In recent days the Department of Homeland Security has dispatched federal law enforcement officers to Portland, scene of more than 50 consecutive nights of protests, which have regularly included damage to the federal courthouse and other major buildings.

Last spring White House staffers presented President Trump with the opportunity to introduce a very interesting wrinkle to the Jones Act, the 1920 law that restricts domestic waterborne transportation to vessels that are U.S.-flagged, U.S.-built and mostly U.S.-owned and crewed.

Congress is debating legislation meant to address police misconduct along with a further aid package for state and local governments struggling with budget deficits.

Presidential candidate Joe Biden said that he does not favor defunding police but instead “conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness.”

Some protestors are calling for defunding the police in the wake of George Floyd’s death and other incidents of police misconduct.

Amid the outcry over George Floyd’s death and subsequent protests, some people are calling for defunding the police.

A Wall Street Journal news article by David Harrison claims, “State and local government spending and employment levels didn’t fully recover from the 2007-09 recession until last fall, a decade after the downturn ended and only a few months before the coronavirus led to a new round of cuts.”

Congress is considering passing additional financial aid for state and local governments.

A proposal by House Democrats announced Tuesday to spend over $3 trillion more to deal with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic would send the federal deficit skyrocketing and place an enormous burden on taxpayers to fund.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that it “has a unique mission—to save lives by deploying effective, proven strategies to prevent, detect, and rapidly respond to disease outbreaks at their source.”