Federal boots on city streets

FOR ONE NIGHT IN LATE JULY, the mayor of Portland, Oregon, joined a protest against police brutality outside the downtown federal courthouse. Alongside the demonstrators, the mayor, Ted Wheeler, was tear-gassed when federal law enforcement cracked down on the assembly. “I’m not going to lie — it stings; it’s hard to breathe,” Wheeler told The New York Times. “This is an egregious overreaction on the part of federal officers. This is flat-out urban warfare.”

Many of the protesters were unsympathetic; some jeered or blasted him with leaf blowers and scuffled with his security team. That’s because Wheeler, who is police commissioner as well as mayor, oversees a department that