The actions of federal law enforcement officers at protests in Oregon’s largest city are raising the prospect of a constitutional crisis.
An iconic image has emerged on Twitter since early Saturday morning in Portland, when a woman wearing nothing but a mask and cap strode toward federal agents as they fired tear gas at protesters — a surreal image of human vulnerability in the face of an overpowering force.Many Portland rallies have attracted thousands and been largely peaceful.
Anger at the federal presence escalated July 11, when a protester was hospitalized with critical injuries after a U.S. Marshals Service officer struck him in the head with a non-lethal round. Video of the incident shows the man, identified as Donavan LaBella, standing across the street from the officers holding a speaker over his head with both hands when he was struck.
“They are sharply escalating the situation. Their presence here is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism. And it’s not helping the situation at all,” Wheeler said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Indeed, crowds of demonstrators had begun to dwindle a week ago, and some people in notoriously liberal Portland — including Black community leaders — had begun to call for the nightly demonstrations to end.But by the weekend, the presence of federal troops and Trump’s repeated references to Portland as a hotbed of “anarchists” seemed to give a new life and renewed focus to the nightly demonstrations — and to attract a broader base.
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