stankmut

They didn’t claim a low number of troops, they claimed a high number of Federal Protection Service officers. They claimed that they had to send 25% (115) of all protection officers to Portland to protect ICE and that demonstrates an inability to execute federal law. The actual peak number of protection officers deployed at any one time was 31.

You can’t separate the two things like that. Lighting a flag on fire is political speech and the administration has said they will charge people who light the flag on fire. The fact that the thing he lit on fire on federal property was the flag is absolutely legally relevant here. It will be a major part of his defense, as they will try to argue that the law he has violated is placing an undue burden on his freedom of speech. It will be the thing the entire case hinges on.

This is important because it’s fairly easy to make laws against all the things involved in a protest and then say “oh we aren’t charging them for protesting, we are charging them for obstructing the view by holding a sign.”

I’m not sure why the article says the charges aren’t relating to burning the flag when the charges are about lighting the flag on fire. The charges don’t say the word flag on them, but it is the flag burning they are charging him with.