Report From Portland

Trump is deliberately igniting not quelling civil disorder

PORTLAND ICE HQ SATURDAY

September 28, 2025

By Marc Cooper

I live a few feet from Portland. I’m in Vancouver, Washington and the only thing that separates me from the Red Capital of Terrorist Antifa is about a half mile stretch of the Columbia River so I’m in Portland a lot. Over one bridge and in downtown in 13 minutes.

Let me cut right to to the point and say Trump is lying his ass off about the City of Roses. It’s not war-torn. There is nothing of any real significance going on and he’s just making it up as he goes. It needs no troops. No detachment of DHS goons. He needs to keep the fug out of here.

I was there a few days ago on a lovely sunny day. I was in downtown, the supposed epicenter of whatever Trump is lying about. I went there to get a couple of vaccinations, including my latest pro-Autism booster and I even bought some Tylenol in case the booster doesn’t take. My wife and daughter went to the movies and brunch there yesterday and saw no detachments of the Red Guard.

There’s no question whatsoever that Portland was a difficult place to be in FIVE YEARS AGO.

Not today. The spat of BLM marches in the hot summer of 2020 were large, confrontational and while 95% of the protesters were peaceful, there was a small contingent of black-clad self-proclaimed anarchists (the Black Bloc who are all white ) who spent night after night for weeks if not not months congregating downtown, breaking windows, tossing rocks and occasional molotovs at the Federal Building and pissing off just about everybody else in Portland. Enough so that in local elections a couple of years ago an actual Republican got elected to the city council. That’s big news in Portland.

As I said, the major ruckus was in 2020. A few square blocks in downtown were trashed. Retailers boarded up their smashed windows. People avoided going downtown because of the nightly clashes. The media swept in like vultures with a narrow focus lens and created the impression that the entire city had been destroyed. And be advised that even at its height, the deluded Black Bloc that were staging the nightly demos were maybe 100-150 people, no more.

Portland today is a city on the rise. The stores and businesses downtown have re-opened and re-decorated. There has not been any outbreak of serial vandalism. The city thrives on great restaurants and food cart hubs and music joints. Portland embraces and promotes its self-titled case of being Weird. They’re proud of it as Portland is one of the few metro areas left in the U.S. that actually has a palpable and engaging personality. It’s home to the best and biggest book store in America, Powells. Its streets are lined with cozy craftsman homes. It has some of the most beautiful parks in the PNW.

Excuse the cliche, but it is not just weird, it’s kinda groovy. Good vibes.

When Trump invaded L.A. in the beginning of summer, anti-ICE demos started popping up in Portland because ICE actually has an office there. So there have been a spate of anti-ICE demos in front of the HQ but most have not drawn more than a hundred people or so. When the ICE goons come out to disperse the small crowds, they use pepper and tear gas and quite brutal takedowns of the protesters which are well documented.

This video from Oregon Live gives a good idea of the minor scope of the current clashes as well as the violent response of the ICE thugs.

But over the course of the summer, there’s been maybe 40 arrests in total and we are talking about an area of two blocks. In the last month, those protests have become more frequent, still small, but sometimes noisy (fireworks). Even during the big No Kings Day demos that brought out many thousands in Portland, that huge crowd marched in front of the ICE offices but there were no incidents and everything was peaceful.

Since Trump announced Portland as a target, the pro-fascist media like Fux News and others have run new footage of this summer’s small clashes intermixed with footage of the much more violent moments from 2020 without alerting the viewers to the deception.

So why is Trump sending in the Feds when the Governor of Oregon and Mayor of Portland have told him not to? Oregon even went to court this weekend to sue the government to not intervene.

Don’t ask me what’s in the head of the Red Mad Hatter, even he doesn’t know. He’s too damn addled. But the dispatch of troops and Federal thugs plays well for Trump...or at least for his brain-dead base of bigots and dummies.

It is another distraction from all of his fuck-ups, like not doing anything to prevent a government shutdown in two more days; it further normalizes military control of major cities; it displaces the outrageous indictment of James Comey and the death of the DOJ. It pumps up the phantom enemy of “antifa” and “illegals” and the new and chilling use of the word “domestic terrorists” to describe ALL who protest and dissent. And if you are a TV zombie living out in the Great Flyover, it’s easy to hate Portland without knowing a thing about it. Its portrayal by the Trumpers and the tag-along media makes it sound like Berkeley in 1968 on steroids, or worse, and its just a damn lie.

There’s another reason why Trump is picking on Portland. Recently the city gave notice to ICE that its local office is in violation of the land use permit it has because it is NOT authorized to be used as a jail and yet there have been more than two dozen instances in the last year when people were held inside for more than 12 hours, if not overnight.

I’m writing this at 6 pm PDT Sunday and the there is already a beefed up detachment of Ice Barbie’s thugs visibly present since early this morning. There was also a larger than usual demo immediately this morning in front of the ICE offices. Of course.

You can be sure that this invasion, if it comes off, will be seen many Portlanders as an intentional provocation by a mentally ill president who is seeking confrontation. And he will find it in Portland for sure. Be prepared for screaming headlines and bloody TV footage because I can guarantee you there is going to be robust resistance from many more than 100 dingleberries in the Black Bloc. You can counsel people all you want to not take the bait but given our current atmosphere, very few are going to listen. This will become a self-fulfilling prophecy for our dictatorial regime. It is both tragic and infuriating. +++