The body of U.S. congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis will be carried across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama Sunday.  The event at the place where he and other voting rights demonstrators were beaten in 1965 on a day known as “Bloody Sunday” begins the second of six days of memorials for Lewis, who died July 17 at the age 80, after a yearlong battle with advanced-stage pancreatic cancer. Later Sunday, Lewis’ body will be taken to Alabama’s capital, Montgomery, where Mayor Steven Reed is encouraging people to line the sidewalks on the final leg of the journey. Officials are asking the public to wear facemasks and socially distance.   Alabama Governor Kay Ivey ordered flags to be flown at half-staff on Saturday and Sunday in honor of Lewis.   During the nearly weeklong memorial events, Lewis’ body will lie in state at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta and the U.S. Capitol in Washington.   U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced last week that visitors could pay their respects to Lewis at the U.S. Capitol Monday and Tuesday.    Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the public viewing will take place outside the Capitol building instead of in the Capitol Rotunda as is traditional. Social distancing will be “strictly enforced” and facemasks will be required.    The Georgia Democrat will be the second Black lawmaker to lie in state at the Capitol.  Congressman Elijah Cummings, who died last year, was the first.   Lewis’ family said there will also be a procession through Washington this week and said members of the public will be able to pay their respects in a “socially-distant manner.”   Lewis’ funeral will be held Thursday at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was once the pastor. Following the service, which will be private, Lewis will be interred at South View Cemetery in Atlanta. Two memorial services were held for Lewis Saturday in Alabama. Dr. Jack Hawkins Jr., university chancellor, speaks behind the casket of the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., during a service at Troy University, July 25, 2020, in Troy, Ala.At the public service at Troy University, five siblings and a great-nephew spoke of Lewis as a loving and fearless family man.  “He’d gravitate toward the least of us,” said brother Henry “Grant” Lewis. “He worked a lifetime to help others.”Brother Samuel said his mother had warned John “not to get in trouble, not to get in the way.”  Samuel Lewis added that his brother did not heed their mother’s warning, saying, “We all know that John got in trouble, got in the way, but it was a good trouble.”  Ethel Mae Tyner, sister of the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., dries her eyes during a service celebrating “The Boy from Troy” at Troy University, July 25, 2020, in Troy, Ala.The Lewis siblings reminded the crowd of their brother’s famous injunction to make “good trouble” — ruffling feathers when it was for a righteous cause.Lewis had wanted to attend Troy University, in Troy, Alabama, his birthplace, but was denied admission to what was then a whites-only school.   Lewis, who as a young boy preached to the chickens on his family’s farm, eventually earned a degree from Fisk University, in religion and philosophy.  Years later, Troy University bestowed an honorary doctoral degree on Lewis. Senator Doug Jones from Alabama said the current crop of protesters “are protesting peacefully, nonviolently,” as Lewis did during the civil rights movement. U.S. President Donald Trump “paints them all with a broad brush and calls them thugs, but he is wrong,” he said, “They are patriots who want America to move forward to a nation of equals together.”    At Troy University, Lewis lay in repose as visitors paid their respects. Later Saturday, a private ceremony honored him at a chapel in Selma, Alabama, ahead of another public viewing.   FILE – U.S. Rep. John Lewis speaks to the crowd as they cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Sunday, March 1, 2020, in Selma, Ala.Lewis rose to fame as a leader of the modern-day American civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. At 23, he worked closely with King and was the last surviving speaker from the August 1963 March on Washington where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.   The civil rights movement led Lewis into a career in politics. He was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981 and to Congress in 1986, calling the latter victory “the honor of a lifetime.” He served 17 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia’s fifth district.  
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Protesters have taken to the streets of several U.S. cities to bring attention to racial injustice.Protests in Portland, Oregon, have been going in for two months, since the May 25 death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota.The Trump administration has sent federal officers to Portland, adding additional fuel to the protests. The demonstrators now are also protesting the federal presence in the city.In Seattle, police using flash bangs and tear gas arrested 45 people Saturday after demonstrations in support or the protests in Portland turned violent. Police said more than 20 police officers were injured.Saturday night, in Austin, Texas, a man was killed when someone shot into a Black Lives Matter march.Media accounts say the man may have approached a vehicle with a rifle before he was fired upon.“All I know is that someone dying while protesting is horrible,” Mayor Steve Adler of Austin said in a statement. Adler said he is “heartbroken and stunned.”In Louisville, Kentucky, a group of armed protesters called for justice of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who died in Louisville when police entered her home without warning on a “no knock” warrant and shot her. Taylor’s boyfriend had fired at the officers first, thinking they were intruders.One police officer has been fired because of the Taylor incident, but charges have not been brought against the other officers.The leader of the NFAC group, an armed Black militia involved in the protests, says he wants the police investigation into the Taylor killing to be more transparent.Police say three NFAC members were injured Saturday when one of the militia’s weapons accidentally discharged.  
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At least one person has died after someone shot into a Black Lives Matter demonstration in the southwestern U.S. city of Austin, Texas.Emergency services officials say they are looking for other victims following the Saturday night shooting.Police say they are treating the incident as a homicide.
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They are the most highly trained members of the Border Patrol, agents who confront drug traffickers along the U.S.-Mexico border and track down dangerous fugitives in rugged terrain.One day this past week, they were in a far different setting — a city park in Portland, Oregon, looking for two people suspected of throwing rocks and bottles at officers guarding the downtown federal courthouse.Beyond the debate over whether the federal response to the Portland protests encroaches on local authority, another question arises: whether the Department of Homeland Security, with its specialized national security focus, is the right agency for the job.It’s not just the Border Patrol Tactical Unit that has been called to duty in Portland. DHS has dispatched air marshals as well as the Customs and Border Protection Special Response Team and even members of the Coast Guard.”The Department of Homeland Security was never intended as a national police force let alone a presidential militia,” said Peter Vincent, a former general counsel for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is also an agency within DHS.The deployment of DHS agents and officers is legal, both under existing law and an executive order President Donald Trump signed June 26 to protect federal property and monuments. But it has made the agency, created to improve the nation’s response to terrorism, a target of widespread criticism.Federal officers advance on a group of demonstrators during a racial justice protest at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse July 25, 2020, in Portland, Ore.Congress plans to delve into the issue Friday, when the House Homeland Security Committee holds a hearing on the federal response to the protests in Portland and Trump’s announcement that he plans to send federal agents to Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico, to help combat rising crime while making “law and order” a central theme of his reelection campaign.”Americans across the country are watching what the administration is doing in Portland with horror and revulsion and are wondering if their cities could be President Trump’s next targets,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who is chairman of the committee.As of Monday, there were 114 federal agents and officers deployed to downtown Portland, according to an affidavit from Gabriel Russell, the regional director of the Federal Protective Service, the DHS component that provides security for federal buildings.Protests have been taking place in Portland since May 26, but the federal agents kept a “defensive posture” by staying inside federal buildings until July 3, Russell said in the affidavit, filed in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking protections for journalists and other legal observers covering the demonstrations.That night, according to Russell, protesters attempted to set fire to the federal courthouse and DHS deployed a Rapid Deployment Force as part of “Operation Diligent Valor.”That same night, Trump stood before Mount Rushmore and accused protesters around the country who have pushed for racial justice of engaging in a “merciless campaign to wipe out our history.” He later criticized officials in Portland for allowing demonstrations to get “totally out of control.”The officers deploying to Portland are “highly trained,” and many wear camouflage because that’s their duty uniform on the southwest border, according to acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, responding to charges of a militarized response to the protests.In addition to their previous training, they took a 90-minute online course on the mission and jurisdiction of the Federal Protective Service, police powers and criminal regulations, according to a course description provided to The Associated Press.Richard Cline, principal deputy director of the protective services, told reporters that DHS officers are given additional training to ensure they act within guidelines established by the Justice Department as they assist an organization that was “quickly overwhelmed” by violent demonstrators.A protester walks past a bonfire set at an intersection during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse July 25, 2020, in Portland, Ore.Wolf also defended tactics such as tear gas, rubber bullets and having officers sweep people off the street into unmarked vehicles, evoking images of a secret police force.”We are only targeting and arresting those who have been identified as committing criminal acts, like any other law enforcement agency does across the country every single day of the week,” he said.On Wednesday, agents from the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, known as BORTAC, set out from the federal courthouse just after midnight in pursuit of two people in dark clothing and carrying makeshift shields suspected of throwing rocks and bottles at officers, according to court records.The agents struggled with the two, eventually restraining them and turning them over to the Federal Protective Service. One, a 19-year-old man, was charged with felony assault of an officer.In addition to rocks and bottles, agents and officers at the courthouse have been struck with ball bearings, improvised explosives, fireworks, and balloons filled with paint and feces, Russell said. Some have also had lasers shined at their eyes.At least 28 officers have been injured and officers have made at least 43 arrests, mostly for misdemeanors.While the use of BORTAC officers in this environment is unusual, it’s not unprecedented, said Michael Fisher, a former senior official with the agency and member of the unit.BORTAC officers have been used to serve warrants on suspects considered dangerous, protected emergency personnel during natural disasters and were sent to Los Angeles during the 1992 riots, Fisher said.”What was happening in Portland is the police were not enforcing … the laws and it just escalated and that’s the reason it’s gone on well over 50 days now,” said Fisher, who now runs a security company.Local officials have in turn accused DHS of inflaming the situation, an argument bolstered by the fact that protests grew larger as controversy intensified over the tactics of the federal agents.Former DHS officials concede the agency has worked with state and local law enforcement before, with the consent and cooperation of local authorities. But in Oregon, officials have accused the federal government of inflaming the situation and asked it to withdraw.Vincent, who left ICE in 2014 and now works as a consultant, said some current officials are “extraordinarily uncomfortable” with what they have been asked to do in Portland.”I am deeply concerned as someone who believes in the mission of the agency and knows and respects its officers and agents that these activities will irreparably damage the agency’s reputation,” he said.  
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Washington has dispatched a special envoy for Afghanistan to press for peace talks between the government and Taliban fighters, with the diplomat scheduled to visit Kabul on a trip with stops in five nations, the U.S. State Department said Saturday.U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad departed on Friday to travel to Doha, Kabul, Islamabad, Oslo and Sofia, the department said in a statement.The United States is drawing down its troops in Afghanistan under an agreement struck in February with the Taliban.The agreement aimed to pave the way for formal peace talks between the insurgents and the Afghan government, and Khalilzad’s task is to try to bring both sides to the table.Khalilzad plans to press for a deal on prisoner exchanges and a reduction in violence, two issues that have hampered progress toward starting peace talks.”Although significant progress has been made on prisoner exchanges, the issue requires additional effort to fully resolve,” the State Department said in its statement.On Wednesday, Khalilzad condemned an attack by Afghan government forces that killed 45 people, including civilians, in airstrikes against Taliban fighters in a western province bordering Iran.
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