COLUMBUS – Cleveland has joined the list of cities where President Trump says he will send federal agents to help combat rising crime.
But Gov. Mike DeWine says, after talking with Mayor Frank Jackson, he does not expect there to be the kind of confrontations between local officials and the president over the limits of federal power as have played out in other cities, especially Portland, Ore.
“The help that they’re going to get is a very different type of help than you saw in Portland. It’s not my understanding that we’re going to see anything like that in Cleveland,” DeWine told reporters at a Statehouse briefing Thursday.
Demonstrations for racial equality have led to clashes between protesters and federal agents in unmarked vehicles. Portland’s mayor was tear-gassed earlier this week when he stood in solidarity with the demonstrators outside a federal courthouse.
A federal judge specifically blocked U.S. agents from arresting or using physical force against journalists and legal observers at the Portland, Oregon, protests.
Trump says he will send federal agents into Chicago and Albuquerque to help combat rising crime as he runs for reelection under a “law and order” mantle.
He spoke only of Chicago and Albuquerque, but the White House said in a later press release that the program would be expanded in the next few weeks into Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee, as well.
The decision to dispatch federal agents to American cities is playing out at a hyperpoliticized moment in American politics.
With less than four months until Election Day, Trump has been warning that the violence will worsen if his Democratic rival Joe Biden wins in November.