Trump Plans to Attack Portland, Again - The Monday AM Quickie 9/29/25

By Whitney Curry Wimbish — Sep 29, 2025

NYC Mayor Eric Adams abandoned his re-election campaign yesterday, a fact I learned at a cafe yesterday when a guy celebrated by passing around stickers of a rat in a suit that said “Eric Ratams for mayor.” - Whitney

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THE BIG NEWS

Trump Plans to Attack Portland, Again

Trump said on social media Saturday that he was “authorizing Full Force, if necessary” to handle “domestic terrorists” in Portland, Oregon, according to the AP, The Oregonian, and Willamette Week. He wrote that he was directing Peter Brian Hegseth, the former Fox News employee who is running the Department of Defense, to “provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland,” which is necessary because his immigration black sites are supposedly “under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”

All of that is a lie, just as it was during Trump’s first administration, when he said Portland needed to be repeatedly abused for protesting the murder of George Floyd in 2020. A group of about 100 protesters gathered outside the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility Saturday night and “the only physically aggressive action came from federal agents, who emerged from the ICE building, arrested one person and deployed pepper-ball projectiles at others,” The Oregonian reported.

On Sunday, a lawsuit that Oregon and the City of Portland filed against Trump included details of the deployment; it attached as an exhibit a memo from Hegseth calling up 200 members of Oregon’s National Guard for a deployment of 60 days. Another exhibit shows that the Department of Homeland Security asked Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek to voluntarily deploy the troops under state control and threatened to federalize them if she didn’t.

In addition to suing him, Kotek on Sunday also joined other elected officials, plus several labor unions and advocacy groups, to tell Trump not to deploy federal troops, stop “interfering with local solutions that are producing positive results,” and “recognize Portland’s progress rather than perpetuating outdated narratives.” The group noted in their open letter that crime data shows Portland has achieved the largest homicide reduction of all major US cities, with a 51 percent decrease in the first half of the year. Gun violence is likewise down, they wrote, 30 percent lower than last year and almost 60 percent lower than in 2022. The group called out Trump’s deployment of federal agents in his first term, saying it “was counterproductive and compounded the harm to Portland.”

MORE STORIES TO WATCH

Hegseth’s Big Meeting Now Includes Trump Speech

What does former Fox News employee Peter Brian Hegseth, who is running the Defense Department, want to talk about with the top military officials he summoned to a meeting tomorrow? It sounded like it would be a lecture about warrior mindset and a reminder to tuck in your shirt or something. But Trump told NBC News yesterday that now he’s going to attend and address the group, too. “It’s really just a very nice meeting talking about how well we’re doing militarily, talking about being in great shape, talking about a lot of good, positive things. It’s just a good message,” he said. “We have some great people coming in and it’s just an ‘esprit de corps.’ You know the expression ‘esprit de corps’? That’s all it’s about. We’re talking about what we’re doing, what they’re doing, and how we’re doing.” Last week, Trump told reporters at the White House that he liked Hegseth’s plan to demand military leaders from around the world leave their posts, including from combat zones. “I know, I love it, I mean I think it’s great,” Trump said. “Let him be friendly with the generals and admirals from all over the world,” he added. “You act like this is a bad thing. Isn’t it nice that people are coming from all over the world to be with us?”

Israel Finds Yet Another Way to Torment Gazans, Extend Genocide

The US-backed Israeli military took over Gazan residents’ mobile phones on Friday to force them to watch live as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lied to the UN and said he isn’t committing a genocide, TNR reported. Netanyahu “appealed” to Gazans, saying that they could end the war themselves if they returned the hostages. He did not mention that Israel has repeatedly rejected ceasefire proposals to do just that. He also said “Israel must finish the job,” and got mad about Britain, Canada and France recognizing Palestine as an independent state. Netanyahu spoke mostly to an empty room because 100 delegates from 50 countries walked out in protest. “Broadcasting Netanyahu’s speech over loudspeakers over tanks and military vehicles in Gaza reflects his sadism,” Hamas official Taher al-Nunu said in a statement, The Washington Post reported.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas gave his speech remotely because UN members voted 145 to 5 to let him do so after the US revoked his visa and barred more than 80 Palestinians from entering the country. “What Israel is carrying out is not merely an aggression. It is a war crime and a crime against humanity that is both documented and monitored, and it will be recorded in history books and the pages of international conscience as one of the most horrific chapters of humanitarian tragedy in the 20th and 21st centuries,” Abbas said.

QUICKEST QUICKIES

ICE Arrests Former Olympic Athlete Who Now Leads Iowa’s Largest School District Immigration officials said Superintendent Dr. Ian Roberts has been working in the country illegally, though all the documentation Des Moines Public Schools has shows otherwise. Via CNN and the Des Moines Register.
Senate Dems Meeting Today With Trump Over Government Funding “Asked Sunday if he would accept a government funding deal that doesn’t include an extension of the ACA subsidies, [Senate Minority Leader Charles] Schumer demurred saying that Democrats ‘need a real negotiation.’” via Politico.
Doctors Reporting More Cases of Severe Pediatric Brain Inflammation Caused by Flu Acute necrotizing encephalopathy and other flu-related encephalopathies are increasing, cases of flu overall are up, and vaccination rates are down. The US last year counted 280 pediatric flu deaths, the deadliest year ever outside of the 2009-10 H1N1 pandemic. via NBC News.
USDA Recalling 58 Million Pounds of Corndogs They’re recalling meat on sticks across the country after several people complained they had found splinters of wood in the food and in five cases sustained injuries. via AP and the USDA.

SOME NUMBER

100,000

That’s how many federal workers are formally resigning tomorrow. It will be the largest mass resignation in US history; workers said they had no choice but to leave after months of Trump’s “fear and intimidation.”

“Federal workers stay for the mission. When that mission is taken away, when they’re scapegoated, when their job security is uncertain, and when their tiny semblance of work-life balance is stripped away, they leave,” a longtime employee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency told the Guardian. “That’s why I left.”

ON THE SHOW TODAY

9/29: Today’s guest is Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It.

DON'T MISS MR CLIPS‌

Dr. Mo Returns From Gaza | Mohamed Mustafa | TMR

Massive respect to Dr. Mohamed Mustafa, who is calling for a coordinated humanitarian effort to save people in Gaza. Donate to help him build a mobile pediatric hospital here.

Dave Rubin's Disturbing ‘Spiderman’ Analogy

This clown brings up the threat of fictional rapists in a comic book movie while actual rapists are impersonating masked ICE agents to attack people in real life.

PARTING WORDS

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

-- Assata Shakur, the legendary Black political revolutionary and writer, who died last week at 78 in Havana, Cuba, where she had been living in exile after escaping from a New Jersey prison in 1979. An all-white jury had convicted her of murdering a state trooper, a crime she long maintained she did not commit, and she had been serving a life sentence. While in prison, she endured solitary confinement, a form of torture; after receiving political asylum in Cuba, the US government placed Shakur on the Most Wanted Terrorists list and the reward for her capture was doubled to $2 million.

In 1998, she wrote an open letter to Pope John Paul II during his trip to Cuba: “The New Jersey State Police and other law enforcement officials say they want to see me brought to ‘justice.’ But I would like to know what they mean by ‘justice.’ Is torture justice? I was kept in solitary confinement for more than two years, mostly in men’s prisons. Is that justice? My lawyers were threatened with imprisonment and imprisoned. Is that justice? I was tried by an all-white jury, without even the pretext of impartiality, and then sentenced to life in prison plus 33 years. Is that justice? Let me emphasize that justice for me is not the issue I am addressing here; it is justice for my people that is at stake. When my people receive justice, I am sure that I will receive it, too.” Rest in peace, Assata Shakur.

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