The Naval Academy Acts Like An Ivy -- II

Through this link,

The Restoration of America Foundation (ROAF) is a watchdog providing transparency of the nation’s military academies’ oversight boards.

It issued a report on this past September's meeting of the US Naval Academy's Board of Visitors (equivalent to a civilian college or university's board of trustees), which included a presentation by Dean of Admissions Bruce Latta:

Latta has been in the position for over 20 years, including when USNA was sued in 2023 for using race-based admissions practices. Latta told the BOV that race, ethnicity and sex were never considered in determining qualification for admissions. That assertion contradicts Latta’s court deposition and evidence in the Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) case against USNA.

In SFFA Latta said,

"If USNA was prohibited from considering race or ethnicity (across all minority groups) as one of many nondeterminative factors, I expect that USNA's class of admitted midshipmen would become less diverse, as it was before USNA began applying its current policies."

BOV member Earl Ehrhart, a Trump appointee, questioned Latta asking, “You testified under oath that enjoining [prohibiting] race-based admissions practices would harm the Navy. Have you changed your mind?”

Earhart continued his questioning when Latta did not answer, asking, “How do you reconcile the conflict between your sworn testimony in SFFA and what you just presented to this Board?”

Latta still didn’t answer the question.

Further discussion revealed that the Naval Academy's admissions process mirrors that of selective civilian colleges and universities, with the actual weighting of factors determining admission a closely guarded secret:

Latta said the admissions office sets the standards by which USNA candidates are selected and determines who is offered an appointment. When questioned on who determines the formula used for candidate selection—called a Whole Person Multiple—Latta responded that admissions staff determine the weighting of each category. That answer did not please Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI), a retired Navy SEAL appointed to the BOV by President Trump. He believes the admissions department had too much power, replying to Latta, “You can set the playing field the way you want.” Van Orden also suggested that the BOV may want to consider putting a member on the admissions board.

Another board member commented, “for way too long we’ve had no visibility into how this process works.” The Superintendent responded that he understood and shared the same concern and that they would have further discussions on the topic in a closed session.

But while the actual factors and their weighting are completely opaque, we do know that SATs were not used as an admissions factor for the classes of 2025-2028:

Latta’s presentation claimed SAT scores were not used for those classes due to limited availability because of COVID. While that may have been a factor for the class of 2025, SAT testing availability was not impacted by COVID for the classes of 2026-2028.

There are lots of arguments for civilian colleges and universities to bypass merit in admissions, for instance,

We think of college admissions as a meritocracy: the students who most deserve it get in. But that’s not actually true at all, according to Tufts University sociologist Natasha Warikoo, who studies college admissions.

. . . But the point Warikoo is making isn’t just that there are more deserving candidates than there are spots— a problem well known in California—it’s that the whole idea of college admissions as a meritocracy is fundamentally wrong.

. . . At most colleges, especially very “select” ones, there are a host of competing internal interests influencing who gets admitted. Sports coaches demand places for their recruits; development offices want places for legacy alumni and people attached to big donors; orchestras and bands need to bring musicians in; different departments want new students who are going to fill their rosters. There’s no single standard for what makes a “worthy” student, and it’s fair to ask: what has any of this got to do with merit?

“When we recognize the diverse goals that universities attempt to address through college admissions, it becomes clear that admission is not a certification of individual merit, or deservingness, nor was it ever meant to be,” she said.

OK, let's grant that Harvard is Harvard; foreign students pay full freight, so we admit them as maybe 40% of an Ivy enterng class, mainly because they're rich and willing to pay. Then they admit maybe 30% as legacies, preppies, and donors, because they donate. Deducting all the other special categories, maybe 20% of an entering class comes in on SATs, grades, and extracurriculars, except everyone's de-emphasizing SATs. Of course, everybody still believes a Harvard degree means you're smart, but that's their problem, not Harvard's.

But the US Military academies aren't Harvard. I asked Chrome AI mode, "if you go to the Naval Academy, is it expected that you will become a Navy or Marine Corps officer?" It answered,

Yes, if you attend the United States Naval Academy (USNA), it is expected that you will be commissioned as an officer in either the U.S. Navy or the U.S. Marine Corps upon graduation. This is a core part of the USNA experience and the service commitment that all midshipmen agree to.

But this mostly eliminates foreign students, a major category of civilian admissions factors. It eliminates most categories of major donor. It ought to be stressing personal qualities that would go to making someone a good officer. But somehow, the Naval Academy admissions office seems to retain DEI as a major category; for instance, as of a 2021 "Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan",

• “Increase the visibility of current midshipmen and alumni from underrepresented populations by including them in recruiting activities and marketing materials.”
• Review processes “for objectivity and influence of bias and unintended disadvantage to underrepresented populations.”
• Increase access to “underrepresented populations.”
• “Identify scoring factors that are directly influenced by school resources and familial obligations such as extracurricular activates [sic] and standardize [sic] test scores and make recommendations for adjustments.”

The big question that remains for me applies to both the Naval Academy and Harvard: why is there so much cheating? If admissions standards have any teeth, they ought to be favoring students for whom the graduation requirements are achievable without cheating. At the Naval Acedemy, it appears that some version of an electrical engineering course is a graduation requirement. Yet in the 1992 cheating scandal, it was widely estimated that 80% of the students saw the course exam before they took it.

According to Newsweek,

Midshipmen are intentionally overworked. Forced to carry heavy academic loads, they also march, train and perform trivial chores, like memorizing obscure facts about the Academy. The idea is to build character through adversity, but often the result is a weary attitude of doing just enough to slide by.

Wouldn't greater attention to factors that would favor an applicant's ability to graduate without cheating or sliding by be much more profitable than randomn social engineering? Nobody seems to want to answer these sorts of quewstions.

Kristi Noem's Visit To Portland

According to KATU,

After meeting with Portland Mayor Keith Wilson on Tuesday during a visit to Portland, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Fox News that if the mayor did not meet some of her demands for more security at the ICE facility “we were going to send four times the amount of federal officers” to the city.

Noem’s remarks to Fox's host Jesse Watters contrasted with a more muted statement from Wilson on Tuesday evening that did not mention any ultimatum issued by the secretary.

“I continue to maintain that the tactics used by federal agents at the ICE facility are troubling and likely unconstitutional,” Wilson said. “In terms of recent rhetoric, we still do not know what ‘Full Force’ against Portland means, or how the administration plans to use our city as a military ‘training ground.’ Because of these deeply concerning situational unknowns, I intend to explore options to protect our community and our right to free expression.”

Portland Mayor Wilson comes from a very similar background to his predecessor Ted Wheeler, from a wealthy Oregon family, who was mayor from 2017 to early this year. His father was was executive vice president at Willamette Industries, a Fortune 500 lumber company formed in 1967, through merger of other Wheeler family interests. For several years, he presided over both right- and left-wing ptotests and riots. Wilson himself runs his family's trucking business, which he took over from his father, in addition to being mayor. Wilson seems just as unable to deal with Antifa and similar groups.

Of yesterday's meeting, Secretary Noem said on Jesse Watters's show last night,

“Just met with the mayor, and I’m so extremely disappointed. He’s continuing to play politics, did not commit to any of those promises and said that he’d give me an answer by tomorrow, and I’m hopeful that he will,” Noem told Watters. “What I told him is that if he did not follow through on some of these security measures for our officers [that] we were going to cover him up with more federal resources. And that we were going to send four times the amount of federal officers here so that the people of Portland could have some safety.”

The YouTube report from The National Desk embedded at the top of this post suggests that there seem to have been changes, however reluctant and minimal, since Noem's visit. Reporter Victor Park said,

There are at least a dozen Portland police officers who have the one-block area surrounding the ICE facility blocked off. We are also seeing far less protesters than we have seen in months. Earlier tonight, Police Chief Bob Day met with Secretary Noem, and Chief Day says that the envioronment and behavior outside the ICE facility needs to change.

Just this morning, I found a lengthy and detailed report from Victoria Taft on actual conditions in the several-block area surrounding the ICE headquarters. It makes plain that Portland politicians, abetted by media, have been seriously minimizing what's been taking place. She embeds this X video documenting her experience trying to film the encampment there:

Besides the filth of the "mutual aid" station, which is illegally blocking the sidewalk (resupplied from their nearby storage unit) and then laughably being told I couldn't film there, here's my biggest shock at the #Portland #ICE facility. When confronted by some umbrella… pic.twitter.com/JDT08NaydW

— Victoria Taft, The Adult in the Room, FITF Squad (@VictoriaTaft) October 7, 2025

She notes in particular that the area controlled by the protesters is much larger than the one block surrounding the ICE building normally cited, and the protesters are much better organized:

My friend HunnyBadgerMom (her X handle), C.K. Bouferrache, tells me that Antifa works in shifts. They go back to their safe house nearby, which is well known, and get a little R&R before they start their next shift at night, where the violence takes place. I caught the shift change in a photo.

So that makes block number three overtaken by this group.

. . . Since Antifa marches to their daily activities from their assembly spot at a nearby park, that makes at least four blocks they have taken over. And then there's the ICE facility itself. It is a fortress, but easily surrounded. Antifa has taken positions in front of it, across the street from it, and down the block. This makes the zone at least a five-block takeover at times.

. . . How many blocks can a terrorist group take over before the city begins to send the police to keep the peace? Trick question. The answer is: When President Donald Trump orders the National Guard to protect ICE agents, forcing the local cops to show up.

The crazies out on the streets in the middle of the day provide one of the multi-pronged Antifa distractions. The people in this bunch looked like they were mentally ill, on drugs, or under the influence of some other mind-altering belief system. Nighttime is when this place gets more dangerous.

For years, the Portland Police ignored the Antifa threats and assaults, and complaints by Portland independent media. Antifa chooses reporters to target because they want to rule the streets without being unmasked.

At least up to Noem's visit, there seems to have been a tacit agreement between Antifa and the police to pretend the takeover wasn't really happening:

Craig Dobson, an assistant chief with the Portland Police Bureau, stated the protests have been persistent, though never so out-of-control that local officers couldn’t respond.

“Portland is not under siege, war-ravaged, or otherwise a particularly violent or unruly major city,” Dobson wrote in a Sept. 28 signed declaration. “In fact, on any given weekend, the nightlife in Portland’s entertainment district has warranted greater PPB resources than the small, nightly protests in front of the ICE facility.”

The police bureau set up a dedicated team when the protests against Trump’s deportation plans started appearing regularly outside the ICE offices on South Macadam Avenue. The bureau made 25 arrests from June 11 to June 25, Dobson wrote. The protests receded enough, Dobson wrote, that police deactivated the dedicated team and made no further arrests until late September. The latest arrests by Portland police occurred when protests flared the same day Trump called-up the Oregon guard.

But the protests are neither small nor nightly. As Victoria Taft put it, there's a clown show in the daytime, with curious tourists and Trump supporters part of the crowd, but things turn dangerous at night. The whole routine is organized and scripted, with gathering points and safe houses. But the official line continues to be that the problems all took place last June, and since then, things have been peaceful. After Noem's visit,

[PPB Chief Bob] Day acknowledged the past "disturbances" at the ICE facility, singling out events in June for a "significant amount of damage committed against the building and variety of assaults," but said over the past few months, there has been a "significant decrease in violent activity." He and Noem did not discuss troop deployments, he said.

Day alluded to briefly discussing with Noem "the need for a change in the environment and a change in behavior down there," with the "energy level going up over the past 10 days."

What nobody in Oregon seema to acknowledge so far is that the protests are well-organized and well-funded, they're here to stay, and it's almost as though there's a tacit agreement with the wealthy, old-money politicians that they can operate at will as long as they leave the bourgeoisie alone. This really needs serious investigating. Maybe Noem's visit will raise visibility.

Portland DA Dismisses Misdemeanor Charges Against Nick Sortor

Via KOIN:

Nick Sortor, who lives in Washington, DC, was slated to be arraigned on Monday afternoon on a second-degree disorderly conduct charge related to an incident outside of the ICE building on Thursday night. However, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said that while Portland police officers had probable cause to arrest Sortor, “after a careful review of the investigation, including reports and video, we do not believe the crime of disorderly conduct can be proven against Mr. Sortor beyond a reasonable doubt.”

On one hand, for a DA to drop or reduce charges is not unusual, as true crime shows on TV are careful to point out. On the other, there were allegations that Sortor had instigated the attack:

According to probable cause documents filed in the case of Angela Davis, [also arrested in the incident,] police relied in part on information from confidential reliable sources embedded in the crowd or CRS.

According to one CRS, they witnessed a white man in his thirties walking down the middle of the street on South Moody Avenue holding a cell phone with a bright light shined in peoples faces.

The CRS said the man, later identified as Nick Sortor, was attempting to elicit a negative response from people.

According to court documents, as Sortor was attempting to film more people, a person dressed in black jumped between Sortor and the group which caused yelling, pushing, and shoving.

At some point, Son Mi Yi was holding an umbrella with the letters "ACAB" on it, and was shoving the umbrella in Sortor's face, and in front of his camera.

. . . According to court documents, Davis, dressed like a bird covered in feathers, chased Sortor while swinging a large stick covered in feathers. Sortor then fell in the street.

Davis, 49, was scheduled to be arraigned Friday on a 2nd degree disorderly conduct charge. However, because she was released from jail the same day, jail staff tell KATU her arraignment was likely delayed.

Sortor and Mi Yi are both scheduled to be arraigned Monday at 2 p.m. on a charge of 2nd degree disorderly conduct. They also were both released from jail on Friday.

Although charges against Sortor were dropped, both Angela Davis and Mi Yi were in fact arraigned. Oregon Online cites a decline-to-prosecute memo in Sortor's case:

Sortor, who has 1.2 million followers on X, had approached black-clad demonstrators and was filming them with a “shining light” when a heated argument began and a woman, later identified by Portland police as Son Yi, allegedly pushed Sortor with an open umbrella, according to a decline-to-prosecute memo.

Sortor grabbed the umbrella, the memo says, citing video evidence, but a crowd swarmed and another woman named Angella Davis swung a stick at him, according to the memo written by Senior Deputy District Attorney Kevin Demer.

Sortor attempted to flee but Yi pushed him into a storm water collection basin known as a bioswale, the memo alleges.

“Any physical contact [Sortor] had with other persons was defensive in nature, reasonable under the circumstances, and therefore justified,” Demer wrote. “Attempting to video record and shine a bright light at the other side, while certainly provocative, is not criminal.”

The level of violence at Thursday's rally, when Sortor was arrested, appears to conflict with Oregon's claim that the protests are small and non-violent:

At a hearing Friday, Oregon lawyer Scott Kennedy blasted Trump’s public statements about Portland on Truth Social, saying they are not based in reality. In a post last week, the president called the city "a NEVER-ENDING DISASTER.”

Kennedy described the protests at the ICE facility in Portland in the days leading up to Trump’s post as "dwindling, relatively sedate.” The biggest protest was in June and was handled without federal troops, he said.

. . . In court filings, law enforcement leaders in Oregon argued that federal forces would probably create more problems than they would solve.

But in yesterday's post, I embedded a video from Sunday night's protest that was so violent that Blogger wouldn't accept it, and visitors were directed to go directly to YouTube. In it, angry demonstrators are pressing against a line of Homeland Security officers, shouting angrily, until one spits directly in the face of an officer and is taken down and arrested. In fact, these demonstrations appear to be little different fom those in other cities, with demonstrators frequently attacking agents while, as in Chicago, police decline to intervene. In addition,

An email from a Portland police sergeant appeared to criticize three people he described as "counter-protesters" after confronting anti-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protesters outside an immigration facility and getting assaulted.

. . . In the email, dated Sept. 21, Braun writes, "these 3 counter-protesters continue to be a chronic source of police and medical calls at ICE."

. . . "Despite repeated advice from officers to stay away from the ICE crowd, they constantly return and antagonize the protesters until they are assaulted or pepper sprayed," Braun writes of the three individuals in the email. "They refuse or are reluctant to walk away from these confrontations, even when police are in the area trying to meet with them."

Again, the reasoning seems to be, as it was with Nick Sortor, that merely by being in the area, the counter-protesters are provoking violence against them, when they themselves aren't violent.

Sortor's attorney, Angus Lee, claimed that the DA dropped charges only after he filed discovery documents demanding copies of all communications between the Portland Police and antifa:

In the next weeks to come, that's when we will be pursuing a federal civil rights case against the Portland Police Department and we will be engaging in extensive discovery to get to the bottom of the relationship between antifa and the Portland Police Command Center.

The Portland city fathers must be aware of the continuing black eye these demonstrations have given Portland. Several major companies, including Nike and Intel, have reduced operations in the city, while Walmart, Target, Cracker Barrel, and REI ave closed some or all of their stores, citing safety and shoplifting concerns.

All the episodes over the past months have, if anything, been an indication that Portland is a city in crisis, and its leadership is simply continuing its complacency.

More Portland

Following Judge Immergut's restraining order against Trump's activation of the Oregon National Guard, Trump successively ordered members of the California and Texas National Guard to Portland.

Immergut later expressed frustration that the Trump administration had defied the court order and that Hegseth had authorized the Texas National Guard to enter the state, Oregonlive reported.

. . . The broader order on Sunday will halt National Guard members from being relocated from any state for federal service in the state of Oregon, including the California National Guard.

. . . “President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement,” a spokeswoman told The Post.

At this point, it isn't clear how this will play out.

Yesterday, I began an effort to tally the number of demonstrator arrests in Portland vis-a-vis Los Angeles as a way of assessing the relative threat to federal facilities in each city, This would give a rough indication of how justifiable sending the National Guard into Portland might be. I discovered that there are additional problems in comparing the two cities:

As protests continue nightly outside the Portland ICE facility, there have been multiple reports of people getting arrested or detained — but figuring out who is in charge and what happens afterward isn't always straightforward.

At times, protesters are interacting with city police, county deputies or federal agents, and each agency handles arrests differently, which makes it harder for the public and journalists to track what is exactly happening.

. . . For instance, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Oregon announced Thursday morning that a woman was in federal court on a felony offense of assaulting a federal officer Tuesday night at the ICE facility.

According to court documents, the woman had "applied red paint to the driveway of the ICE facility," and while being processed by federal officers, allegedly "struck one." That woman has been released pending further court proceedings. She pleaded guilty Friday and will be sentenced in December.

In contrast, KGW also received a statement from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, saying that six people were arrested for various offenses Tuesday night — but with no names or details.

Reports indicate that Portland police do not involve themselves when demonstrators attack the ICE facility directly, leaving enforcement to ICE personnel. In addition, police interaction with demonstrators is, apparently by policy, mostly limited to Dialogue Liaison Officers, who do not wear police uniforms and do not make arrests. Nevertheless, arrests were made by federal law enforcement at last Saturday's demonstration, for example:

Federal agents took several protesters into custody and deployed gas and pepper balls at least three times against a crowd of hundreds who gathered for a demonstration in front of the Portland ICE facility Saturday afternoon.

There was a noticeable contingent of counter-protesters among those gathered at the ICE facility throughout the day.

The events initially began as a march from Elizabeth Caruthers Park to the ICE facility organized primarily by Portland Contra Las Deportaciones (PDXCD).

One of the protesters into taken into custody was Holly Brown, one of the organizers of the march.

Brown, who was released around 5:30 p.m., said it was “really horrible inside.”

“There’s different holding cells with, like, really harsh fluorescent lights. There’s no bedding. It’s just like concrete. And the phones didn’t work. They didn’t have phones working in the entire facility,” Brown told KOIN 6 News. “There’s, all these different, like, posters on the wall encouraging people to self-deport. It’s a really horrible, horrible place.”

She said she was charged with trespassing on federal property.

According to the KGW link above, since federal arrestees aren't taken to the Multnomah County Jail, media doesn't tally these totals, but it's reasonable to infer that arrests by federal law enforcement must add considerably to the published Portland totals I cited in yesterday's post.

But there's an additional problem with the generally favorable coverage of the demonstrations in Portland media, which starts with the mention of Holly Brown, who is apparently affiliated with Portland Contra Las Deportaciones (PDXCD), the organizer of Saeturday's protest. The KOIN link just above relies heavily on the account of someone identified only as Rainbow:

“What we did not expect in the targeted arrests was the full-on pushing that they did,” protester Rainbow told KOIN 6 News. “In the pushing, I ended up getting clocked in the eye by one of the federal agents, then they started tear gassing really bad.”

Rainbow said she saw an elderly couple in the group of protesters. The woman got hit in the head with a tear gas canister and began bleeding, eventually receiving help from medics. Rainbow claimed federal agents “tear-gassed the heck out of” the man who was using a walker to move around.

Who is Rainbow? The story doesn't identify her any other way but as a "protester". Is she, like Holly Brown, affiliated with PDXCD, the organizer? She identifies an elderly couple, with the woman hit in the head with a tear gas cannister, as well as a man using a walker. Why would elderly people choose to expose themselves to this sort of stuff? Who encouraged them to attend? This all seems to be part of a scripted event:

Hundreds of protesters marched to the Portland Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Facility on Saturday afternoon.

It is the latest demonstration since President Donald Trump announced last week he would deploy up to 200 members of the Oregon National Guard to Portland. Late Saturday afternoon, a federal judge temporarily blocked the deployment.

Before the temporary restraining order was known publicly, protesters gathered Saturday morning at nearby Elizabeth Caruthers Park in the South Waterfront neighborhood.

They later marched a few blocks toward the detention facility at around 1 p.m. and blocked the road in front of the building. Crowds gathered peacefully and mostly stayed concentrated in front of the facility. Soon after, federal law enforcement marched out of the center and fired tear gas and smoke canisters to disperse the crowd. They also fired pepper balls at people.

. . . Brittanee Carr of Milwaukie brought her 5-year-old daughter to the protest. She said her family has been following the protests on TikTok the past few days.

“I want to show her you know that this is not OK, that you can stand up for what you believe in, and we can come out here and we can protest peacefully,” Carr said.

Throughout the afternoon, federal law enforcement officers would occasionally walk out of the facility to disperse crowds and let federal vehicles inside the facility.

In fact, other accounts show the confrontation lasting until 9:00 PM. If the crowds -- amounting to several hundred -- were blocking the street or blocking access to the facility, then a law enforcement action was justified, but it appears that the Portland Police were unwilling to take enforcement action themselves. Compunding the problem is either the extreme naivete or deliberate connivance of elderly and disabled people and young children being placed in a dangerous situation. If tear gas and pepper balls were deployed, why did any of these stay there?

Beyond that, even if Portland is more or less quiet on certain nights, it's plain that PDXCD and similar groups can order up several hundred demonstrators, including elderly people with walkers and five-year-old children as potential victims, any time they want. So far, I don't think we're getting the whole story on the Portland riots.

UPDATE: This vignette took place in Portland Sunday night. Portland media has been calling the latest demonstrations "family-friendly events".

Portland Update

As I noted yesterday, both Portland city and the State of Oregon sued to block the use of National Guard troops to protect the ICE facility and maintain order in the area. The judge said she would rule on their request for a temporary restraining order over the weekend. This she did:

US District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump nominee, ruled Saturday that deploying active-duty troops to secure the “war ravaged” Oregon city would violate the US Constitution and federal law barring military involvement in domestic law enforcement.

“The relationship between the federal government and the states, between the military and domestic law enforcement, and the balance of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government,” she wrote in her ruling.

. . . In her ruling, Karin pointed out that scores of demonstrations held outside a south Portland immigration facility were not notably violent or disruptive in the days and weeks before Trump’s order.

“Overall, the protests were small and uneventful,” she wrote.

This has been the position of Portland's mayor and other local officials all along. However, the photo at the top of this post is from a protest just yesterday afternoon, and it suggests that the gathering was significant, and arrests were in fact apparently made. According to The Oregonian,

Federal officers have arrested more than two dozen people outside Portland’s ICE building since June, with the majority in the first month that demonstrators started to gather to protest President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The pattern of arrests appears to reflect what Gov. Tina Kotek, Mayor Keith Wilson and Police Chief Bob Day repeatedly said Saturday as Trump authorized sending federal troops to the city:

. . . Relatively low-key demonstrations by a small group of people have continued at the building with law enforcement oversight throughout.

People have been accused in federal court of vandalizing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, disrupting the electronic key card reader operating the building’s gated entrance, blocking federal vehicles from leaving the property, throwing rocks or sticks at officers, shining green lasers into officers’ eyes, disrupting the internet service inside by removing fiber-optic cables and barricading the entry gate with traffic cones, lumber, tables and electronic scooters.

. . . Most of the arrests, 18 of about 29, occurred in June, when demonstrations peaked with hundreds of people at the building. Four more people were charged on July Fourth after another large protest. In recent weeks, no more than several dozen people have gathered outside the building on South Portland’s waterfront.

However, it's difficult to compare arrest statistics from the Portland demonstrations with those in Los Angeles this past June: by the accounts of Portland officials, the Portland Police Bureau has generally left law enforcement around the ICE facility to federal forces, while in Los Angeles, LAPD was active during the protests. In addition, the Los Angeles District Attorney has a tough-on-crime stance, unlike Portland's. For instance,

The Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office and the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office charged at least 71 people with crimes allegedly committed during recent protests against federal immigration enforcement.

. . . The cases stem from downtown Los Angeles protests almost all in June, with one case in July, where 75 people are accused of throwing rocks, fireworks, beer cans and water bottles at officers, driving motorcycles into police lines, and spray-painting “[redacted] ICE” on a building. Others face allegations of looting stores during the demonstrations. Charges range from failing to disperse to assault on police officers.

Again, Portland employs “dialogue liaison officers” rather than uniformed police to deal with protesters, and their treatment is generally more lenient than LAPD. Dialogue Liaison Officers, wearing white uniform shirts, act as liaisons to demonstrators, their role is not enforcement, and they do not make arrests.

Nevertheless, according to The Oregonian, over the same period mostly in June, Portland had 29 arrests, while Los Angeles had 71. These totals, although Portland's is arithmetically lower, are in the same order of magnitude, double digits, especially considering the differing roles of "dialogue liaison officers" vis-a-vis LAPD uniformed officers. If Trump was justified in sending troops to Los Angeles to protect federal agents and facilities, he has about the same justification for sending them to Portland. At the first link above,

The temporary restraining order blocking Trump’s move will expire in 14 days.

The White House disputed the ruling, insisting the president would be “vindicated” by a higher court.

“President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement — we expect to be vindicated by a higher court,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told The Post.

What's Going On In Portland?

Conflicting reports have come out of Portland, OR on the status of ICE enforcement, violent protests, attacks on and arrests of conservative journalists, and the Trump administration's reaction. For context. the YouTube video embedded above gives an idea of the day-to-day routine downtown.

The restaurant owner conducting the tour attributes much of the problem to major businesses that allowed office workers to work from home during the pandemic, but never required them to return to the office afterward, abandoning public space to the Lumpenproletariat, who in the video look like nice college kids who are nevertheless all nodded out.

The political alignment in Portland appears to be an entitled bourgeoisie aligned with homeless but middle-class-looking young white druggies and violent leftist radicals, against the working class broadly defined.

A conservative journalist, Katie Daviscourt, said she was attacked Tuesday night by an Antifa-affiliated protester who gave her a black eye.

The local police department, she claims, refused to do anything to help.

“I immediately ran to a Portland police officer, hunted down the suspect, chased her through the streets and said, ‘This is my assault suspect, can you guys finally do something?’ and I had eyes on her for about 35 minutes,” she said.

“Portland police refused to come in and make an arrest and I had three officers just standing there, watching me try to hunt down the suspect,” she told [Fox anchor Jesse] Watters.

The Portland Police Department issued a press release Wednesday asking for the public’s help in identifying the suspect — but police denied that they refused to help the journalist.

One of the department’s “dialogue liaison officers” followed the suspect and confronted her, police said.

“The Dialogue Officer attempted to talk to the suspect to hear her side of the story. She would not stop, so the DLO told her she was being detained. She refused the lawful police order to stop and she fled,” police said.

Police said they met with the victim and that the case is being investigated by its Major Crimes Unit.

A woman, possibly the same one, attacked another conservative journalist, Nick Sortor, Thursday night. Accordinbg to the AP,

Sortor, 27, who’s a regular guest on Fox News and whose X profile has more than 1 million followers, was arrested Thursday night with two other people outside the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said it was reviewing the case and would make a decision on whether to proceed with charges before Sortor’s arraignment Monday.

What led to the arrests was not immediately clear. Portland police said they moved into the crowd to make arrests as fights broke out. They arrested Sorter and two others.

All three were charged with second-degree disorderly conduct. Sorter was released Friday on his own recognizance, according to Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office’s online records.

But as of Thursday morning, Fox News was reporting a completely different situation:

For the first time in months, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency building here was not besieged Wednesday night by Antifa creeps, who have clearly been scared off by the Trump administration’s increased presence on the ground.

It's a funny thing, just as in President Trump’s crackdown on crime in Washington, D.C., once there are consequences for breaking the law, things get awfully quiet.

It was obvious as I approached the facility just before nightfall that something had changed. Gone for the most part was the menacing gang of masked Antifa with their sticks and flagpoles that I had seen prowling the previous night.

It sounds as though the rejoicing was premature, and the menacing creeps were back Thursday night, along with the dialogue liaison officers, who were apparently there to dialogue, not to enforce the law. By yesterday,

The U.S. Department of Justice says it will launch a widescale probe of the Portland Police Bureau following the arrest of a conservative online journalist and influencer Thursday.

. . . Speaking to the media later Friday morning, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the arrest “extremely troubling,” claiming that Sortor was “ambushed by antifa and was defending himself.”

Sortor said the investigation will be led by Harmeet K. Dhillon, who is serving as assistant attorney general for civil rights, and in earlier years represented Andy Ngo, editor-at-large at The Post Millennial, in civil litigation.

On social media, Dhillon posted a letter addressed to the city attorney and Police Chief Bob Day, warning the city may be using its policing powers to engage in “viewpoint discrimination.”

The letter cited as evidence the arrest of Sortor, the lack of the arrest of a suspect in the assault reported by Post Millennial reporter Katie Daviscourt at a Tuesday protest, as well as recent moves by the City Council finding the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in breach of its land-use permit.

Dhillon's letter is reported to demand:

• All bodycam footage of Sortor’s arrest and the alleged assault on Daviscourt.
• All incident reports, arrest reports, and force reports related to the events.
• All complaints filed against the PPB for its handling of the incidents.
• All internal communications regarding the decision to target the ICE facility with zoning enforcement actions.
• Any communications directing PPB officers on how to respond to ICE protests in the last 30 days.

As of Thursday, before Sortor's arrest, Fox News reported,

Federal immigration officials say their Portland, Oregon, facility has come under nightly attack, with little help from local police because of political directives from city leaders.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News’ Bill Melugin, Cammila Wamsley, director of Portland’s ICE office, said the facility has faced violence for more than 100 consecutive nights, with Portland police largely absent under guidance from the mayor and city council.

. . . She said nightly protests have escalated beyond chants and signs, with bottle rockets striking the ICE building, rocks shattering windows, lasers targeting officers’ eyes and barricades blocking vehicles.

. . . Wamsley said the Portland Police Department has been slow to respond — and sometimes doesn’t respond at all — because of city policy. She explained that assaults have occurred outside and across the street from the building, but police have either taken too long to arrive or not shown up at all.

"That is not the stance they would take six blocks from here, but it is the stance they take with us because of guidance from the mayor and city council," Wamsley said.

According to Axios,

The city and state filed for a temporary restraining order seeking to block the arrival of troops, which was the subject of Friday's hearing.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield also filed a lawsuit seeking to block the deployment, alleging the move violates the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits using troops for domestic law enforcement.

However, there are exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, particularly the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to use federalized Guard units to suppress domestic violence that hinders the execution of state or federal law and deprives people of their constitutional rights. Given Assistant Attorney General Dhillon's letter to Portland authorities, it's likely that the Justice Department will argue that the deployment is lawful on this basis.

The judge, a Trump appointee, said she would issue a ruling later Friday or over the weekend. Thus key developments, both the judge's ruling and the District Attorney's decision to proceed with disorderly conduct charges against Sortor, are imminent.

UPDATE:

Breaking: The first of the Portland Antifa ICE rioters has been federally convicted.

Trantifa militant Julie Winters, formerly Christopher Hudson, has pleaded guilty to felony intimidation of a federal officer and resisting arrest. Other serious charges were dropped as part of… https://t.co/tMs7sAXnMr pic.twitter.com/KLpUSJ1mx6

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) October 3, 2025

AOC Bows To Nancy Pelosi, But It Doesn't Make Much Difference

On Tuesday, AOC said,

". . . I saw some Republican members of Congress saying, ‘Oh, well, if we have this shutdown, it’s because of AOC,’” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Well, if that’s the case, my office is open and you are free to walk in and negotiate with me directly, because what I’m not going to do is tolerate 4 million uninsured Americans because Donald Trump decided one day that he wants to just make sure that kids are dying because they don’t have access to insurance. That’s what’s not going to happen.”

I read this as saying, in effect, "Yes, I'm driving the shutdown, and Republicans may as well negotiate with me directly." One person who was not amused at this was Nancy Pelosi:

.@SpeakerPelosi suggests @AOC lacks 'experience' to be Democratic leader in government shutdown. https://t.co/NhbhkYQFqQ pic.twitter.com/cv9jJ4LrUY

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) October 1, 2025

Her reply to the reporter's question about AOC's remarks was barely suppressed rage. "Why are you saying such a ridiculous thing?"

"She’s wonderful, she’s a real team player, and the rest of that," she told the reporter. "You started by saying Republicans say that she’s directing this. She is not, Hakeem Jeffries is, and this takes a lot of experience, a lot of unity from the caucus in terms of the point of view, and that’s what this is."

AOC implicitly walked the remarks back by yesterday evening:

Ocasio-Cortez made it clear in an interview with NBC News that Democratic leadership is driving the party’s strategy.

“They’re saying this stuff about me in the press, and the fact of the matter is I can tell you, in the seven years that I’ve been here, they [Republican leaders] have never given me a single phone call, because they know what the truth is,” she said. “They know that the people that they need to be negotiating with, and who they are negotiating with, are Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer,” the House and Senate Democratic leaders, both of New York.

But this doesn't change the situation on the ground, which even Chris Cilizza, formerly of CNN and the Washington Post, who now claims to be "independent" on YouTube, understands:

He says,

I think Alexandria Ocasio Cortez may be the thing, the codex that explains why we are where we are in a government shutdown. To go forward, we need to go back, back to March. In March, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, from New York, announces that he is going to vote to keep the government open. He doesn't want to run the risk of allowing Elon Musk and his DOGE people to have a chance to cut even more federal workers by closing down the government, so he's gonna keep it open, he's not gonna get any concessions from the Trump administration.

. . . Now, Schumer probably figured he was gonna take some flak for that, but I do not think he thought he was gonna take the amount of flak from the left that he took. . . . And one of the voices that was most promenent in speaking out against that was Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. . . . Chuck Schumer, . . . who is up for reelection in 2028 to a fifth term, looks at the landscape, and he says, "All right, well, we need to get something from Republicans this time around and Donald Trump. So I'm going to say we need to get the extension to these health care subsidies for Obamacare."

I think Schumer knows it's very unlikely he's going to get that. Trump is in control, Trump thinks a shutdown is fine for him. . . . Chuck Schumer has been in the Senate since 1998. . . . He is currently 74 years old. He'll be 76ish in 2028. . . . Schumer hasn't said whether he wants to run for another term or not, but I think he absolutely wants to keep that possibility open. . . . He doesn't want the narrative to be in 2028 that he retired to run away from certain defeat in a Democratic primary. He wants there to be a credible, plausible opening for him to run for another term.

. . . He looks at the situation, he looks at the outrage from the left. . . and he says, "If I don't get something big and deliverable for Democrats out of this showdown, I'm screwed politically, I will lose this race. So I am going to go forward with this shutdown, and I'm going to keep my Democratic caucus in line, and I'm going to make sure we don't give the Republicans the seven votes they need to keep the government open." He does all of this in large part because of the worry about Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. . . . But the thing is, AOC is 35 years old. She is 40 years Chuck Schumer's junior.

In the end, although Cilizza doesn't go that far, Schumer's problem is the clock, and what is true of Schumer is even more true of Pelosi. What Cilizza has said here is that Schumer is letting AOC set his priorities, but she's forced him into a game he's bound to lose. Whatever he holds out for from Trump, anything he could potentially point to as an important deliverable, Cilizza thinks he won't get it -- but Schumer's the one who's going to lose, not just to Trump, but to any primary oppenent in 2028.

Meanwhile, AOC is 35. This is just as much Pelosi's problem, or even more so. We must assume Pelosi threw a behind-the-scenes tantrum and forced AOC to walk back her implicit announcment that she was running the shutdown, but that doesn't change the fact that Schumer is at the end of his career, and although Pelosi has formally retired as Speaker, she's continuing to run the House through Jeffries, who is little more than a ventriloquist's dummy. I asked Chrome AI mode about this, and it answered,

A narcissist's refusal to acknowledge the passage of time is a defense mechanism rooted in a fear of losing their inflated sense of self. To a narcissist, the physical decline and diminishing social influence that come with aging are existential threats to their core identity, which is built on a fantasy of superiority. They may use a range of tactics to deny reality and cling to a distorted, timeless past where they felt most powerful.

But if we're talking about refusal to acknowledge the passage of time, we're right back to where we were with Joe Biden. Somehow all the senior Democrats are living in a fantasy world where they're still powerful, and they're refusing to acknowledge that things have changed.