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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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      Nature, books and naked bike rides: Portlanders push back on Trump claims that city is ‘like living in hell’

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      In Portland, Oregon, a city Donald Trump claims to have seen “burning down to the ground” on his television, residents are pushing back on the US president’s false depiction of their tranquil city as a war zone.Trump, who refuses to accept firsthand accounts from Oregon’s governor and the Portland mayor that the widespread unrest he thinks he’s seen on television is not actually happening, has ordered the military in to the Pacific north-west city.Portland police made three arrests on Thursday night after fistfights broke out between demonstrators and a pro-Trump influencer from Washington DC at an Ice field office, and 200 national guard troops are expected to arrive in the coming days. But a visit to the Ice field on Thursday afternoon showed that, far from being “under siege” by militants, there were fewer than 10 protesters on the sidewalk, nearly outnumbered by journalists.Now residents, frustrated with the president’s false claims that Portland is “war ravaged”, are showing a different side of their city from the one depicted by Trump and Fox News.A raft of Instagram and TikTok videos from Portlanders are poking holes in Trump’s claim that life in their city is “like living in hell”, showcasing verdant hiking trails, trees in rich fall colors and a thriving food scene. Plans are also being drawn up for the most Portland of all possible responses: an Emergency Naked Bike Ride against “the militarization of our city”.View image in fullscreenOn a rainy Thursday in the city, the kitchen at Kann, Portland’s award-winning Haitian restaurant, was busy preparing for dinner. Jokes about Trump’s war were shared at Coava, a cafe with a single-origin coffee menu that changes seasonally which is popular with Japanese tourists. Business was brisk at Powell’s Books, the downtown icon which inspired the new protest slogan: “Portland isn’t a war zone; it’s a bookstore with a city around it.”The parking lot was full at Providore Fine Foods, a culinary marketplace whose owner, Kaie Wellman, said she was concerned about how Trump’s “threats against our city” could be “devastating for local businesses” like hers, which worked so hard to survive the pandemic only to be hit first by Trump’s tariffs and now his “100% false” portrayal of a minor protest at the Ice field office in the city’s south waterfront district. “It’s really profoundly upsetting,” she said.Wellman, a fifth-generation Oregonian, is opening a bistro this month in the Portland Art Museum’s new Mark Rothko Pavilion, a $110m expansion that has taken a decade to complete. “It really is such a cornerstone for our community, for downtown Portland, to have such a significant new building,” she said. She describes her leap of faith in opening a new restaurant just blocks from where the 2020 protests for racial justice took place as “a love letter to Portland and what a vibrant community we are.“One of the main reasons that we’re opening up this cafe downtown, and do what we do here in town, is because of our deep love for the state and for the city. And to see it portrayed anything less than what it is, you know, is just so frustrating. It’s a place that people want to come and live and raise their families. And it’s kind of unmatched in beauty,” Wellman said.View image in fullscreen“Yes, we’ve had issues here, but we’ve had the same issues that basically every other city around this world has had. And we’re coming at these issues from a thoughtful place and not trying to sweep them away. But the issue that’s being portrayed right now does not exist in this town.”Asked about Trump’s claims of lawlessness, Wellman said it was “not the case at all”. “And I am in the south waterfront at least two to three times a week because my 92-year-old mother lives in the south waterfront,” she added. “So I can tell you firsthand what’s been happening down there. And what I have seen, at the quote-unquote very worst, it’s still been peaceful protests. Maybe there’s been some strong words thrown around.”“I would say right now, if there is any disturbance that’s been going on, it’s Black Hawk helicopters that are circling around a neighborhood that is filled with many retirees and older people … causing all of them fear and a lack of sleep,” she added.View image in fullscreenBack at the Ice field office protest, Amanda Cochran, a US army veteran, was holding a homemade sign that read “Vets Against Militarization” on one side, and “Immigrants Are Not the Enemy’ on the other. She wore a tour shirt for the Canadian rock band Three Days Grace with the lyrics “Let’s start a riot.”“I’m here because I’m really fed up with the fact that Trump is talking about using the military to go into cities and to train the forces,” she said.“I served in the US army for six years and this is my first time ever protesting,” she said. “I just felt really strongly that if we don’t stand up and say something then this could easily become a militarized country and the citizens will be under the control of the military, and I don’t think that that is OK, and that’s not what I fought for.“Us veterans, we have the privilege of being able to express our opinions because we’re out, and hopefully we can kind of give those soldiers that don’t want to be there a voice. If enough of us show up, maybe Trump will back off,” she added.Across the street, the Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, who has been reporting from inside the facility, prepared for a live hit out front, accompanied by three men with covered faces who appeared to be private security guards.Just to their left, a young protest organizer, Jack Dickinson, who achieved a measure of viral fame this week for the chicken costume he wears to mock Trump, was being interviewed for the local news.Why a chicken? One of the advantages of the costume, Dickinson explained, is that “it disarms people.“We’re dealing with a real influx of rightwing agitators right now,” he continued. “It becomes difficult for them to interact in certain ways, I think, when there’s the chicken suit, but not just the chicken suit, it’s then somebody who tries to have a conversation with them about the soybean situation that we’re facing right now,” referring to the collapse in crop prices for US farmers due to Trump’s trade war with China.View image in fullscreen“We do not want this to escalate,” he said, agreeing with local officials who suggest that Trump wants to provoke a response from the protesters.“There is definitely a desire for a response. We saw this most clearly on Sunday night because for that protest, we had 30 people that were down here associated with rightwing Twitter accounts or rightwing YouTube channels,” Dickinson said. “There is a clear desire to get somebody reacting in a way that they can frame as a justification for what they are doing. And Portland just isn’t giving them what they want.” 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

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      Donald Trump says he is deploying troops to Portland, Oregon

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      Donald Trump said on Saturday he is deploying troops to Portland, Oregon, “authorizing Full Force, if necessary”, ignoring pleas from local officials and the state’s congressional delegation, who suggested that the president was misinformed or lying about the nature and scale of a single, small protest outside one federal immigration enforcement office.Trump made the announcement on social media, using references to antifascists and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). He claimed that the deployment was necessary “to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists”.Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, rejected the president’s characterization. “There is no national security threat in Portland. Our communities are safe and calm,” she wrote on social media. “My office is reaching out to the White House and Homeland Security for more information. We have been provided no information on the reason or purpose of any military mission.”A visit by the Guardian to downtown Portland on Saturday morning confirmed that the city is placid, the farmers’ market was packed and the protest against immigration enforcement in an outlying residential neighborhood remained small. There were just four protesters on the sidewalk near the Ice field office Trump claimed was “under siege”. One, wearing a chicken costume and draped in an American flag, held up a sign that read: “Portland Will Outlive Him.” Passing motorists honked in appreciation.The White House did not provide details in connection with Trump’s announcement, including a timeline for the deployment or what troops would be involved.Portland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, said at a hastily assembled news conference on Friday night that the city had become aware of “a sudden influx of federal agents in our city. We did not ask for them to come. They are here without clear precedent or purpose.”“The President has sent agents here to create chaos and riots in Portland, to induce a reaction, to induce protests, to induce conflicts. His goal is to make Portland look like what he’s been describing it as,” Oregon’s junior senator, Jeff Merkley said. “He wants to induce a violent exchange. Let us not grant him that wish. Let us be the force of orderly, peaceful protest.”The senator also drew attention to video evidence from the local newspaper, the Oregonian, which showed federal agents using force against a small number of protesters outside the Ice facility, who remained peaceful.Although a spokesperson for the Oregon national guard told the Oregonian that no official request for troops had been made yet, convoys of dozens of federal agents, in marked and unmarked SUVs, were seen on Friday entering a federal building downtown and an Ice field office in a residential neighborhood that has been the scene of regular protests by dozens of protesters.“The President of the United States is directing his self-proclaimed ‘Secretary of War’ to unleash militarized federal forces in an American city he disagrees with,” Representative Maxine Dexter wrote in a social media statement on Saturday, referring in part to the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth. “This is an egregious abuse of power and a betrayal of our most basic American values. Authoritarians rely on fear to divide us. Portland will not give them that.”Both of Oregon’s US senators and three of its House representatives had in recent days strongly rejected Trump’s claims about mass anarchy in the city as a fiction intended to justify the unnecessary deployment of federal troops as part of an “authoritarian” crackdown.Ron Wyden, the state’s senior Democratic senator, told reporters on Friday: “It’s important to recognize that the president’s argument is a fable – it does not resemble the truth.”“If he watches a TV show in the morning and he see Portland mentioned, he says it’s a terrible place,” Wyden added.During an Oval Office event on Thursday to announce that the administration intends to investigate and disrupt what it claims is “organized political violence” funded by leftwing groups, Trump made several wild claims about Portland, which was a center of racial justice protests in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. But life has long since returned to normal, and barriers around the federal courthouse and police headquarters downtown have been removed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe president, however, apparently deceived by video of a handful of protesters gathered outside the Ice facility in a south-west Portland neighborhood broadcast by conservative outlets, insisted that the city has been in non-stop “anarchy” since 2020 and is barely livable.“Portland is, I don’t know how anybody lives there, it’s amazing. But it’s anarchy out there,” Trump said. The president then claimed, falsely, that most of the city’s retail stores had closed, due to arson attacks, and “the few shops that are open” were covered in plywood.Describing the small number of protesters who have gathered outside an Ice facility that has been illegally used for detentions in a residential neighborhood, Trump claimed, without evidence: “These are professional agitators, these are bad people and they’re paid a lot of money by rich people.“But we’re going to get out there and we’re gonna do a pretty big number on those people in Portland that are doing that.”Representative Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat, said on Friday: “This proclaimed ‘war on Antifa’ is completely a fallacy. Antifa is an ideology, it is not a group, and so we’re extremely concerned with what he’s going to try to do with that pronouncement.”“Donald Trump does not care about safety. If he cared about safety he would not have released 1,600 convicted insurrectionists into the streets. He cares about control and authoritarianism,” she added, referring to Trump’s clemency for those who carried out the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. “Portland does not need the military. We do not want them, we do not need them, we do not welcome them to come here under his orders.”Trump, a Republican, has sent military troops to the Democratic-controlled cities of Los Angeles and Washington DC so far in his second presidency. He has discussed doing the same in Memphis and New Orleans, which are also Democratic strongholds. More

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      Portland’s first ranked-choice vote elects progressive outsider as mayor

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      In 2022 it appeared the political winds in Portland, Oregon, one of the US’s most progressive cities, were beginning to shift. Residents who had grown frustrated over the city’s approach to homelessness rejected the incumbent, Jo Ann Hardesty – the first Black woman to serve on the city council – in favor of the “law-and-order” Democrat Rene Gonzalez, who pledged to back an expanded police force and “clean up” Portland.But this month, as swaths of the US electorate moved to the right, the Pacific north-west city took a markedly different approach. Residents elected the most diverse city council in Portland history, opting for more progressives, and rejected Gonzalez as mayoral candidate. Instead, they chose Keith Wilson, a businessperson who has never before held office and has promised to end unsheltered homelessness in a year.Wilson had large leads over his competitors in the election, the first in which the city used ranked-choice voting and in the latest results was leading the second place candidate 60% to 40%.The most conservative candidates for mayor and the county board, who took hardline stances, lost, Richard Clucas, a political science professor at Portland State University, pointed out.“Both were defeated significantly because Portland remains a very progressive city despite what people may have heard elsewhere,” Clucas said.The results came as the city was in the midst of what officials have described as a “once-in-a-generation” change to its government system and major voting reforms. This month, for the first time ever, Portland used ranked-choice voting to elect a mayor and a larger, more representative city council. The new officials will have different roles as Portland moves from a commission form of government to one overseen by a city administrator.Voters approved the overhaul two years ago – the same year Gonzalez won – as the city of 630,000 people grappled with a declining downtown, rising homelessness, a fentanyl crisis, growing public drug use and a sluggish recovery from the pandemic. Voters appeared to take out their dissatisfaction with crime, homelessness and drug use on Hardesty, the most progressive member of city council, said Ben Gaskins, a political science professor Lewis & Clark College in Portland.Some have speculated the city was beginning to recoil from its progressive values, particularly after voters in the county ousted the progressive district attorney for a challenger endorsed by police groups. That came shortly after Oregon moved to reintroduce criminal penalties for the possession of hard drugs, in effect scrapping the state’s groundbreaking drug decriminalization law.Claims the city is turning away from progressivism are significantly overstated, Gaskins said – instead, the shifts indicate an electorate that is more focused on tactical concerns rather than ideological ones.Gonzalez was widely considered a frontrunner in this year’s mayoral race. Calling it a “make-or-break election”, the commissioner said that as mayor he would add hundreds of officers to city streets and stop “enabling the humanitarian crisis on our streets by ending the distribution of tents and drug kits”.Wilson, who serves as the chief executive of a trucking company and founded a non-profit to expand shelter capacity and ultimately end homelessness, made the issue the center of his campaign, pledging to reform the city’s approach to alleviating the crisis. He insisted the issue could be addressed with “care and compassion”, the Oregonian reported, and said he would increase the number of night-time walk-in emergency shelters available in churches and community centers.That approach appealed to city voters, Clucas said, over harsher remedies. “They don’t simply want a crackdown, arrests and other things; they want to find some way to compassionately address it.”At a debate in October, Wilson said he would give city leaders an F for their efforts to address homelessness, according to the Oregonian. “Letting people suffer and die on our streets is unacceptable … I believe that every person in Portland deserves a bed every night,” he said.The progressive Carmen Rubio, a city council member, was also a frontrunner in the race. But she lost endorsements after reporting from the Oregonian revealed that she had received about 150 parking and traffic violations since 2004, many of which she failed to pay for months and years, and that she had her license suspended multiple times.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGonzalez’s campaign was hurt by reporting from the Willamette Week that showed the “public safety champion” had also received seven speeding tickets between 1998 and 2013, and had his license suspended twice.Wilson was once considered a long-shot candidate, but he was probably bolstered by the city’s new ranked-choice voting system, experts said.His position as a businessperson coming from outside the political system allowed him to be a “compromise candidate”, Gaskins said. Wilson fit the gap of someone who is progressive but still represents a change to the status quo, he said.“I think the fact Keith Wilson was able to win shows Portland wants someone who is clearly on the left but who is focused on policy solutions and getting things done versus just being the most ideologically pure candidate in the race,” he said.“He is a candidate of this particular moment.”In an acceptance speech last week, Wilson pledged to build trust and take advantage of a “transformative opportunity”.“It’s time to end unsheltered homelessness and open drug use, and it’s time to restore public safety in Portland,” he said. “Voters aren’t interested in pointing fingers. They just want us to get things done.”Along with Wilson, residents also elected 12 city councillors, nearly half of whom are people of color, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported – a remarkable shift given that just seven years ago, only two people of color had ever been elected to city government. At least four of the new councillors identify as LGBTQ+, the outlet reported, and five received endorsements from the Democratic Socialists of America chapter in Portland. More

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      Anti-Trump protests erupt across US from New York City to Seattle

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      Protests against Donald Trump erupted in the US on Saturday as people on both coasts took to the streets in frustration about his re-election.Thousands of people in major cities including New York City and Seattle demonstrated against the former president and now president-elect amid his threats against reproductive rights and pledges to carry out mass deportations at the start of his upcoming presidency.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenIn New York City on Saturday, demonstrators from advocacy groups focused on workers’ rights and immigrant justice crowded outside Trump International Hotel and Tower on 5th Avenue holding signs that read: “We protect us” and “Mr President, how long must women wait for liberty?” Others held signs that read: “We won’t back down” while chanting: “Here we are and we’re not leaving!”Similar protests took place in Washington DC, where Women’s March participants demonstrated outside the Heritage Foundation, the rightwing thinktank behind Project 2025. Pictures posted on social media on Saturday showed demonstrators holding signs that read: “Well-behaved women don’t make history” and “You are never alone”. Demonstrators also chanted: “We believe that we will win!” and held other signs that read: “Where’s my liberty when I have no choice?”View image in fullscreenCrowds of demonstrators also gathered outside Seattle’s Space Needle on Saturday. “March and rally to protest Trump and the two-party war machine,” posters for the protests said, adding: “Build the people’s movement and fight war, repression and genocide!” Speaking to a crowd of demonstrators, some of whom dressed in raincoats while others wore keffiyehs in solidarity with Palestinians amid Israel’s deadly war on Gaza, one demonstrator said: “Any president that has come to power has also let workers down.”On Friday, protesters gathered outside city hall in Portland, Oregon, in a similar demonstration against Trump. Signs carried by demonstrators included messages that read: “Fight fascism” and “Turn fear into fight”.View image in fullscreen“We’re here because we’ve been fighting for years for health, housing and education. And whether it was Trump, or [Joe] Biden before this, we have not been getting it and we are wanting to push to actually get that realized,” Cody Urban, a chair for US chapter of the International League of People’s Struggle, said, KGW reported.Also on Friday, dozens of demonstrators in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, gathered in Point Start park to protest Trump’s election victory. People carried signs reading: “We are not going back” and “My body, my choice”.“We are afraid of what’s coming, but we are not going to back down,” Steve Capri, an organizer with Socialist Alternative, told WPXI TV. “Trump is an attack on all of us so we need to unite, we need to get organized, join movements, study and learn together.” More

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      Early ballots burned in suspected attacks in Washington and Oregon

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      Hundreds of early ballots cast for the US presidential election have been burned in two suspected attacks in Washington and Oregon, exacerbating tensions ahead of next Tuesday’s knife-edge contest.Police said Monday that the fires in the two states were believed to be connected and that a vehicle involved had been identified, according to the Associated Press.Firefighters went to the scene after smoke was reported coming from a ballot drop box in the city of Vancouver in Washington state at 6.30am on Monday, according to local media.KATU, a local television channel, reported capturing footage of responders releasing a pile of burning ballots to the grounds. The ballots continued to smolder after the flames had been doused.Hundreds of ballots were believed to have been inside when smoke was reported billowing from the box, which had last been emptied at 8am on Sunday. KATU reported that only a few of the ballots deposited there after that had been saved.The elections auditor for Clark county, the local authority administering the boxes, said voters who had cast their ballots into it after 11am could seek new voting documents at a link on the county’s election web page.“There is absolutely zero place in our democracy for political violence or interference against our fellow citizens, election workers, or voting infrastructure … Our right to vote needs to be protected under all circumstances. We can’t yield to intimidation, and we must continue to stand up against unpatriotic acts such as this one,” said local congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.She requested law enforcement officers be in place overnight at all ballot drop boxes in the county until election day, saying: “South-west Washington cannot risk a single vote being lost to arson and political violence.”The fire was reported after a similar incident in nearby Portland in Oregon, where police say an incendiary device was set off inside a ballot drop box close to a building hosting the Multnomah county elections division.Security staff extinguished the fire before police arrived. The device was deactivated and removed by the local bomb squad.The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned of ballot drop box destruction in a September memo obtained by Property of the People, a public records watchdog group. The agency said in an intelligence brief that election infrastructure will be seen as an “attractive target for some domestic violent extremists”, with drop boxes as a “soft target” because they are more accessible.Social media posters in forums frequented by extremists have shared ideas for attacked drop boxes, the agency said, including “road flares, fireworks, petroleum fuel, linseed oil and white phosphorus, cement or expanding foam, bleach or other chemicals, and farm machinery”. Other methods could include putting up fake signs to claim a drop box is out of order, putting up decoy drop boxes or putting “timed explosives” into drop boxes. They have also discussed ways to avoid law enforcement detection.“Damaged ballot drop boxes could temporarily decrease voting opportunities and accessibility and intimidate voters from casting votes if safety concerns arise in the vicinity of a targeted or damaged ballot drop box,” the DHS wrote in the intelligence brief. “Successful ballot drop box destruction could inspire others with related grievances to conduct similar actions.”The incidents came days after a US Postal Service mail box containing a small number of ballots was set on fire in Phoenix, Arizona, last Thursday.Police arrested a 35-year-old man who they said admitted to the crime while he was in custody. They also said he had told them his actions had not been politically motivated and he had committed the offense with the purpose of getting himself arrested.The Guardian has reported that far-right election denial groups supporting Donald Trump have been monitoring election drop boxes as part of their activity in the run-up to next week’s poll, when officials are bracing themselves for disruption and challenges to the vote tallies. More