Criticism for Trump’s ‘abuse of power’ grows

FEDERAL officers’ actions at protests in Oregon’s largest city, hailed by President Donald Trump but done without local consent, are raising the prospect of a constitutional crisis — one that could escalate as weeks of demonstrations find renewed focus in clashes with camouflaged, unidentified agents outside Portland’s US court.

Demonstrators crowded in front of the United States federal court and the city’s Justice Centre late Monday night, before authorities cleared them out as the sound and light of flashbang grenades filled the air.

State and local authorities, who did not ask for federal help, are awaiting a ruling in a lawsuit filed late last week. State Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in court papers that masked federal officers have arrested people on the street, far from the court, with no probable cause and whisked them away in unmarked cars.

Trump said he plans to send federal agents to other cities, too.

“We’re going to have more federal law enforcement, that I can tell you,” Trump said Monday. “In Portland, they’ve done a fantastic job.”

Constitutional law experts said federal officers’ actions in the progressive city are a “red flag” in what could become a test case of states’ rights as the Trump administration expands federal policing.

“The idea that there’s a threat to a federal courthouse and the federal authorities are going to swoop in and do whatever they want to do without any cooperation and coordination with state and local authorities is extraordinary outside the context of a civil war,” Michael Dorf, a professor of constitutional law at Cornell University, said.

“It is a standard move of authoritarians to use