Does Federal Law Extend to Portlandia?

Trump critics in Portland and Chicago cannot claim that Presidents lack the authority to call out the troops to protect the national government and enforce federal law. Presidents have used these same authorities to desegregate southern schools in the 1950s after Brown v. Board of Education and to protect civil rights protesters in the 1960s. Those who cheer those interventions cannot now deny the same constitutional authority when it is exercised by a president they oppose. If critics want the federal government to have the power to enforce civil rights laws against resistant states, they also must concede to President Trump the authority to enforce immigration laws against rioters in the cities of Portland and Chicago.Read More