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Good Morning, Portland: It's weekend weather time! Nice today; high of 62! FOG tomorrow? Just in the morning; water vapor is like that. Cloudy for the rest of Saturday, but still not that cold. RAIN all day Sunday—that's just how we do. Let's dew some news!
• Portland Police have made 50 arrests at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building since June. The Oregonian reports that at least eight of the cases resulting from these arrests cite assistance from "what authorities call 'Confidential Reliable Sources' or, more plainly, 'informants.'” Have we heard of this happening before at other protests? Yes. Are these likely plainclothes police? Yes.
• Oregon Capital Chronicle reports that while Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem's promised in July to come down hard on "Antifa-affiliated groups" who dox ICE agents—and a DHS press release from Tuesday asserting "Portland Antifa groups" have doxed agent’s identities—neither Noem nor DHS have produced evidence or instance of doxing actually occurring.
• How do you make a felony case disappear with just a Mountain Dew Baja Blast? It's called civil compromise! TBH, if the president of our country wasn't constantly threatening us we'd be talking about this one nonstop.
• Ahead of his appearance at Mississippi Studios, we talked with comedian Guy Branum about his new show, Portland gays, and what it’s like to be an authority on the zeitgeist while also being in the zeitgeist. Gossip columnist Elinor Jones demands to know which celebrities still smoke cigarettes.
• Now showing at Imago Theatre: The nearly 100-year-old comedy by Noël Coward Design for Living unpacks questions still asked by lovers today, and looks at success through through the lens of a bright young throuple! Read our review!
• It's October and folks are trying to make us think about the end of the year. It used to be that December was the isolated monthlong barrage on your inbox from every organization wanting some mythic "extra money" you need to donate at the end of the year. Anyway. What I'm saying it that it's time to think about 2026 and tickets going on sale for concerts in 2026. Like, for instance, St. Vincent headlining the Portland Jazz Festival. If you call it "Biamp" you're a narc. Sponsors get nothing and like it! Let's hit national news!
IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• An investigation by Propublica reveals that more than 170 US citizens have been caught up in ICE raids. "Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched." Read the detailed reporting here.
• Former Trump administration "national security hawk" John Bolton [what the hell do I have to do to be called a hawk? -eds] pleaded not guilty, this morning, to charges that he shared classified information with his family and kept top secret documents at his home. While the Trump administration has been vocally pursuing retribution cases against President Trump's enemies of late—like former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James—Bolton's case was actually already under investigation during the Biden administration.
• President Trump is suing the New York Times again, and it's making me realize that someone should really put together a book of Justices telling the President that his lawsuits suck. That would sell. Last month, a judge from the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida threw out Trump's defamation lawsuit against NYT saying it was unnecessarily discursive, laden with “florid and enervating” prose, and took too long to lodge formal allegations of defamation. The judge also wrote "“A complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective.” Today's word is vituperate. Merriam-webster says vituperate "first appeared in English in the mid-16th century and can be traced back to two Latin words: the noun vitium, meaning "fault," and the verb parare, meaning "to make or prepare." It means "to use harsh condemnatory language."
• One of National Public Radio's founders Susan Stamberg has died. You can still hear her voice in the elevators of NPR's headquarters.
Susan Stamberg joined NPR at its start, originally to cut tape — literal tape, with a single-sided blade — at a time when commercial networks almost never hired women. n.pr/493MG7W
— NPR (@npr.org) October 16, 2025 at 3:58 PM
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• Hey, apropos of nothing. Here are some people who have been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom: fashion designer Ralph Lauren, Bill Nye (the science guy!), talk show host Phil Donahue.
• Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley has died.
Ace Frehley, the Kiss guitarist who died on Thursday at 74, scored his only Top 20 solo hit with a cover of “New York Groove” that’s endured for decades. His take was louder and flashier than the original, adding more riffs and backing vocals.
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) October 17, 2025 at 8:40 AM
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• Today in being a little intense in a way that reveals something about you, a Pentagon spokesperson is upset about the Netflix drama series Boots, which probably only adds to the new show's interested viewership. Based on a memoir titled The Pink Marine, Boots tells the story of a closeted Louisianan teen who follows his best friend into the Marine Corps. For some bizarre reason, Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson fired off a rant about the US military "restoring the warrior ethos" to Entertainment Weekly, in which he says it doesn't matter your gender or orientation as long as you can lift a rucksack, but then randomly segues into "Netflix whose leadership consistently produces and feeds woke garbage to their audience and children." Like, yes, their documentaries are just awful. But is this really about Boots or? The Trump administration continues its incoherent march... around?
• Sending you into the weekend with fuck you/it's not winter/it's Halloween energy.
