Ninth Circuit Hears Arguments On Portland Guard Deployment

Judge Immergut's temporary restraining order a week ago prohibiting Trump from deploying the National Guard to protect the ICE facility in Portland has disappeared from the news, probably because the issues are complex, but they mostly favor Trump. On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals placed an administrative hold on the case prior to hearing arguments on Thursday. Via the Oregon Capital Chronicle,

U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut. . . granted the restraining order against Oregon Guard deployment on Saturday, saying the Trump administration had not made the case that a “rebellion” was taking place at the protests outside the ICE facility.

A stay would prevent Immergut’s order from taking effect, but because of a second, broader restraining order she issued Sunday that has not yet been appealed, federal troops still couldn’t be deployed.

Via Oregon Public Broadcasting,

Federal law allows the president to deploy Guard members if there’s an invasion from a foreign nation, a rebellion or if the president cannot carry out federal laws with “regular forces.”

Immergut, who was nominated by Trump, found the administration did not clearly prove those were the conditions taking place in Portland. She said the White House, therefore, could not send in troops to deal with protests at Portland’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building.

“The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” Immergut wrote in her initial ruling.

"The facts" appear to differ widely depending on whether you're a Portland-area resident or you live almost anywhere else.

Portland is in full gaslight mode over the Antifa assaults on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on a near-nightly basis. Legacy media is helping in the deception by ignoring the story for the most part since June and then committing resources to the story only after they fashioned it into a Trump's Picking on Portland narrative, covering the facility during the daytime when there are generally no attacks on ICE officers in the driveway of the facility, and highlighting the costumed protesters wearing fuzzy furry suits.

Back to the Oregon Public Broadcasting link:

The appeals court panel indicated in its [Thursday] questioning that the president has sweeping authorities when it comes to law enforcement. The panel was made up of Judges Ryan Nelson, Bridget Bade and Susan Graber. Nelson and Bade were appointed by Trump during his first term, while Graber — a former Oregon Supreme Court justice — was appointed by President Clinton.

The judges also used Thursday’s hearing to question whether the judiciary has the authority to put limitations on National Guard deployments if the president believes it is necessary.

“I am sort of trying to figure out how a district court of any nature is supposed to get in and question whether the president’s assessment of executing the laws is right or wrong,” Nelson stated.

. . . The judges from the 9th Circuit did not immediately issue a ruling, but said that they would offer their opinion as quickly as possible.

All the furries that turn up in photos of the Portland demonstrations have me scratching my head. Several of them appear in almost any given photo, both of the tamer daytime protests and the more violent episodes after dark. And we've begun to encunter furries outside Portland, too -- Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson's trans partner had a sidline kink as a furry, for instance. Back then, I noted that YouTube pop psychologist Dr Todd Grande felt the need to reassure us that only a small subset of furries have sex with each other while dressed in animal suits.

Well, maybe so, but even if there's no kinky connotation here at all, what are we to make of fully-grown adults wearing onesie costumes better suited for toddlers? I did a quick check, and you can certainly get adult animal onesies everywhere from Walmart on up, but they're advertised and sold as bedtime wear, not something meant for going out in public. There's a serious incongruity here. And as Victoria Taft noted in the accounts I've cited here, the media in covering the Portland protests stresses that families with children attend.

Really? I wouldn't want a grown man in a chicken onesie anywhere near a kid of mine. What on earth is the matter with Portland? Nothing to see here, just a bunch of adult furries dressed up in toddler jammies parading in front of kids, completely harmless. Only a small subset of these guys have sex with each other. Whatever you're thinking, it's simply untethered to the facts.

Antifa Ups The Ante

The headline of an Atlantic story on the Portland Antifa protests a week ago was Portland’s ‘War Zone’ Is Like Burning Man for the Terminally Online. The subhead is. "There’s more absurdity than menace on the city’s streets—at least for now." Most of it is behind a paywall, but this much is visible to a non-subscriber:

In the days since Donald Trump directed his “Secretary of War” to marshal troops against “domestic terrorists” in Portland, Oregon, encouraging the use of “full force” in a city he likened to a “war zone,” I have been hanging around the demonstration that the president wants to crush. What I’ve found is an atmosphere that is more like a carnival than combat.

By some accounts, this all started back in June, when a group of friends decided to pitch a tent outside an ICE facility in the city. “I was like, ‘Oh, hell yeah! Occupation against deportation! Let it begin, bitches!’” Andy Siebe, who has cropped, caramel-color hair and thin, rounded stumps for teeth, told me when I got to the encampment site, which consists of a heap of cots and tents and medical supplies.

No worries, just a group of friends with no teeth. In his 2024 debate with Trump, Joe Biden quoted former FBI Director Wray to the effect that Antifa isn't an organization, it's an idea, but accounts of the Portland demonstrations I've cited here strongly suggest, contra The Atlantic, that they're well-funded and well-organized, although media accounts go as far as to call them "family friendly" and minimize the actual danger to casual attendees. As of 2020, Trump was already calling them "well funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS":

...And I look at them as a bunch of well funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS who are protected because the Comey/Mueller inspired FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find their funding source, and allows them to get away with “murder”. LAW & ORDER! https://t.co/yHLzB0RQ8e

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 18, 2020

Two weeks ago, Trump signed an order designating them a "domestic terrorist organization". However,

Current law does provide for the designation of some groups as "foreign terrorist organizations," a process that lies with the State Department. It is through this mechanism that al-Qaida and ISIS, for example, have landed on the public list that the department regularly updates. To qualify for this designation, an organization must be based overseas; it must be a cohesive entity engaged in terrorist activity; and it must be a threat to U.S. national security interests.

No similar list or process exists for domestic groups.

That link at NPR perpetuates the myth that Antifa is an idea, not an organization:

"I think it's pretty well-known that antifa is sort of a loosely organized movement rather than a particular organization," Faiza Patel, director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said before the order was released.

The image at the top of this post appeared on the the Portland-focused website “Rose City Counter-Info”. As of the time I post this, it's still there. It encourages mass use of lasers to make it difficult, if not dangerous, for helicopters to fly over Portland monitoring the anti-ICE demonstrations. According to AOL,

Federal prosecutors also charged a man with the crime of aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft in Portland days before the Rose City Counter-Info post, alleging he aimed it at a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) helicopter in September.

“The laser can cause blindness and spotting in vision, making it a challenge to find other aircraft and obstacles, which could lead to a catastrophic event,” an FBI agent said in a criminal complaint. One crew member in the helicopter had to avert his eyes while in flight due to the laser, the complaint said.

Aiming a laser at an aircraft is in fact a federal crime.

The 2012 federal statute makes it illegal for people to “knowingly” point a laser pointer’s beam “at an aircraft”—whether private, commercial, or military—or its flight path. Most importantly, it attaches consequences to this action: A monetary fine of up to $250,000 and/or a federal prison sentence of up to five years. On top of that, the FAA’s website notes that it “can impose civil penalties of up to $11,000” each time someone aims a laser beam at an aircraft.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "Is it a crime to encourage people to violate federal law?" It answered,

Yes, encouraging people to violate federal law is a crime under specific federal statutes, particularly if it meets the criteria for solicitation, aiding and abetting, or conspiracy. Simply advocating for illegal conduct, however, may be protected by the First Amendment if it does not incite immediate lawless action.

. . . It is a federal crime to command, encourage, or request another person to commit a federal offense, particularly a crime of violence. The crime of solicitation is complete when the request is made, regardless of whether the other person agrees to or commits the crime.

. . . Simply encouraging a broad group to violate a law at some unspecified point in the future is likely protected speech. However, telling a specific person to immediately and deliberately break a law would likely meet the criteria for illegal solicitation.

The Rose City Counter-Info post seems at least to be edging close to a line. I assume Homeland Security and the FBI are looking carefully to see exactly who is behind this. Whoever they are, I think at this point, they're tugging on Superman's cape.

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.