Skip to content
Housing:The Showdown Over Segregation in Suburbia
CityLab
Perspective

For Trump, ‘Local Control’ Is Only for the Suburbs

As the president threatens to send federal troops into U.S. cities, he also claims that fair housing enforcement will “abolish the suburbs” by undermining local authority. 

Federal police walk through tear gas while dispersing a crowd of protesters in Portland, Oregon. 

Federal police walk through tear gas while dispersing a crowd of protesters in Portland, Oregon. 

Photographer: Nathan Howard/Getty Images North America

Lawrence Lanahan

On Monday, acting U.S. Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf defended the camouflaged federal officers who were rounding up Portland, Oregon, protesters in rented minivans, over the increasingly outraged objections of state and city leaders. “I don’t need invitations by the state, state mayors, or state governors to do our job,” he said. “We’re going to do that, whether they like us there or not.”

Later, President Donald Trump told reporters he was preparing to bring the same “fantastic” law and order to several other U.S. cities: “I’m gonna do something, that I can tell you. Because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and — and Oakland is a mess — we’re not gonna let this happen in this country.”