Spencer Reynolds writes:

President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to implement a slate of controversial policies in his second term, including military strikes on Mexican drug cartels, restrictions on abortion pills, a new “Muslim ban,” immigration raids, and mass deportations. Any one of these moves is likely to bring tens of thousands of protesters onto the streets. Trump has made it clear he will meet opposition with force. A major player in that crackdown will be the Federal Protective Service, a little-known but powerful law-enforcement agency that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 identifies as key to quashing dissent. Congress, as well as state and local authorities, must act urgently to prevent its weaponization against the president’s political opponents.

The FPS is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Its officers carry guns and make arrests just like other police—with the difference being that Congress has empowered the agency to bring in additional forces from among the department’s 90,000 other law-enforcement officers. The homeland security secretary can assign those officers to work directly for the FPS at a moment’s notice, augmenting its police force with huge numbers of personnel who have received little more than cursory training to execute domestic law-enforcement functions.

The agency was at the heart of the heavy-handed response to racial-justice demonstrations in Portland, Oregon, in 2020, when the first Trump administration sent hundreds of officers—including 300 Border Patrol special forces agents—to suppress crowds engaged in largely peaceful protests protected by the U.S. Constitution. Instead of leaving local police to deal with any trouble, federal officers shoved protesters into unmarked vans, compiled dossiers on individuals to drive potential prosecutions, spied on journalists, and took to the nightly news to attack the protests. [Continue reading…]