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    ‘Huge victory’ in Portland as judge’s final order bars Trump from sending national guard

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    A federal judge in Oregon on Friday blocked Donald Trump from deploying national guard troops to Portland, ruling there was no evidence of widespread violence to justify federal intervention.The US district court judge, Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, delivered her final order in the case on Friday. She found that protests near Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility were “predominately peaceful, with only isolated and sporadic instances of relatively low-level violence”.Earlier this week, Immergut barred Trump’s administration from deploying the national guard to Portland until at least Friday, saying she “found no credible evidence” that protests in the city had grown out of control before the president federalized the troops earlier this fall.In Friday’s ruling, she concluded that most altercations occurred between protesters and counter-protesters, not between protesters and federal agents. Immergut also acknowledged that while she “may lack jurisdiction to enjoin President Trump in the performance of his official duties”, her injunction only bars the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, from deploying members of the national guard to Oregon.This is the latest development in weeks of legal back and forth in Portland, Chicago and other US cities as the Trump administration has moved to federalize and deploy the national guard in city streets to quell protests.The ICE facility in south-west Portland has been the site of ongoing protests since June, when Portland police declared one a riot. The city of Portland and the state of Oregon sued the Trump administration in September after the president announced he had directed the defense department to federalize and deploy the Oregon national guard.Immergut previously issued a temporary restraining order barring the deployment of the national guard in Oregon, a decision the Trump administration appealed.The judge heard three days of witness testimony from law enforcement officers and officials describing conditions around the ICE facility. Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield called Friday’s ruling “a huge victory”.“The courts are holding this administration accountable to the truth and the rule of law,” Rayfield said. “From the beginning, this case has been about making sure that facts, not political whims, guide how the law is applied. Today’s decision protects that principle.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling. More

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      Portland judge rejects Trump request to allow national guard deployment

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      A federal judge in Portland, Oregon, on Friday rejected the Trump administration’s request to immediately lift her order blocking the deployment of federalized national guard troops to the city, saying that she would decide the matter by Monday.The hearing in Portland and one in Washington DC are the latest in a head-spinning array of lawsuits and overlapping rulings prompted by Trump’s push to send the military into Democratic-run cities despite fierce resistance from mayors and governors. Troop deployment remains blocked in the Chicago area, where all sides are waiting to see whether the US supreme court intervenes to allow it.The Portland district court judge, Karin Immergut, who is based in the city, had previously issued two temporary restraining orders blocking the deployment of national guards troops there, in response to a persistent but small protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office.Her first order, blocking the deployment of 200 troops from the Oregon national guard, said that Donald Trump had exceeded his authority by taking federal control of the troops based on his claim that the city was in a state of war-like rebellion. Trump’s assessment, Immergut ruled, was “simply untethered to the facts”.When Trump responded to that order by sending 200 troops from California’s national guard to Oregon, and threatened to send 400 more from Texas, Immergut determined it was an attempt to evade her order, and issued a second order barring the deployment of troops from anywhere in the country to Portland.Immergut’s first order was lifted on Monday by a three-judge panel of the ninth circuit court of appeals, over the strong dissent of the only judge on the panel who lives in Portland. But because the government never appealed Immergut’s second order, it remains in effect and the deployment of troops remains blocked until she decides whether or not to lift or modify it in response to the appeals court ruling.At a virtual hearing on Friday, Immergut cited two reasons for her to delay lifting the second injunction. The first was that the appeals court did not address a central fact in her second order: that she had issued it in part because the government responded to her first order by attempting to evade it. The second was that the ninth circuit appeals court is currently considering a call from one of its judges to rehear the appeal of her first order before a larger panel of 11 judges.At the end of the hearing, Immergut said that she would decide by Monday, if not earlier.The US district judge, Jia Cobb, an appointee of Joe Biden, was hearing arguments Friday on a request from Brian Schwalb, the District of Columbia attorney general, for an order that would remove more than 2,000 guard members from Washington streets.In August, Trump issued an executive order declaring a crime emergency in the district – though the Department of Justice itself says violent crime there is at a 30-year low.Within a month, more than 2,300 guard troops from eight states and the district were patrolling under the army secretary’s command. Trump also deployed hundreds of federal agents to assist them.It is unclear how long the deployments will last, but attorneys from Schwalb’s office said troops were likely to remain in Washington through at least next summer.“Our constitutional democracy will never be the same if these occupations are permitted to stand,” they wrote.Government lawyers said Congress empowered the president to control the DC national guard’s operation. They argued that Schwalb’s lawsuit is a frivolous “political stunt” threatening to undermine a successful campaign to reduce violent crime in Washington.Although the emergency period ended in September, more than 2,200 troops remain. Several states told the Associated Press they would bring their units home by 30 November, unless their deployment is extended.Among the states that sent troops to the district was West Virginia. A civic organization called the West Virginia Citizen Action Group says the governor, Patrick Morrisey, exceeded his authority by deploying 300 to 400 guard members to support Trump’s efforts there.Morrisey has said West Virginia “is proud to stand with President Trump”, and his office has said the deployment was authorized under federal law. The state attorney general’s office has asked Richard D Lindsay, a Kanawha county circuit court judge, to reject the case, saying the group has not been harmed and lacks standing to challenge Morrisey’s decision.Lindsay heard some arguments Friday before continuing the hearing to 3 November to give the state time to focus more on whether Morrisey had the authority to deploy the cuard members.“I want that issue addressed,” Lindsay said.April Perry, a district judge, on Wednesday blocked guard deployment to the Chicago area until a case in her court is decided or the US supreme court intervenes. Perry previously blocked the deployment for two weeks through a temporary restraining order.Attorneys representing the federal government said they would agree to extend the order, but would also continue pressing for an emergency order from the supreme court that would allow for the deployment.Lawyers representing Chicago and Illinois have asked the supreme court to continue to block the deployment, calling it a “dramatic step”. More

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      Silly inflatable costumes are taking over anti-Trump protests. What are they actually saying? | Julia Carrie Wong

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      There was little reason to imagine that the inflatable frogs would become an actual thing. Protests at the ICE detention center in Portland, Oregon, in recent months have reflected the city’s penchant for whimsy and weirdness, and tactics such as naked bike riding, organized public knitting and “ICE fishing” with doughnuts have largely remained a local affair.But when a federal agent in riot gear ran up behind a protester wearing an inflatable frog costume and sprayed a chemical agent directly into his costume’s air vent with all the casual menace of an exterminator, the inflatable frog went viral. “I’ve definitely had spicier tamales,” the 24-year-old protester, Seth Todd, told the Oregonian, cementing the frog’s status as a leftist folk hero.Soon, activists had launched “Operation Inflation” to equip Portland protesters with an entire menagerie of inflatable animal suits, and the costumes began appearing at other protest hotspots, including the ICE detention center near Chicago where police have deployed teargas, pepper balls and batons against protesters in recent weeks. By the time millions of Americans took to the streets in last weekend’s No Kings marches, inflatable costumes were ubiquitous.“I obviously started a movement of people showing up looking ridiculous, which is the exact point,” Todd said. “To show how the narrative that is being pushed [that] we are violent extremists is completely ridiculous.”View image in fullscreenMove over pussy hats. Step aside safety pins. The resistance 2.0 has a new visual language, and this time it’s polyester, battery-powered and full of hot air. The colorful costumes lent a festive air to the No Kings protests and offered an implicit rebuke to the Trump administration’s attempt to smear his political opponents as violent terrorists.“Frivolity and absurdity are kryptonite to authoritarians who project the stern father archetype to their followers,” wrote author Gary Shteyngart in a New York Times op-ed celebrating the profusion of playful and joyful imagery at Saturday’s marches. “Once the pants are lowered and the undies of the despot are glimpsed, there is no point of return.”It’s a lovely idea, but nine months into the second Trump administration, it’s hard to argue that Americans have yet to catch sight of the president’s dirty laundry. Kryptonite, like the emperor’s new clothes, is just a fairytale. As Americans seek to harness the energy of No Kings and direct it toward building an effective opposition to Trump’s authoritarian agenda, it’s worth considering what the inflatable costumes are actually saying.Street protest movements have many aims and many outcomes, but one of the most important is the production of imagery that conveys a message and outlasts the event itself. Activists are keenly aware of symbolism and optics – they aren’t called “demonstrations” for nothing – and often work to imbue protest aesthetics with their particular ideological and ethical commitments.Nonviolent resistance movements tend to adopt aesthetics that emphasize the inherent dignity and humble humanity of their members. From the Sunday best donned by marchers in the US civil rights movement to the simple dhoti worn by Gandhi and the modest white dress shirt and black slacks of the Tiananmen Square Tank Man, aesthetic choices by peaceful protesters are an effective way of manufacturing imagery that, by contrast, illustrates the sadism and brutality of an oppressive state.The rejection of respectability politics by subsequent generations of Black liberation activists in the US – from the Black Panther party to Black Lives Matter – reflected not just an aesthetic but also an ideological shift. The Panthers were not seeking equality within a white supremacist system, but a revolution of the system itself; their signature berets, black leather jackets and firearms asserted their militancy and tied them visually to other leftwing revolutionary movements around the world.View image in fullscreenRebel clowning or “tactical frivolity” represents a another aesthetic tradition of protest, one that deploys humor and buffoonery to pierce the aura of invincibility relied on by despots and dictators. From Charlie Chaplin’s lampooning of Adolf Hitler in the 1940 film The Great Dictator to the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (Circa) protests against globalization and capitalism in the early 2000s, clowning has a storied history within leftwing and antifascist resistance movements.“The clown puts their absurd body in the way of the harm of others. It is politically more expensive to club a clown!” wrote performance artist LM Bogad in a 2020 essay about his experience with Circa. Confrontations between clowns and riot police create what Bogad calls “irresistible images” – “images that are so compelling that our ideological opponents cannot help but reproduce them even though they undermine their worldview and support ours”.Portland’s inflatable frogs fit squarely into this tradition, co-opting and subverting the aesthetic of intentional cruelty that has been so assiduously cultivated by the second Trump administration. Maga’s exaggeratedly sculpted faces and glorification of human misery convey the underlying ethos of the Trumpist worldview: beauty is pain, and pain beauty. When Donald Trump conjures up a false image of Portland as “war-ravaged” and “under siege” by antifa “terrorists”, he asks his supporters to embrace the cleansing power of state violence. But when federal agents and riot cops are forced to carry out their attacks on inflatable cartoon characters rather than figures clad in the all-black uniform of recent iterations of antifascist activism, government forces are enlisted in the project of debunking their own lies.But there is a difference between facing down a riot cop outside an ICE detention center, and dancing in the streets during a permitted march on a sunny Saturday morning. When a Vietnam war protester placed flowers down the barrels of rifles wielded by military police at the 1967 march on the Pentagon, or when anti-occupation activists clucked like chickens before IDF soldiers in the West Bank, they clowned in the face of real danger. Without the implicit threat of state violence, without the bravery of offering up a comically unprotected body as a target for real violence, tactical frivolity can devolve into little more than entertainment.View image in fullscreenThere are very good reasons to hold family-friendly protests away from the threat of riot cops, but different contexts require different tactics; what is ridiculously effective in front of an ICE detention center can end up looking just a bit ridiculous when there is no danger in the frame.Already, one mainstream media outlet has published an affiliate link-laden article promoting cheap inflatable costumes on Amazon: “You too can join in on the movement today with this steeply discounted inflatable elephant costume that’s less than $20 – a record-low price, according to Amazon.” Similarly, the aesthetics of the flower power movement were adopted and commodified by the fashion industry over and over again, losing political potency along the way. The revolution may well end up being televised, but it is sure as hell not going to arrive in a cardboard box with free shipping from Amazon Prime.It is also worth keeping in mind that Trump is not a straightforward “stern father” autocrat. While some of his rhetoric and actions invoke violence and terror against disfavored groups, he has also played the role of his own court jester, to great effect. His disinhibited remarks and frequent buffoonery are doing their own work to disarm and discredit his opponents, who have often struggled to convince the broader public of the seriousness of the threat he poses. So while tactical frivolity certainly has the power to deflate the menace of the Department of Homeland Security’s anti-immigrant security apparatus, it is not clear that it has much to offer when confronting Trump directly. After the No Kings protests, the president posted an AI-generated video of himself dumping shit on protesters; it’s impossible to make him look like more of a clown than he already is.Finally, remember that clowning is a fundamentally de-escalatory tactic. When activists turn rifles into vases and riot cops into zookeepers, they are interrupting the cycle of escalating tension that can turn protests into dangerous confrontations. We absolutely need to de-escalate the violence that is being aimed at immigrants and other disfavored communities by Trump, ICE, DHS and the national guard – but it’s not clear to me that de-escalation is the right tactic for nationwide, popular protests. The Democratic party leadership has overwhelmingly failed to operate as an actual opposition party since Trump’s re-election; they don’t need to calm down, but to wake up.So please, wear your inflatable frog costume if you plan to use your body to obstruct the workings of Trump’s violent deportation machine: in addition to provoking irresistible images, it might help protect you against teargas and pepper spray. But let us be strategic about deploying tactical frivolity against Trumpism. When millions of people take to the streets to demand that our leaders and institutions stop capitulating, the message should not be mistaken for anything other than deadly serious. More

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      Democratic senator’s anti-Trump floor speech ends after nearly 23 hours

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      Oregon’s Jeff Merkley gave a marathon, nearly 23-hour speech on the Senate floor that began on Tuesday and ended late Wednesday, pressing the case that Donald Trump is acting as an authoritarian by prosecuting political enemies and deploying the military into Merkley’s home town of Portland.The 68-year-old senator began speaking around 6.20pm on Tuesday evening and continued until just after 5pm on Wednesday. Standing continuously on the Senate floor alongside placards that read “authoritarianism is here now!” and “Trump is violating the law”, Merkley paused only to take questions from fellow Democratic senators who joined him in the chamber to make their own points about the president’s conduct.“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the civil war. President Trump is shredding our constitution,” Merkley said as he began his speech.He repeated those words as he finished speaking just before sunset the following day, and thanked the No Kings protesters who had filled the streets of American cities in anti-Trump demonstrations the prior weekend.“They were ringing the alarm bells. They were saying that it is absolutely unacceptable to have an authoritarian government,” Merkley said.The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, said the Oregonian delivered an “amazing tour de force over these many hours. Jeff Merkley has been the Paul Revere of 21st-century America, literally, figuratively, riding from one corner of this country to the other, alerting people to the danger.”Republican whip John Barrasso followed him up by saying Merkley’s speech was “what I can only describe as rubbish” and noting it did nothing to resolve the deadlock over government funding that has forced a shutdown.Merkley spoke a day after a federal appeals court had allowed the president to send the national guard into Portland over the objections of local leaders, who say there is no merit to the president’s claim that the city is a “war zone”. Trump has also ordered a similar deployment of troops into Chicago, where federal agents are carrying out an aggressive crackdown targeting people they believe to be undocumented immigrants. The supreme court is poised to consider a legal challenge to that move.The senator touched on those deployments to cities that are overwhelmingly Democratic, as well as other instances where the president is seen as retaliating against his political enemies, including the charges a handpicked US attorney has filed against the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, and former FBI director James Comey.“Equal justice under law – that’s the vision here in America. Not unequal injustice, which is what the president is pursuing by taking the power of the government and going after individuals that he does not like or perceives to be political opponents,” Merkley said.“That’s what you read about in authoritarian governments far away, and you go, that would never happen in the United States of America, but it is happening right here, right now.”Merkley’s address is the second instance this year in which a Democratic senator has staged a lengthy floor speech to condemn Trump’s policies. About two months after Trump’s inauguration, Cory Booker of New Jersey spoke for 25 hours and five minutes, setting a new record for the longest speech ever by a solo senator.On Wednesday morning, the Oregon senator stood speaking from a lectern where he had placed a small glass of water and a copy of How Democracies Die, a 2018 book by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt detailing how representative governments around the world have been dismantled.Among those who joined him on the floor was Booker, who said: “We are seeing a time now that if we do not ring the alarm bells, more and more Americans will be hurt by a president who is acting more like an authoritarian leader than a democratically elected executive.”Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal likened Trump’s partial demolition of the White House East Wing to layoffs and funding cuts he has ordered across the government.“This destruction that Donald Trump is doing to the White House is emblematic of the wrecking ball he is taking to our democracy. Put aside the waste of money that could be used to improve our education system, solve food insecurity, guarantee the election integrity of this nation – the damage that he’s doing to this iconic symbol of America is so costly to our image and esteem around the world,” Blumenthal said.Ron Wyden, Oregon’s senior senator, said in an interview that his counterpart was “making some particularly, relevant and important points about the threat”.Asked if other Senate Democrats were planning such lengthy speeches, Wyden said: “You take them one at a time, but I think what Senator Merkley is doing is very important.”The speech comes on the 22nd day of the government shutdown that began at the start of the month, when Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on legislation to extend funding beyond the end of September.The Senate has held 11 unsuccessful votes on a Republican-backed bill to extend funding through 21 November, which Democrats have blocked because it does not including healthcare funding that they are demanding, as well as curbs on Trump’s use of rescissions to slash funding approved by Congress.After Merkley finished his speech, the Senate’s Republican leaders moved to hold a 12th vote on the funding bill. 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      Portlanders mock Trump for calling their city ‘war-ravaged’. But they’re clear-eyed about its problems

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      When Donald Trump said he was sending the national guard to Portland, Oregon, to protect immigration officers, local residents immediately responded with characteristic sarcasm. Mocking the president’s portrayal of a city in decline, social media was awash with videos of children in parks, busy farmers’ markets and September’s falling leaves overlaid with satirical text: “war ravaged”.When the US secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, visited the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) building where protesters had been gathering for weeks, she found a small crowd of demonstrators wearing inflatable animal costumes, not a city overrun by antifascist militants. The reality on the ground did not deter Trump from painting the city as unlivable.“I don’t know what could be worse than Portland,” Trump said in an 8 October White House meeting. “You don’t even have stores anymore. They don’t even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows. Most of the retailers have left.”Oregon’s largest city boasts a wealth of beauty, nestled between two rivers and surrounded by mountains. It isn’t “bombed out”, as Trump said, and officials in recent weeks have worked hard to convince Trump the city is not a dystopia, saying years of public messaging about Portland’s challenges are outdated.“Portland is vibrant and thriving,” said a 28 September letter co-signed by 200 Oregon business leaders, elected officials and organizations. “Just like with public safety, we recognize that there is more work to do and we continue to forge public-private partnerships every day to make our city better.”But Trump’s narrative did not appear suddenly. Portland is, in fact, struggling with a dire affordability crisis, with persistently high rates of homelessness, and too many people living on the streets with mental health and addiction needs.Economic leaders in the city have argued for years that those problems, combined with high taxes and racial justice protests, have slowed the city’s economic recovery from a deep pandemic hole.Progressive critics have said that a period of economic boom followed by Covid left the city’s social safety net in disrepair, and their arguments have increasingly resonated with voters in recent years.View image in fullscreenPortland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, a moderate, won election in 2024 in a landslide. But the election also brought four members of the democratic socialists of America (DSA) and an even, progressive-moderate split to the city council.Campaigns promising to address root causes of social issues are resonating with voters across the nation, including in New York, where Zohran Mamdani is leading the polls for the mayoral race.Sameer Kanal, a DSA-affiliated councilor, said that, like in cities across the country, there is a new, relentless focus on affordability.“How can we make sure that the rent is low enough, not make sure that the people that are richest in the city are benefiting the most?” Kanal said.Cost of livingIn the mid-2010s, national media celebrated Portland’s quirks, bringing an influx of new residents and business opportunities. It also meant housing costs soared and homelessness increased year after year. Average rent in Portland increased by 30% from 2012 to 2015, and the average home sale price grew by nearly 50% from 2011 to 2016. In 2025, Portland’s average fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment, as defined by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, was $1,997, up from $905 in 2011.No single neighborhood’s average rent is affordable to Portlanders making under $31,000 annually. And despite home sale prices decreasing by 7% citywide from 2020 to 2024, high mortgage rates and a low stock of houses for sale leave even median-income Portlanders with few options to buy.To keep up with demand, Portland’s housing bureau estimates the city needs to build at least 63,000 units affordable for low- and moderate-incomes in the next 20 years.Mitch Green, an economist and professor elected to Portland’s city council this year, said the “Portlandia era” of the 2010s brought significant revenue to the city, but did not create the sufficient affordable housing necessary to meet the needs of the entire population, particularly low-income residents.“People can, in some sense, adapt a little bit to changes in rent,” Green said. “But when it changes quickly, what you’ll see is, people will fall through the cracks.”View image in fullscreenA 2019 project to bring a luxury Ritz-Carlton hotel and residences symbolized both the market’s optimism for Portland and its troubles after the economic downturn following Covid, people like Green argue.The $600m project displaced a block of food carts enjoyed by locals. The city’s tax incentives obligated the project to build affordable housing units or contribute $8m toward an affordable-housing program. When high rents and the arrival of Covid hollowed out downtown Portland in 2020, shuttering the central city after its upswing, the project like many others of its kind struggled. Only 8% of the 132 luxury condos sold, and the city may never see the money or the affordable housing after the construction lender foreclosed on the building earlier this summer.Temporary solutionsThe lack of affordable housing has been a key driver in a persistent homelessness emergency. As of July, more than 16,000 people are unhoused in Multnomah county, which encompasses Portland. Roughly half are unsheltered, and the vast majority live in Portland.There are twice as many unsheltered Portlanders as there are shelter units. With affordable housing in short supply, unhoused residents are left surviving in the shadows, under constant threat of fines, jail time or sweeps.The mayor has responded with a dual strategy: clearing encampments, while building out temporary shelter units.Like in many counties across the US west, encampment sweeps have become more frequent and aggressive in recent years. It’s a strategy the mayor says he wants to scale up.“The city of Portland anticipates returning to enforcement of existing public space regulations on safety, sanitation and livability in the coming days,” Wilson said. “Every community member, both housed and unhoused, deserves a safe community.”Meanwhile, the mayor’s office has added 800 beds since January toward his goal to add 1,500 by 1 December.The approach is not without its critics. A Street Roots and ProPublica investigation earlier this year found that the increase in sweeps in Multnomah county contributed to a fourfold increase in homeless deaths over a four-year period. And progressive leaders, backed by a throng of local organizers, have argued the city should focus on building permanent housing rather than temporary shelter.Multnomah county has spent $500m on housing in 2024, with half spent on temporary shelters and navigation services. That approach is expensive and ineffective, according to Green.“It’s good to open up some shelters so people have a place to hang their head at night, and they don’t have to be stuck out in the winter or the summer experiencing the conditions,” Green said. “But it’s not a solution for homelessness. The solution for homelessness is housing.”Green and other local leaders recently visited Vienna to learn how social housing might better address Portland’s needs. The European city spends $500m on its entire social housing program, including all homelessness spending. It is rare for a person to live on the streets.Meanwhile, the outlook is grim for Oregonians at risk of losing housing. Amid billions in federal cuts to social programs and tax breaks in Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, the state’s Democratic supermajority legislature cut $100m in eviction-protection funds this year, instead allocating $205m toward a statewide temporary homeless shelter program.That’s a heavy loss, according to Becky Straus, managing attorney at the non-profit Oregon Law Center, which provides pro bono legal assistance for low-income Oregonians.“We can’t cut our way out of the housing crisis,” Straus said. “Without eviction prevention, more people will end up on the streets and shelters won’t be able to keep up.”Through August, nearly 8,000 evictions were filed in Multnomah county alone this year, with 90% for nonpayment of rent.Drug decriminalizationAs the city grappled with a sharp increase in homelessness, it also faced the visible impacts of a drug crisis that rose nationally since as early as 2013, following decades of disinvestment in services at the state level. In 2021, Oregon became the first state in the US to decriminalize drugs and allocate hundreds of millions in marijuana tax revenues to build treatment programs across the state. The measure was an attempt to address a persistent addiction crisis, one that appeared more visible with storefront windows boarded up and social services at a minimum post-pandemic. Rather than incarcerating low-level drug offenders, the state would invest in building up its support infrastructure.The decriminalization measure – passed after the city saw 100 consecutive days of racial justice protests – was meant to reduce interactions with the criminal justice system and confront racial disparities in policing, particularly for low-level offenses, and create a public health framework for addiction. A now-deleted Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) 2020 survey showed Oregon among states with the least access to substance use and mental health treatment.But the headwinds the policy faced were fierce. After voters passed the ballot measure, it took more than 15 months for the state’s health authority to send funds to new statewide support networks – the other side of the decriminalization coin. That meant people were not arrested for possession or consumption of drugs, even in public spaces. Still, few options existed for a person seeking recovery services for substance use disorders.In time, multiple studies showed that the effects of Covid-19, rising housing costs and the arrival of fentanyl coalesced in early 2021, leading to the public’s distorted perception that drug decriminalization was responsible for homelessness, crime and high downtown vacancy rates.Despite appearances, deaths from fentanyl followed an identical trajectory in all 50 states after the drug saturated each market, regardless of each state’s criminal penalties.“Portland was not an outlier,” said former Multnomah county district attorney Mike Schmidt.Still, the Oregon legislature ended the state’s decriminalization efforts under public pressure in September 2024, while maintaining funding for new treatment centers.Portland police have arrested 400 people for drug offenses since then, with 72% being charged with misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance. Meanwhile, funding has helped thousands of people access harm reduction, peer support and substance use treatment services through new networks the decriminalization measure created.Olivia Katbi, co-chair of the democratic socialists of America Portland chapter, said she still believes “Portland is the best city in the country”, despite its challenges. “And, Portland as a city has problems in the way that every large American city has problems.”This article is co-published with Street Roots, an investigative weekly street newspaper More

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      Newsom to sue Trump over California national guard deployment to Oregon

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      California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, announced on Sunday that he is suing Donald Trump over the alleged deployment of 300 California national guard personnel to Oregon.“They are on their way there now,” Newsom said in a press statement. “The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words – ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents.”Newsom’s proposed lawsuit follows a federal judge’s ruling that blocked the Trump administration from deploying the Oregon national guard to Portland. US district judge Karin Immergut agreed with arguments it would inflame rather than calm tensions in the city.Immergut said in her ruling, which delays sending the guard until at least 18 October, that there was a lack of evidence that the recent protests in Portland justified the move.Caroline Turco, Portland’s senior deputy attorney, said that there had been no violence against Ice officers for months and that recent Ice protests were “sedate” in the week before the president declared the city to be a war zone, sometimes featuring fewer than a dozen protesters.“This isn’t about public safety, it’s about power,” Newsom said. “We will take this fight to court, but the public cannot stay silent in the face of such reckless and authoritarian conduct by the President of the United States.”In a statement on X, Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield said the state is “quickly assessing our options and preparing to take legal action.“The President is obviously hellbent on deploying the military in American cities, absent facts or authority to do so,” he wrote. “It is up to us and the courts to hold him accountable. That’s what we intend to do.”The California national guard referred questions to the defense department. A department spokesperson declined to comment.“President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement. For once, Gavin Newscum should stand on the side of law-abiding citizens instead of violent criminals destroying Portland and cities across the country,” read a response from the White House deputy press secretary, Abigail Jackson.The news from Oregon came just a day after Trump authorized the deployment of national guard troops to Chicago, the latest in a string of similar interventions across several US states.Trump had first announced the plan on 27 September, saying he was “authorizing full force, if necessary” despite pleas from Oregon officials and the state’s congressional delegation, who said there had been a single, uneventful protest outside one federal immigration enforcement office.For years, Trump has amplified the narrative that Portland is a “war-ravaged” city with anarchists engaging in chaos and unlawful behavior.During his first term in 2020, he deployed federal forces to the city amid the protests over the murder by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The protests spread across the US but were especially heightened in Portland. Despite protests against Ice being relatively small in the state this year, Trump has used them as a justification to deploy troops.Speaking on X about the latest move from Trump, Newsom said: “It’s appalling. It’s un-American, and it must be stopped.” More

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      Trump says ‘no choice’ but to cut federal workers if government shuts down as midnight deadline looms – live

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      When asked by a reporter during his executive order signing, why it’s necessary to cut more federal jobs in the event of a government shutdown, the president said it’s something you “have to do”.“No country can afford to pay for illegal immigration, healthcare for everybody that comes into the country. And that’s what they [Democrats] are insisting,” Trump said. “They want open borders. They want men playing in women’s sports. They want transgender for everybody. They never stop. They don’t learn. We won an election in the landslide. They just don’t learn. So we have no choice. I have to do that for the country.”On the Senate floor, Patty Murray – who serves as the senior senator from Washington, and vice-chair of the influential appropriations committee – just said that she hopes Republicans will “come to their senses and come to the table”.“If Republicans want to avoid a shutdown like Democrats want to avoid a shutdown, then stop spending so much time saying you will sit down with us on healthcare later,” Murray said. “Spend that time working with us right now.”Attorney general Pam Bondi is set to appear before the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday, 7 October, as turmoil in the justice department continues.Last week, federal prosecutors indicted former FBI director James Comey. This despite the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, Erik Siebert, finding insufficient evidence to prosecute him.The president, then moved to fire Siebert and installed White House staffer and his personal attorney, Lindsey Halligan.When asked by a reporter during his executive order signing, why it’s necessary to cut more federal jobs in the event of a government shutdown, the president said it’s something you “have to do”.“No country can afford to pay for illegal immigration, healthcare for everybody that comes into the country. And that’s what they [Democrats] are insisting,” Trump said. “They want open borders. They want men playing in women’s sports. They want transgender for everybody. They never stop. They don’t learn. We won an election in the landslide. They just don’t learn. So we have no choice. I have to do that for the country.”The president signed an executive order today to “accelerate” pediatric cancer research by using artificial intelligence.This includes doubling a $50m investment in the childhood cancer data initiative.“For years, we’ve been amassing data about childhood cancer, but until now, we’ve been unable to fully exploit this trove of information and apply it to practical medicine,” Trump said.It’s worth noting something that Donald Trump said earlier, during his announcement in the Oval Office.“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible. Like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like,” the president said, seemingly in reference to the memo sent out by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) last week that told federal agencies to prepare for layoffs in the event of a government shutdown. “And you all know Russell Vought. He’s become very popular recently because he can trim the budget to a level that you couldn’t do any other way.”Vought, who is the director of the OMB, was standing beside the president during today’s announcement.In response, top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer said the president “admitted himself that he is using Americans as political pawns”.“He is admitting that he is doing the firing of people, if god forbid it [the shutdown] happens,” Schumer added. “Democrats do not want to shut down. We stand ready to work with Republicans to find a bipartisan compromise.”In terms of who stands to be affected if Congress fails to pass a funding extension today, my colleague Lauren Gambino notes that approximately 750,000 federal employees will be furloughed each day of a government shutdown, according to an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office released on Tuesday.Operations deemed essential – such as social security, military duties, immigration enforcement, and air traffic control – continue, but other services may be disrupted or delayed. Mail delivery and post office operations will continue without interruption.Agencies have been releasing updated contingency plans in the event of a shutdown. The Department of Education said nearly all its federal employees would be furloughed, while most of the Department of Homeland Security workforce would remain on the job.The effect can be wide-ranging and potentially long-lasting. Previous shutdowns have closed national parks and the Smithsonian museums in Washington; slowed air travel; delayed food safety inspections and postponed immigration hearings.Lauren notes that while the broader economy may not feel the effects immediately, analysts warn that a prolonged shutdown could slow growth, disrupt markets, and erode public trust.Read Lauren’s full primer on the looming shutdown below.Qatar, Egypt and Turkey are urging Hamas to give a positive response to Donald Trump’s proposal for ending Israel’s war in Gaza, Axios is reporting, citing two sources with knowledge of the talks.Trump said earlier this morning that he was giving the group “three or four days” to respond. “We have one signature that we need, and that signature will pay in hell if they don’t sign,” Trump told US generals and admirals in Quantico, Virginia. Yesterday the president made clear that he would support Israel continuing the war if Hamas rejects the proposal, or reneges on the deal at any stage.According to Axios’s source, while Trump presented the plan at a press conference yesterday alongside Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Qatari PM Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and Egyptian intelligence chief Hassan Rashad were presenting it to Hamas leaders in Doha – and both urged Hamas to accept.Per Axios’s report: “Al-Thani advised the Hamas leaders that this was the best deal he was able to get for them and it won’t get much better, the source told the news agency. He also stressed that based on his conversations with Trump, he was confident the US president was seriously committed to ending the war. He said that was a strong enough guarantee for Hamas. The Hamas leaders told al-Thani they would study the proposal in good faith.”They met again on Tuesday, this time along with Turkish intelligence director Ebrahim Kalin, the source told Axios. Ahead of that meeting, al-Thani told Al-Jazeera he hopes “everyone looks at the plan constructively and seizes the chance to end the war”. He said Hamas needs to get to a consensus with all other Palestinian factions in Gaza before issuing an official response. “We and Egypt explained to Hamas during yesterday’s meeting that our main goal is stopping the war. Trump’s plan achieves the main goal of ending the war, though some issues in it need clarification and negotiation,” the Qatari PM added.The US is set to deport some 400 Iranian people back to Iran in the coming months as part of a deal with the Iranian government, the New York Times (paywall) reports.Iranian officials have told the paper that a US-chartered flight carrying about 100 people departed Louisiana last night and will arrive in Iran via Qatar in the next few days.The deportation to Iran, which has one of the harshest human rights records in the world, marks “one of the starkest efforts yet by the Trump administration to deport migrants no matter the human rights conditions in countries on the receiving end”, the NYT’s report reads.“The identities of the Iranians on the plane and their reasons for trying to immigrate to the United States were not immediately clear,” it notes. But Iranian officials add “that in nearly every case, asylum requests had been denied or the [deportees] had not yet appeared before a judge for an asylum hearing”.Earlier today, the homepage of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud) was changed to a message in bold, claiming “the Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands. The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.”The partisan message comes after whistleblowers at the agency claimed they were fired for raising concerns about the agency dismantling efforts to enforce fair housing laws.Here is my colleague Alice Speri’s story on today’s ruling from a federal judge that found the Trump administration’s policy to detain and deport foreign scholars over their pro-Palestinian views violates the US constitution and was designed to “intentionally” chill free speech rights.In a short while, Donald Trump is expected to sign executive orders at 3pm EST in the Oval Office.As of now, it’s closed press, but we’ll keep you updated if anything changes.With the potential for another contentious government shutdown looming large, national park leaders and advocates are concerned the Trump administration could again push for leaving America’s parks open when they are unstaffed.“National parks don’t run themselves. It is hard-working National Park Service employees that keep them safe, clean and accessible,” 40 former superintendents said in a letter issued to Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, this week, urging him to close the parks if a shutdown occurs. “If sufficient staff aren’t there, visitors shouldn’t be either.”Irreversible damage was done at popular parks, including Joshua Tree in California, following a month-long shutdown in Trump’s first term, when his administration demanded parks be kept open while funding was paused and workers were furloughed.Without supervision, visitors left behind trails of destruction. Prehistoric petroglyphs were vandalized at Big Bend national park. Joshua trees, some more than a century old, were chopped down as trash and toilets overflowed. Tire tracks crushed sensitive plants and desert habitats from illegal off-roading vehicles in Death Valley. There were widespread reports of wildlife poaching, search-and-rescue crews were quickly overwhelmed with calls and visitor centers were broken into.There were 26 pages of listed damages, according to Kristen Brengel, senior vice-president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, who added that those effects happened in late December and January – a season when many parks are typically quieter.The autumn months, and October especially, still draw millions of visitors even as the peak of summer visitation begins to slow. In 2024, there were more than 28.4m recreational visits in October alone, according to data from the NPS.One House Democrat told me, on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, that the “best thing” for Democrats right now is that their Republican colleagues are “refusing” to negotiate on healthcare, and “forcing the American people to get hammered with these consequences of what they’ve done”.This Democrat added that if GOP lawmakers were to “cut some kind of deal on health care” it would “inoculate them to some extent, for the midterms in 2026”.The Hill is reporting that the Senate is expected to vote on the Republican and Democratic versions of a stopgap funding bill at 5pm EST today.A reminder that both failed to achieve the 60 votes needed to clear the chamber prior to last week’s congressional recess.At the time of writing this post, government funding is set to expire in under 10 hours.A federal district court judge in Massachusetts today ruled that the Trump administration’s policy of arresting, detaining, and deporting noncitizen students and faculty members for pro-Palestinian advocacy violates the first amendment.Judge William Young said that today’s ruling was to decide whether noncitizens lawfully present in the US “have the same free speech rights as the rest of us”.“The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally ‘yes, they do.’ ‘No law’ means ‘no law’,” he said.The lawsuit, brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University after activist Mahmoud Khalil’s was arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in March, alleged the Trump administration was conducting an “ideological deportation” that was unconstitutional. It resulted in a nine-day trial in July.Coming soon to Miami: the Donald J Trump presidential library.Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis and his cabinet voted Tuesday morning to hand over a lucrative parcel of land for the venture, the first formal step towards a building intended to honor the legacy of the 45th and 47th president.The unanimous vote by DeSantis and three loyalists, including the unelected Florida attorney general James Uthmeier, conveys almost three acres of prime real estate in the shadow of the Miami Freedom Tower, the iconic and recently reopened “beacon of freedom” that saw tens of thousands of Cubans enter the US during its time as an immigration processing center.On Monday, protestors at the site, currently a parking lot for Miami Dade College’s downtown campus, highlighted the juxtaposition with a building celebrating a president who has implemented the biggest crackdown on immigration in the nation’s history.“I look forward to the patriotic stories the Trump Library Foundation will showcase for generations to come in the Free State of Florida,” Uthmeier said in a statement following the vote.Eric Trump, the president’s son, celebrated the news in a post to X. “It will be the greatest Presidential Library ever built, honoring the greatest President our Nation has ever known,” he wrote.Critics of the venture note that college trustees voted a week ago to transfer ownership of the land, estimated to be worth $67m, to the state without knowing what DeSantis intended to do with it.On CNN today, Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, said that “sometimes you’ve got to stand and fight” in regard to the looming shutdown.“A fight to protect Americans who can’t afford their healthcare, is a fight worth having,” she added.The president said that he didn’t see Democrats “bend” at all when they discussed healthcare provisions in his meeting on Monday. He spoke with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries.But when asked to clarify what he means when he talks about Democrats fighting for undocumented immigrants’ access to federal healthcare programs, when they aren’t eligible to access them, Trump didn’t answer the question.Instead he listed off, what he described as, several achievements by the administration to curb illegal migration.Donald Trump has just said that the government will “probably” shut down, while addressing reporters in the Oval Office.“They want to give Cadillac Medicare to illegal aliens … at the cost to everyone else,” the president said. This is a false claim that Trump and congressional Republicans have repeated since lawmakers have failed to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded. A reminder, this lapses tonight.Undocumented immigrants are not eligible to enroll in subsidized programs like Medicaid, Medicare or the Affordable Care Act. More

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      Oregon sues to block ‘illegal’ deployment of 200 national guard troops to Portland

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      The state of Oregon filed a lawsuit in federal court on Sunday seeking to block the deployment of 200 national guard troops to Portland, arguing Donald Trump’s characterization of the peaceful city as “war ravaged” is “pure fiction”.Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said at a news conference that she had been notified by the Pentagon that the US president had seized control of the state’s reservists, claiming authority granted to him to suppress “rebellion” or lawlessness.“When the president and I spoke yesterday,” Kotek said, “I told him in very plain language that there is no insurrection, or threat to public safety that necessitates military intervention in Portland.”A Pentagon memorandum dated Sunday and signed by the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, obtained by the Washington Post, said: “200 members of the Oregon National Guard will be called into Federal service effective immediately for a period of 60 days.”Trump’s action, in asserting federal control of the state’s national guard troops, is clearly “unlawful”, Oregon’s attorney general, Dan Rayfield, said, given that it was not taken in response to a foreign invasion or mass anarchy, but one small protest by dozens of activists outside a single Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Portland.“Let’s be clear, local law enforcement has this under control,” Kotek, said. “We have free speech demonstrations that are happening near one federal facility. Portland police is actively engaged in managing those, with the federal folks a the facility, and when people cross the line, there’s unlawful activity, people are being held accountable.”The state’s lawsuit notes that the president’s false claims about the Ice facility being “under siege”, and life for Portland resident being “like living in Hell”, appear to be based on a single Fox News report broadcast earlier this month, which mixed social media video from a conservative journalist of the current protest with video of much larger protests in 2020, in another part of the city.“The problem is the president is using social media to inform his views,” the attorney general said, either because he was trying to mislead the public intentionally, or is “relying on social media gossip” about the actual conditions in a US city.Kotek added that she had tried to inform Trump, during a phone conversation on Saturday, that he had been badly misled about current conditions in Portland, which is once again a vibrant and peaceful city a half-decade on from the pandemic-era racial justice protests.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“What I said to the president is: ‘I don’t understand what information you have.’ When he says to me that the federal courthouse is under attack, that is absolutely not true,” Kotek said. Video featured in the recent Fox News report on Portland did show images of a 2020 protest outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland that were wrongly described as recorded during the current anti-Ice protest.“Some demonstrations happening at one federal facility, that are being managed on a regular basis by local law enforcement, if that is the only issue he’s brining up, he has been given bad information,” Kotek said.“We cannot be looking at footage from 2020 and assume that that is the case today in Portland.” More

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      Portland residents scoff at Trump threat to send military: ‘This is not a war zone’

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      A visit to downtown Portland, Oregon, on Saturday, hours after Donald Trump falsely declared the city “war ravaged” to justify the deployment of federal troops, made it plain the US president’s impression of the city, apparently shaped by misleading conservative media reports, is entirely divorced from reality.There were just four protesters outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in an outlying residential neighborhood that the president had claimed was “under siege” by antifascists and “other domestic terrorists”. Jack Dickinson, 26, wore a chicken costume draped in an American flag and held a sign that read “Portland Will Outlive Him”. Passing motorists honked in appreciation.Dickinson, who is from Portland and has helped organize the small but persistent protest at that location, which is going on three months, said he was not surprised to see Trump focus his attention on the city. But he called the president’s threat to have soldiers use “full force” against the protesters, whose numbers occasionally swell into the dozens, unwarranted.“There’s no justification, no reason for the national guard or military to be using ‘full force’ on people,” Dickinson said, “but they have this narrative about Portland that’s been helped by selectively edited videos to set themselves up for a crackdown.”The Ice field office, which the city of Portland recently accused the agency of illegally using for detentions, is also attractive to protesters because it sits directly next to a Tesla dealership. Another protester held up a sign that read “Tesla Funds Fascism/Stop Buying Teslas”.A third protester, a young man who goes by the nickname Burrito, said that he was “protesting them wrongfully kidnapping random individuals based on their skin color”.He also rejected the president’s characterization of the city and of the anti-Ice protesters. “This is not a war zone and it’s disgusting the way that he talks about us,” he said.The activist said that the point of the protests was to frustrate and wear out the federal agents, who, he said, have been responsible for any violence that has taken place: “As the day progresses, we get more numbers, they start to show more force and our people come out. It’s just a matter of how they escalate things, because they are the escalators, not like the one that Trump took that doesn’t work.”The number of protesters was vastly smaller than the number of people in nearby coffee shops and restaurants, where Portlanders went about their usual weekend business, joking about life during wartime.The city’s downtown blocks, which were the scene of mass protests in 2020, first against racist policing and then against Trump’s deployment of federal agents to guard a courthouse, were similarly placid.View image in fullscreenThe only person on the sidewalk outside the federal courthouse was a street sweeper, wearing a neon-green vest with the words “Clean & Safe” on the back. The fence that surrounded the building five years ago had long since been removed, as had the plywood boards that covered the windows of the adjacent police headquarters, where thousands of racial justice protesters rallied after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.There was also no sign of activity at the nearby Edith Green federal building, with its distinctive facade clad in vegetated screens, one day after a local TV reporter recorded the arrival of a convoy that included masked federal agents in an armored homeland security truck.By contrast, the nearby Portland farmers’ market was packed with residents and tourists buying produce and eating acaí bowls from a thriving local business started by a yoga and meditation teacher.On social media, Portlanders continued to mock Trump’s false claims about the city as they have for weeks, by posting images of themselves enjoying life in the city with audio of the president saying, earlier this month, that it is “like living in Hell”. More