portland

Washington Post logoThe protesters are defiant. They equip themselves with makeshift protective gear, donning bicycle helmets, gas masks and goggles while wielding umbrellas as shields. Some have repurposed household tools like leafblowers to help against tear gas and other projectiles fired into the crowds. Others assemble ramshackle barricades and shine laser pointers to disrupt the scopes of the heavily armed security forces. Authorities brand them vandals and “rioters.” But the crackdowns that ensued only galvanized further dissent.

That’s how the script read for months of unrest that gripped Hong Kong last year. But it has also been on view in recent weeks in the West Coast city of Portland, Ore., the site of an intensifying showdown between demonstrators and the Trump administration. Over the weekend, Black Lives Matter protesters marched in cities across the country, from Los Angeles to Omaha to Seattle. In some instances, they clashed with police and federal security forces, leading to arrests.

Portland, though, has become ground zero of a new phase in the United States’ summer of discontent. The city, as my colleagues noted, has “a long tradition of protest as a subculture of anarchism.” Petty street skirmishes there between far-right and anti-fascist groups have inflamed American social media in recent years. Their reelection prospects narrowing, President Trump and his Republican allies have seized upon the disturbances in the Pacific Northwest as a parable for what the American left supposedly has in store for the rest of the country. As a result, Portland has become the first battleground in an apparent nationwide surge of federal agents deployed to big cities with the White House’s prodding — and without local approval. Continue reading.

Operation Diligent Valor: Trump showcased federal power in Portland, making a culture war campaign pitch

Washington Post logoPORTLAND, Ore. — As statues of Confederate generals, enslavers and other icons tumbled from their pedestals amid protests last month, President Trump issued an executive order meant to break the cascade. It enlisted the Department of Homeland Security, created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to protect the country against external threats, to defend U.S. monuments and federal property against “anarchists and left-wing extremists” who he said are advancing “a fringe ideology.”

The order signaled Trump’s eagerness to mobilize federal power against the societal upheaval that has coursed through America since George Floyd’s death. He sought to frame and create a culture war — right vs. left, right vs. wrong — and was taking a stand at the monuments that some view as historical homages and many others view as symbols of oppression.

But Trump’s June 26 declaration came too late. The momentum of the protests was fading in many U.S. cities, and confrontations between federal authorities and civilians were becoming less frequent. Then Trump found Portland, according to administration and campaign officials. Continue reading.

How Trump’s Use of Federal Forces in Cities Differs From Past Presidents

New York Times logoLegal scholars fear the president is trying to take on a job that the Constitution did not give the federal government.

Federal forces went into Los Angeles to control the Rodney King riots. They entered Washington, Chicago and Baltimore in the days after the killing of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. They went into Detroit during a race riot in 1943, and then again in 1967. They were in Little Rock, Ark., during school integration. For the Pullman Strike of 1894 in Chicago, and across numerous cities during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, they were there, too.

So in some ways, the scenes of officers clad in riot gear this week in Portland, Ore., have a long American lineage in federal responses to domestic unrest. But there is something different in this moment, too, in President Trump’s repeated vows to send forces to other American cities for reasons that slip between protecting specific federal properties, restoring general order and combating violent crime.

“The idea of bringing in troops or law enforcement in its many forms to quell civilian protest is as American as apple pie — it is foundational to this nation,” said Heather Ann Thompson, a historian at the University of Michigan. But then the president began talking about crime in Chicago, and naming cities where protests this summer haven’t turned violent. Continue reading.