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Good morning, Portland. How are you doing? Personally, I’m extremely overwhelmed. I think I’ve said this before, but this week is truly in the running to be the absolute MOST of the year so far. If I were a normal person, I would try not to pay attention to all of it. It’s okay to wear horse blinders sometimes. On the other hand, if you guys were taking care of yourselves, nobody would be reading this and I wouldn’t have a job. So keep torturing yourselves, actually.
I want to delay getting to the news as long as possible. I’m having fun vamping right now. But eventually, we all must face the abyss unblinkingly.
Oh yeah, also, it’s the first of the month! Rabbit rabbit rabbit. Say it back.
IN LOCAL NEWS:
• So, we already know that the big local news is that Portland is getting invaded by National Guard troops sometime soon. Probably. It depends on what a judge says later this week during a hearing for a temporary restraining order requested by the state of Oregon to keep troops from getting deployed to Portland’s streets. Or, since Trump has an interesting relationship with the law, he might send ’em even if the judge says not to. Anything could happen! The hearing will take place on Friday morning, so we can worry about that then. (Although, I do want to make sure everyone knows Judge Michael Simon, who will be hearing the case, happens to be the nephew of playwright Neil Simon. He’s also married to Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, which means Bonamici is also technically related to Neil Simon. This is interesting to me because I performed “The Odd Couple (Female Version) in a 9th grade drama class. I probably played the neurotic one.)
One new development that took place yesterday: The White House released a document attempting to provide a some firm justification for deploying troops to Portland. In a press release, the Trump administration lays out why Portland is an “Antifa-led hellfire.” And let me just say…the evidence provided was flimsy. The document lists a dozen or so examples of “violent radical left terrorism” in Portland over the last nine years, starting right after Trump got elected for the first time in 2016, because that’s when history began for him. The list characterizes left-wing activists as the sole perpetrators of violence during the “leftist versus Proud Boys” clashes that have happened in Portland over the years, when people on both sides often walked away with injuries. It also conveniently leaves out the incidents of right-wing violence that have taken place in Portland over the last decade.
Of course, it’s not very convincing to cite something that happened five or six years ago as a reason for sending in National Guard troops today. Which brings us back to the Trump administration’s extremely dubious assertion—challenged by everyone from the socialists on City Council to Portland Police Bureau Chief Bob Day—that the current protests at Portland’s ICE facility are dangerous enough to warrant sending in the troops. Never mind the fact that, over the last few months, the protests have typically involved around a dozen unarmed people squeezing squeaky toys to annoy the federal agents, who have played fast and loose with tear gas and pepper balls and almost blinded someone with a projectile.
So, yeah. Expect to see more bullshit in the coming days and weeks.
• And, while we’re talking about bullshit…the typically-venerable Oregon Public Broadcasting rankled many Portlanders with a story it released yesterday. The story was seemingly intended as a window into how Oregonians outside Portland are feeling about Trump’s decision to send troops here. But with very little in the way of fact-checking, it reads as way too credulous of what some random people in eastern Oregon think about a situation they know nothing about, and which many people in Portland are extremely scared about. For example, in case you wanted to know, 59-year-old Debbie Zimmerlee in Crook County (population 27,000, largest city Prineville) said the last time she came to Portland, she was scared to walk to the Fred Meyer down the street from her hotel. Look, Debbie, I’m afraid of getting stuck in elevators. Does that mean we should send the National Guard to somehow deal with all the nation’s elevators? No, it doesn’t. If the troops were deployed to address elevators, what would that even look like? Would they remove the elevators? If so, where would they put them? And what about people who need elevators to get between floors? It’s as ridiculous and harmful to expect 200 National Guard troops to come into Portland and address homelessness and allegedly out-of-control crime.
• In other news, which would have been much bigger if not for the impending National Guard invasion, the Oregon Legislature finally passed a transportation funding package. It just about tore the state apart, and the bill the Democrats managed to pass is woefully inadequate for the state’s transportation needs, but still…it’s good that the seemingly never-ending 2025 legislative session finally ended. Lawmakers expect the bill will raise a little more than $4 billion over the next decade, which is less than half of what Democrats wanted to raise with a much more ambitious bill back in the spring. And, while it’ll keep the lights on at ODOT, that’s just about all it’ll do. Transit agencies will benefit from a very temporary increase in the state payroll tax, but Democrats agreed to sunset the payroll tax increase in just two years, putting public transit right back in the dire place it is now. The bill also doesn’t invest in much-needed safety programs around the state, among many other failures. In conclusion: While the battle over Oregon transportation funding may be over, the war has just begun. Expect more fights to come.
• In other transportation news, the Week Without Driving is upon us. This is a national challenge and initiative led by the organization America Walks to try to get people in the car-dominant US to think deeper about their transportation choices. While driving a car seems like the default transportation option for people across most of the country, including in Portland, a good chunk of Americans are unable to drive. Included in this category are many people with disabilities, elderly people, children, and those who can’t afford the significant expense of car ownership. Because of our historic disinvestment in non-car transportation options, those who don’t drive are often significantly limited in their mobility. It doesn’t have to be this way! And it’s actually awesome to ditch your car, even if it’s just for a week. Check out some of the events BikeLoud is leading during this year’s Week Without Driving, intended to show that it is possible to live an active and free life while limiting your driving. (And it would be even better if we had more bike infrastructure and robust public transit systems.)
IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS:
• The US government has shut down. Is this unprecedented? No, of course not. There were two government shutdowns during Trump’s first term, one of which lasted 35 days. But the political situation in this country is particularly out of control right now, even when stacked up against all the other horrible times in American history. The shutdown comes after Republicans refused to pass a bill proposed by Democrats that would fund the government through the end of the month, along with extending Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the end of 2025. The Democrats aren’t capitulating to Republican attempts to fund the budget at current levels, which would include gutting healthcare programs. Meanwhile, Trump wants to use the shutdown as an excuse to fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers (on top of all of those who were DOGE-d earlier this year) and slash even more crucial programs. Another thing about a government shutdown? National Guard troops still have to work, but they probably won’t get paid. If morale among the guard members set to arrive in Portland wasn’t already going to be terrible, it sure is now.
• Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held an extremely unusual and quite alarming meeting with US military commanders in Quantico, Virginia yesterday. The conference appeared to be mainly intended as a stage for Hegseth to go on a series of very aggressive rants against everything and everyone he doesn’t like in the military. He attacked fat people, men with beards and long hair, and “wokeness” (snooze). He also indicated support for behaviors such as military hazing. The rhetoric from Hegseth is extremely vile and frightening, and every senator who voted to confirm him to his seat should be removed from office. Most alarmingly, though, was Trump’s announcement that he wants the US to start using “dangerous cities” like Memphis and, yes, Portland, as “training grounds for our military.” Am I crazy, or is he declaring civil war? Like, this is gotta be how civil wars start, right?
• Trump wants to ruin the planet in ways the shareholders aren’t even down for.
Trump administration wants to roll back regulations on HFCs (very potent greenhouse gases) OVER THE OBJECTIONS OF THE APPLIANCE INDUSTRY.
— Elizabeth Kolbert (@elizkolbert.bsky.social) September 30, 2025 at 11:36 PM
• Taylor Swift has a new album coming out Friday, perfectly timed to get millions of Americans to stop thinking about the boring doldrums of the news. Who cares about National Guard troops entering your town when you have mediocre pop music to listen to and 1000 unnecessary vinyl variants to buy? (If any Swifties come after me for this, I will immediately fold. I deeply fear them and yet cannot stop being a hater.)
• Sooo…this is the perfect video. And it’ll make you feel better even though everything is a disaster. Thank you for reading! Bye.
