In an era in which there are so many major national news stories (the Epstein files, a U.S. President interfering with elections, nuclear brinkmanship in the Middle East, kidnapping of a foreign leader, the systematic building of concentration camps — the list goes on and on), local stories that might otherwise garner national attention tend to get lost behind the gravity of those other stories.

There’s an interesting court case being considered in the U.S. District Court here in Portland, Oregon, that falls squarely into that category. It’s a class action suit entitled Dickinson (a.k.a. "the Portland Chicken") et al. v. Trump et al. It’s a suit in which the plaintiffs are asking the Court to rule that ICE’s use of teargas and other crowd control measures have been excessive and should therefore be forbidden. The plaintiffs have already received a temporary injunction, as well as an extension of that injunction, while the case is being considered.

That’s a quick overview of the legal case, to date. But there’s much more to this story.

• There are effects on the neighborhood in which the overzealous ICE response to peaceful protests has taken place.

• There are the potential nationwide implications of the outcome of the case.

• Most especially, there is an outstanding question about ICE and the Department of Homeland Security providing false or misleading evidence to the Federal District Court.

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The “Evidence”

Let’s start with the last of those points.

A social media video of what appeared to be an altercation between ICE agents and protesters was among the evidence that DHS submitted to the court. The narration talks about how “Antifa terrorists” attacked the ICE building in Portland. The video shows in rapid fire some fairly wild skirmishes, with ICE deploying teargas.

ICE has consistently argued that their tactics have been 100% within the law because they’ve only been responding to the violence that has been perpetrated by the protesters.

But the video evidence they provided to the court of the purported violence in Portland was of a skirmish that happened in Broadview, Illinois. Additionally, someone at ICE or DHS blurred or deleted the watermarks on this video to obscure its source.

When it was learned that had used this falsified evidence, the judge in the case — in an abundance of fairness — asked them if they could provide video evidence of violence that had actually taken place outside or around the ICE facility in Portland. In response, they claimed that it would have been too burdensome to review the video footage on their security cameras.

This is not the first time the feds have used fraudulent video tactics, but it may be the first time they’ve attempted to use fraudulent video as evidence in a court proceeding.

I am by no means a legal expert, but that sounds like a pretty shabby excuse, particularly when virtually all reports are that the protests have been peaceful. It has also been reported that the small handful of violent incidents have been handled by the Portland Police Bureau, which has characterized them as having been nothing out of the ordinary for any kind of protest.

If there had been actual widespread violence perpetrated by protestors, security camera video of such violence would likely have been immediately saved by ICE. Additionally, if such violence occurred, the omnipresent local news media would have footage that could be subpoenaed.

The Neighborhood

There’s some relevant backstory on the neighborhood where the ICE building is located. It’s in the middle of a mix residential/business neighborhood, with a narrow one-way road leading from the main road (Route 43) past the ICE facility into the surrounding neighborhood that includes apartment buildings, businesses, and lots of medical offices.

Neighbors have had to seal themselves in their apartments for days on end because of the teargas. Some residents with medical conditions such as breathing difficulties have been forced to move out of their homes and into hotels for their own well-being. Others have reportedly slept in their bathtubs, with wet towels under the door to prevent the teargas from seeping in. Babies and children have become sick from the fumes.

This firing of explosive teargas canisters isn’t a singular incident. The use of teargas and other “crowd control” weapons has gone on for months not one or days of this here and there. It’s now been happening, on and off, for months — since October 2025. At least one ICE projectile was fired through the window of a unit in a nearby apartment building, allowing teargas to enter the apartment unimpeded.

It’s worth reiterating that there are numerous medical offices in the South Waterfront neighborhood. Medical practitioners associated with Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) maintain offices in that neighborhood, and the aerial tram that transports patients and providers to and from the main OHSU campus has its terminal there. So if you have an appointment with your oncologist or your otolaryngologist (ENT physician), for example, you may be forced to pass through a cloud of teargas to get to your appointment.

The Implications

It’s hard to know whether the ruling in this case will be limited to this specific set of circumstances or whether there will be implications for ICE as a whole. No matter what the decision of the court is, it will be newsworthy. It’s hard to imagine that a reasonable judge could deny relief to the plaintiffs. But this is 2026 in the United States, so all bets are off.

We can also be relatively sure that Trump et al. will challenge the result if they are ruled against. Filing endless challenges has been their modus operandi for just about every one of the countless legal cases the administration has been involved in. The fact that they’ve often been caught blatantly lying about ICE activities (including, most especially, regarding the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti) doesn’t seem to have slowed them down in the least. But it certainly seems like providing false evidence in a federal court sinks to a whole new depth.

Will there be any consequences? Will the person or people who provided or ordered to be provided the fake video be taken to task in any way? The consequences for any average citizen who attempted to deceive a court in this way would be “hell to pay.” But because the defendants in this matter are the President and his collaborators, the legal consequences are more likely to be one of those “when hell freezes over” situations.

In a somewhat related matter, Rep. Dan Goldman (D - NY-10) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D - CA-14) recently introduced the ICE OUT (Oversight of Unchecked Tactics) Act, in Congress. This law, if passed, would “strip qualified immunity from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents who use excessive force and ensure that victims of excessive force can seek justice.”

It’s clear that the administration in general, and DHS and ICE in particular, want there to be no oversight and no limits to activities that ICE and CBP engage in. The ruling in this case may at last provide one such limitation.

The American Civil Liberties Union (specifically, the ACLU of Oregon) is representing the plaintiffs. The ACLU can always use your support as a member or a donor, either nationally or locally. The national offices are in New York and Washington, DC, but every state has its own organization, which you can find by doing an internet search for “ACLU” followed by your state name.

In November 1983, Rev. Jesse Jackson announced his candidacy for the U.S. Presidency. Shortly after that announcement, one day in early 1984 word spread around New York City that Jackson would be making an appearance in New York’s Greenwich Village on West 12th St. for a campaign event.

A crowd gathered in the street at the appointed time around a flatbed truck with a PA system and a few banners and campaign signs. It was a latter day facsimile of the whistle stop tour that Theodore Roosevelt had made popular many decades before — meeting the voters where they live. The location for Jackson’s appearance was only steps away from New York’s LGBT1 community center, and it was literally in the shadow of St. Vincent’s Hospital, one of the few medical facilities in New York…

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I don’t usually write about up-to-the-minute events here, choosing instead to give myself a bit of time to reflect and analyze before commenting. But today’s Congressional fiasco in the House Judiciary Committee was beyond any normal boundaries, so I’m choosing to break one of my own boundaries and post a few immediate thoughts.

Pam Bondi, the top law enforcement official in the nation, sat in front of a Congressional Committee with a literal book full of insults for her questioners. (This is not the first time she has done this, but merely a repeat tactic she used during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.) She repeatedly referred to that “burn book” multiple times because apparently she couldn’t even remember all the insults and accusations she had planned to hurl.

And hurl she did. She was combative, she was defensive, she was rude, and she …

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Even Donald Trump’s most vocal critics acknowledge his uncanny ability to manipulate the media. It’s hard to deny that particular skill. But it’s alarming when you evaluate his success not just at staying in front of the cameras to bolster his fragile ego but also his willingness to use the levers of power to bend the entire media landscape to his will. But that skill has already proven to be a serious threat to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

One of the most obvious recent breaches of the First Amendment is the arrest and malicious prosecution of Georgia Fort and Don Lemon, independent journalists who documented a protest in Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. The protest was newsworthy mostly because of the recent murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis but also because the pastor of said church works as an ICE agent.

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For more than a decade, many of us have written and spoken about the complete lack of courage of Republican politicians. We’ve accounted the hypocrisies, we’ve tallied the countless lies, we’ve pointed out their abject immorality.

In so doing, there has always been at least some thought that there might be some redemption of the party. Liberal and progressive commentators have often provided constructive criticism as to how the GOP might get itself back on track as a viable political party. They have maintained that the two-party system has, in its own way, functioned by creating ballast so that fringe positions espoused by one party or the other would not overtake the mainstream.

That theoretical redemption, however, has been entirely dependent on one condition: holding their party’s leader accountable for his crimes and misdemeanors, both charged…

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Since her murder at the hands of ICE last week, decent people in the United States have been grieving the loss of Renee Nicole Good. Decent people have not been demonizing her or spreading lies about her or or blaming her for her own death. Decent people have been mourning her loss as if they knew her because, in a sense, they have known her. She was a mom who kept stuffed animals in her car to keep her kiddo occupied. She was a woman trying to make a life with her family in a city that was relatively new to her. She was relatable.

One thing that distinguished Good’s treatment by ICE from many others who have been the targets of ICE agents’ violence is that Good’s murder was captured on video from multiple angles. ICE has been as opaque and secretive in their statistics as they have been public and proud in their cruelty. As a result, there isn…

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The conventional wisdom is that a picture is worth a thousand words. This picture, though, is worth a thousand jaw drops.

It’s the flimsy makeshift war room that someone at Mar-a-Lago thought would be a fitting facility from which to initiate an international military invasion. Remember that military invasion of Venezuela that happened before they invaded Minnesota and before they threatened invading Iran and Denmark and Greenland and probably a few other sovereign nations?

(Of course, you may have been distracted by the ICE officer shooting a 37-year-old mother in the face, or by the subsequent spin by DHS, or perhaps by the resignation of civil rights attorneys and prosecutors in protest to the government’s determination to investigate the victim rather than the murderer, or maybe by the most recent malicious prosecution by the Trump/Bondi Depart…

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At first, I thought it best to let the dust settle before posting anything that had even a whiff of optimism. But the more I think about it, we could all use a dose of optimism right now. The current dust might settle, but in this administration, there will always be more dust. So here’s the post I originally intended — with a few updates for timeliness.

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Long before Donald Trump ever entered politics, lying was always his primary skill. Between his lies and an inner circle who were willing to prop him up, Trump has never fully faced the consequences of his behavior and his crimes.

But in recent weeks, Trump has been starting to show desperation. The lies he’s telling are less and less plausible, and he seems exasperated that fewer and fewer people are believing those implausible lies.

I sometimes wonder if he is intentionally doubling down on his lies out of habit or if, instead, he has been so protected from the truth by his lack of contact with reality that he has actually come to believe what he is saying. He has surrounded himself, as usual, with sycophants who tell him and the public only what he wants to hear.

Whether it’s the ever-grinning visage of Kevin Hassett or the hyper-aggressive ra…

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A year ago, the election had just happened. The incredulity that progressives felt at America voting for Donald Trump — now a convicted felon — as President for the second time had only begun to sink in.

I had been musing about what my grandparents — old-school Republicans — would have thought about the election and the state of the country generally. They would not have been able to imagine our reality then and, one year out, the state of our nation and of their political party would be even more unfathomable.

Here’s that post, in its entirety.

I am very fortunate to have had wonderful grandparents.

My grandfather was born in 1893. He was a WWI flyer, a Georgia Tech graduate, an electrical engineer, an avid reader (including sitting for what seemed like hours at a time reading the dictionary). He obsessively followed the hourly stock market reports on WOR radio out of New York City. He was a quiet man who valued his southern roots but who never felt a need to display a Confederate flag.

He was a Republican.

My grandmother was born in 1897. She graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1919. She was a suffragette, and she remained active in the League of Women Voters for her entire life. Family lore has it that the only job she ever had was during World War II, when she worked for a time in a factory that assembled fuses for bombs. Details are somewhat sparse. She recycled before there was a word for recycling. She, too, was an avid reader. She was a mother and grandmother.

She was a Republican.

They were members of the Audubon Society and they loved feeding and watching the birds that came to their feeders and suet cages. They regularly played bridge with their friends. They were Scrabble players and did crossword puzzles and, in so doing, instilled in me a love of words and language. They paid attention to current events via their local newspaper, the evening newscast, U.S. News and World Report, and the Wall Street Journal.

I loved them both dearly. They were lovely, gentle, kind, and compassionate people. Did I mention they were Republicans? Why, yes. Yes, I believe I did.

I remember them struggling to make sense of the Vietnam War — a war that our government was telling them was the right thing to do but that young people (myself included) were protesting in ways that the nation had never witnessed before. They grappled with the issue.

While I understood Woodstock only as “three days of peace and love and music,” they saw only monumental traffic jams and tens of thousands of wet, muddy young people. The reality, of course, was somewhere in between those two extremes or, perhaps more accurately, the sum of those two extremes.

When there was an issue that perplexed them, they didn’t rush to judgment. They stepped back and tried to learn about it in a measured way.

Both my grandparents died in the mid-1970s at a time when I was too young (or at least not adult enough) to have adult conversations with them. But, from time to time, I imagine sharing with them the events of my own life and discussing with them the affairs of the day.

Those imaginary conversations often have consisted of discussions of things that exist now that didn’t exist when they were alive — microwave ovens, bullet trains, Starbucks, bread machines, flat screen televisions, and such. I remember the look of awe on my grandmother’s face the first time she listened to my transistor radio using its earphone, and I imagine equivalent looks of wonder for these newfangled everyday objects.

Sometimes when I pick up my smartphone, I ponder what my grandfather — the electrical engineer who worked in telecommunications — would think of the ability to carry around all this technology in one’s pocket. I’m certain he would put his engineer’s mind to work and learn all about it.

But lately, I’ve been trying to imagine how I would explain to them what has happened to their beloved Republican Party. As open-minded as they were, as much as they sought to understand things, I cannot fathom them comprehending how their party of Teddy Roosevelt and Abe Lincoln and Dwight D. Eisenhower has morphed into this cult that unabashedly worships a convicted criminal — a lifelong con artist who somehow has risen to the highest office in the land, not once but twice.

Both my grandparents lived long enough to witness Richard Nixon’s demise, and they were disturbed and ashamed — not just because he was forced to leave office due to the threat of impeachment but also because they acknowledged what he did was morally, ethically, and legally wrong.

So how could they possibly understand the allure of Donald Trump? They were in their last years when Trump was charged with housing discrimination in 1973. That probably would have been their only exposure to him, if indeed they were aware of him at all. Those of us who are living through these terrible years can’t begin to explain his criminality coupled with his utter lack of a conscience, though we don’t stop trying.

It’s a difficult enough endeavor to explain his first term in office.

“Yeah, there’s this guy in your party who had no relevant experience, whose sole qualification was a sketchy real estate career in New York City, who leveraged his personal grievances and racism in his attempt to achieve elected office. Not only that, but there were recordings of him bragging about his sexual conquests. Oh, yeah. Did I tell you he won?”

The first term would be shocking enough to people of my grandparents’ generation — Republicans and Democrats alike. The fact that Donald Trump achieved a second term would be outside the realm of comprehension.

“Yeah, remember that Trump guy I was telling you about? He was impeached. Yes, twice, as a matter of fact — once for trying to extort one of our allies for personal political gain and once for an insurrection that he fomented. Yeah, I guess I forgot to tell you that part. He didn’t accept the results of the election that he lost, so he incited a violent mob to stop the peaceful transfer of power. He put the life of his own vice president at risk. But he also instilled enough fear of retribution in the members of his own party so that they didn’t convict him in the Senate. Yeah. He was re-elected.”

I cannot even imagine what my grandparents’ reaction would be.

There’s a logical chain of events between the first telephone and the iPhone. I’m pretty certain I could help them make sense of that evolution. But the chain of events between the Republican Party of my grandparents’ time and the Republican Party of today is not so obvious.

But it’s there. It’s there in the gradually increasing emphasis on attaining and retaining power within the party. It’s there in the subcutaneous racism that found a welcome home in the GOP as part of the Republicans’ southern strategy. It’s there in the “greed is good” mindset of the 1980s and in the infusion of massive amounts of cash into our politics, thanks in part to the Citizens United decision.

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I am now almost as old as my grandparents were when they died. Overall, I’ve had a pretty damn fortunate life, but one that has also had some significant struggles and challenges. I don’t think anyone reaches their seventies without struggles and challenges.

I don’t have children or grandchildren. I sometimes think I was born gay because of my complete lack of affinity for child-rearing. But I wonder if the kids who are the age of my non-existent grandchildren will reflect, in their senior years, on the Trump era as a dark and shameful anomaly in the nation’s history or if instead Trump’s personal and political behavior will have become so normalized that he and this time we’re in will not stand out.

I hope it’s the former, but I’m certain I will never know.

Democrats — including a Democratic Socialist — ran the table in Tuesday’s election. Progressives and Democrats (and really anyone who truly cares about democracy itself) can breathe a sigh of relief. It’s been a long time since Democrats and progressives have had reason to celebrate.

The sigh of relief, though, is a temporary one because, in truth, the election didn’t — and couldn’t — instantly solve any of the issues that we are facing as a nation. Instead, the election results were a primarily a barometer about the political mood of the nation.

We’ve recently seen multiple polls in which Trump’s behavior, Trump’s policies (such as they are), and Trump himself are all in negative territory. Trump and the MAGA crowd scoffed at those polls, claiming they were “fake news.” (Seriously, Trumpists, aren’t you tired of that flimsy, worn out excuse?) …

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An old U.S. Army recruiting advertisement attempted to inspire recruits to “be all that you can be.” It encouraged enlistees with the following tag line: “We do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day.”

Our current administration merits a similar tag line: “We do more destruction in a single week than most people do in their lifetimes.”

Here’s a random sampling of what Trump and his sycophants “accomplished” just this past week:

• Trump posted an AI video of himself as a fighter pilot, literally shitting on Americans, in response to the millions of Americans who marched in the streets to protest his policies, his crimes, and — for some — his very existence. In precisely timed coordination with that, J.D. Vance posted his own AI video of Trump’s coronation as king, with his minions kneeling at his feet.

• Those videos were merely a precursor to the…

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We’ve had a few days since the second No Kings march and, if the size mood of the marches around the country are any indication, it won’t be the last.

Here in Portland, the spirit of the day was evident long before the march itself. The Max Trains (Portland’s light rail public transit) were full to the Max starting early in the day, transporting marchers downtown in anticipation of the rally and march.

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Kristi Noem, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and cosplay aficionado, made a visit this week to Portland, Oregon — a city that her boss has disparaged and mischaracterized for years. She was dispatched to prop up his most recent delusion — that Portland is a “war zone,” a “city on fire,” a “hell hole” — but she failed miserably.

The reason she failed is that there is no war and no war zone. There are no fires, except in some in the wood burning pizza ovens of certain restaurants. The most hellish thing about Portland these days is when the food co-op runs out of locally sourced chanterelles.

Social media has been full of photos taunting the so-called president with Portland’s natural beauty and glorious recent spell of weather. It’s not a difficult task. It’s a beautiful place with a long history of being laid back and progress…

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Larry Flynt was probably best known as the publisher of Hustler, a “girlie magazine” that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable content. Flynt was unapologetic for the content of his magazine and, if sales of his magazine were any indication, there was a huge market for what he was peddling. It made him a millionaire many times over.

But Larry Flynt is probably known most for becoming an unintentional First Amendment advocate. He found himself in court multiple times on obscenity charges. His First Amendment challenges culminated …

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For many years, Trump’s favorite excuse, when anyone took him to task about anything, was that it was a “witch hunt.” Rape charges? Witch hunt. Instigating an insurrection? Witch hunt. Anyone calling attention to one of his multiple failures as president? Witch hunt.

That’s clearly the lens (or at least one of the lenses) that Trump looks at life through. Someone is always on the hunt. Someone is always the predator and someone is always the prey. And if you’re not the predator, then you’re the prey.

It sure seems like he uses that mindset to turn himself into the ultimate predator. His most recent witch hunt is against the media. In reality, he’s been going after the media for years, but he’s been severely ratcheting up the rhetoric lately. He’s been using the power of his office to go after anyone he disagrees with or, more specifically, …

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Donald Trump loves to boast about how much work he does. Donald Trump’s children love to brag about how much work their father does. Donald Trump’s cabinet members love to suck up to Donald Trump by fawning over him for how much work he does — so much so, in fact, that their sycophancy is entirely indistinguishable from South Park’s satirical versions of themselves.

There’s certainly plenty of activity in the White House. But does Donald Trump really do so much work? It’s no coincidence that that activity, masquerading as work, has increased in both volume and visibility in the weeks since the Epstein scandal has re-emerged.

Trump is a master media manipulator, and he has been for many years. It’s one of his few actual skills. Manipulating the media is also his go-to move whenever there’s something he doesn’t want the American people to pay attention to. In his entire political life, there has never been anything he has wanted to distract from more than the Epstein files. The st…

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Never has the contrast between reality and Trump’s fantasy life been more vivid than it has been with Putin’s Alaska visit and his subsequent meeting with Zelenskyy and European leaders.

Virtually every reputable news organization (note that I used the word “reputable”) has been reporting that Putin dominated the meeting and Trump not only got nothing but also gave Putin legitimacy on the world stage.

For starters, they met on U.S. soil, on territory that was once Russian, land that Putin would love to get his expansionist hands on again. Second, despite Trump saying repeatedly prior to the summit he’d be very upset if no cease fire in Ukraine were agreed to, Putin not only didn’t agree to a cease fire but also received Trump’s buy-in that Ukrainian territory that Russian overtook during the war (and even some that they didn’t) would remain in Russia’s control.

After his visit to Alaska, Putin returned to Russia having attended only one of the two planned sessions. There was no need …

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