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Federal officers in downtown Portland on July 29.
Federal officers in downtown Portland on July 29. Mathieu Lewis Rolland

Good Morning, Portland! We're going to reach a high of 96 degrees today—let's cool off together with these (checks notes) rainbow snorkel pups:

Here are the headlines.

• The feds are leaving Portland today! Or, well, umm, some of the feds are leaving Portland, and Oregon State troopers are coming to take their place in front of the federal courthouse. That opens up a lot of questions about how downtown protests will be policed moving forward—here are the answers we know so far.

• At the demonstration last night, federal officers refused to go quietly: The Oregonian reports that yesterday saw "the largest visible response by the federal government" so far. Once again, the feds tear gassed hundreds, and fired off impact munitions into large crowds.

Meanwhile, the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) cleared Lownsdale Park today in preparation for state troopers:

• The ACLU of Oregon has filed yet another lawsuit in response to police and protests. This time, it's against the city of Portland and PPB, arguing that PPB's livestream of the protests is a form of illegal surveillance. (And on top of all that, it's a really shitty livestream! Leave the documenting to the journalists, cops.)

• The Portland City Council voted unanimously yesterday to send a police oversight reform measure to the November ballot. The measure, crafted by Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, seeks to amend the city charter and create a new cop accountability system that makes it easier to investigate and punish Portland police officers accused of excessive force, discrimination, civil rights violations, or killing people. The measure faced significant opposition from the Portland Police Association (the union for rank-and-file officers) and City Auditor Mary Hull Caballero, who argued that it could violate state law and was created too hastily.

• A new poll from DHM Research shows that Oregonians' views on policing and the Black Lives Matter movement have grown markedly more progressive since protests began. One of my personal favorite stats: 58% of Oregonians support cutting some funding from police departments and shifting it to social services.

• Time for some national news! Let's see what is happening in our great nation, land of the free, home of the brave... Well, it looks like Donald Trump has floated delaying the election on Twitter! Technically Trump doesn't have the authority to do that—it would require approval from Congress, including the Democrat-controlled House—but when has that ever stopped him from trying before?

• For the 19th week in a row, over one million Americans have filed unemployment claims, thanks to COVID-19. It seems that the plan to sacrifice some lives for the economy is... not going so well?

• The late Congressman John Lewis' funeral is today, and the New York Times published an opinion piece penned by Lewis in his final days to mark the occasion. You should definitely read the entire thing, but here are a few words of wisdom to go out with today:

"Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars. ...

The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others."