Liberal big-city mayors are angry that the Trump administration isn’t just letting their cities burn.
A group of mayors sent leaders in Congress a joint letter on July 27 asking for legislation to prohibit the use of federal agents to help quell riots which are tearing up cities like Seattle, Portland and Chicago, FOX News is reporting.
It’s all part of the growing war between the left and President Donald Trump, heading into a fall presidential election.
The Trump administration is currently planning to send even more agents to Portland, Ore., where violent protests have given way to arson attempts on a federal courthouse. Portland has seen two months of nightly, destructive, tense confrontations between protesters and police and federal agents. The officers have used tear gas and other crowd control measures, as well as allegedly refused to identify themselves and pulled people into unmarked vehicles.
In an attempt to make the federal intervention seem like oppression, the letter to House and Senate leaders calls the deployment of federal agents “unlawful and repugnant,” and “against our explicit request.”
“This must stop,” the letter reads. “As demonstrated now in Portland, these federal forces have used the pretext of protecting federal property to also patrol streets, way outside of their lawful jurisdiction, arrest residents without cause and trample on Constitutional rights.”
The letter was signed by Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
In an earlier letter, the same mayors demanded that Congress investigate Trump’s deployment of federal forces. Yet another letter to U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr and Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf called for the withdrawal of personnel.
