2020 Redux

When local pols feed raw meet to the bear, they shouldn't be surprised when the bear bites back.

Breaking news: a brewing deees-aster in Minneapolis!

Trump—the fascist everyone loves to hate—seems intent on backpedaling on ICE’s involvement with the people of Minneapolis (or at least the folks who might strap on a Sig Sauer P320-9mm pistol to attend what might turn into a riot)…

Minneapolis, last we looked, was 1,730 miles away…but it’s lodged deep in the hearts of local politicians (faced with a city in trouble by every economic measure¹), who seemed eager to act as coroner, investigator, judge, and jury on far-away matters in that frozen town. Which they hadn’t actually, like…seen.

Despite the distance, public lamentations, statements, broadsides, and “Get the fuck outs” were flying like bats outta hell recently…

…which proves the old adage: Whenever something complicated happens, progressives will condense it into yelling points that just happen to coincide with their beliefs. “Beliefs” being different than facts that result from a thorough investigation, conducted under rules of evidence, after hearing from the various sides of a complicated situation, with penalties for telling porkies and a fair respect for the fragility of human memories in a world full of scurrilous videos and AI fakery.

Thus, the burp of the body politic was heard by the pols—and members of the media—and amplified in the name of creating even more intestinal eruptions…with not much regard for where it might end. Given this town’s history, hyperbole is to be expected. It worked with BLM, Floyd the Martyr, Covid terror, River to the Sea, No Kings…we were due for another run-up of the bloody flag. One thing you can say for Portlanders, they’ll strap on their marching shoes, rain or shine.

The ICEcapades were the answer to every local politician’s wet-dream of quick ink, moral posturing, and safety from any real responsibility.

• It’s the feds, stupid. The most any junior-grade pol can do is “call for,” or “condemn,” or “stand with,” or even “push back” as our beleagured governor said—without actually saying what that “push” might look like. “Push” Donald Trump? Even Oregon’s Tough Girl might have a problem with that. As the National Review’s legal-beagle, Andrew McCarthy² wrote:

Under settled federal jurisprudence, the power to make and enforce immigration law has been delegated to the government of the United States. Period. The states can no more nullify federal immigration law within their territories than nullify federal tax, firearms, environmental, and other law of which progressives approve and demand vigorous enforcement (which they unfailingly get when Democrats are in the White House).

• They get to ignore any real discussion of immigration policy. Discussion; who you kidding? We are suddenly in the world of black-and-white, binary choices, with no sense whatsoever that the debate over who gets to live here and why has baffled Great Minds for the last century. Back to McCarthy…

Even with their excesses, defunding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol would be very foolish. That we need their missions done better does not alter the fact that we need their missions done. But if Congress were to assert itself and start slashing budgets, that would be the proper, effective, and politically accountable way to curtail the president’s enforcement initiative.

…for another view, reference Councilor Candace Avalos’s summary above of many years of deep thinking about immigration policy. “Abolish ICE.” And replace it with…?

Predictably, even good guy Dan Ryan—never one for hyperbole—got into the queue…

…while our mayor and newly-elected peacock city council prez had additional final judgments based on their “witness,” which consists of contested video recordings—but no matter…

…without actually mentioning what will happen now that they “cannot accept” a federal action. Refuse to accept tainted federal money? Vote for different pols to go to Washington and yell on our behalf?

• The brave words—some consisting of what councilor Angelita Morillo might call “dog whistles”—have heated things up down at ICE headquarters. The Portland Police bestirred themselves to arrest four “protesters” the other night and things are getting gnarly again...

Anyone around here remember how the Floyd Marches turned into attempts to burn down the federal building and blind federal agents with lasers? Has anyone heard the term, “redux?” Anyone care to ponder why we’re still trying to get the rep as “riot city” off our backs?

• The high dudgeon over ICE started a weird arms race among pols to become the king/queen of outrage. It wasn’t enough to sympathize; instead, pols reached deep into their vocabularies and literary tropes, with often strange results. Here’s our nominee for the “history rhymes, but not always” award, courtesy of councilor Steve Novick. Do be fair, he has a rep for an oddball sense of humor, but… really?

“…when I think of the fight against fascism in World War II, I think of Winston Churchill’s hope for the day when “the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the Old.” Today, no foreign power is coming to save us. We are on our own.

“So I ask the students of history among you—what example can give us hope? The French Revolution? Louis XVI was nowhere as brutal as Donald Trump. The fall of the Soviet empire? Gorbachev let the Berling Wall fall.

“I know I shouldn’t need a parallel example from history to keep hope alive. But it would help.

“All my best,

“Steve Novick.”

I encountered Novick at a constituents’ meeting in a Montavilla coffeehouse. Curiously, no one in the small crowd brought up the issue of ICE. They seemed more interested in the persistent drug market down on Pine St., and the virtues (or horror) of a bus-only lane on PBOT’s “reimagining” of 82d Ave.

No one mentioned that day before, the city council had been shut down by anti-ICE protesters…

…so I felt compelled to ask, Given that the protesters had driven the council off its perch and onto ZOOM, maybe, “It was time to dial down the rhetoric.”

Novick—and here you’ll have to accept the observation by Queen Elizabeth II that “recollections may vary”—got a bit testy and said the problem was that the protesters were there “because the council wasn’t doing enough.” And that ICE had “beaten an 80-year old man to the ground.”

And then the meeting broke up.

Novick had raised the 80-year old guy in some correspondence between us about his email—give him credit, Novick actually writes back, which is saying a lot…

When ice or other federal agents are shooting American citizens in cold blood, or beating peaceful 80-year-old protestors to the ground, they are not enforcing immigration laws. Trump’s goal isn’t just to deport undocumented people; it’s to suppress dissent of any kind. And he expects federal agents to carry out that mission.

I turned to ChatGPT, which is my go-to AI search engine. The best it could come up with was a September 2025 story…

79-year-old man allegedly body-slammed by ICE agents (Los Angeles, CA)

A 79-year-old U.S. citizen filed a $50 million federal administrative claim alleging he was body-slammed and detained by federal immigration agents during a raid on his Van Nuys car wash.

What the hell; Novick rounded up. As for Trump’s goal to destroy America…recollections may vary.

1. The latest: Portland exports declined by over 18-percent, leaving us dead last among rankings of the nation’s 40 largest cities.

2. Before turning to punditry, McCarthy served as an assistant US Attorney in New York.