“No Kings” protests cause chaos as the Army celebrates its 250th anniversary, a Minnesota manhunt concludes following a political assassination, and President Donald Trump ups the pressure on Iran.
It’s Monday, June 16, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.
Morning Wire is available on video! You can watch today’s episode here:
 
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If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
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<h2>&#8220;Mostly Peaceful&#8221; Protests And A Birthday Parade</h2>
<div id="attachment_934735" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-934735" class="size-large wp-image-934735" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2219848297-864x576.jpg" alt="SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - JUNE 11: Protestors gather in front of the Henry M. Jackson Federal building during a protest against federal immigration arrests on June 11, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. Protests against ICE raids have spread to cities across the nation after beginning in Los Angeles last weekend. (Photo by Rio Giancarlo/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2219848297-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2219848297-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2219848297-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2219848297.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Rio Giancarlo/Getty Images</div>
Topline: As President Trump presides over the celebration of the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary – “No Kings” protests erupt in violence.
Multiple rioters were arrested near Portland’s ICE facility over the weekend after police declared that a planned protest had devolved into a riot. The chaos in Portland, which left several officers injured, was part of a wave of anti-Trump protests across the country and coincided with Trump&#8217;s celebration of the Army’s 250th birthday.
The Portland &#8220;No Kings&#8221; protest included <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/multiple-arrests-near-portland-ice-building-after-police-declare-riot">tens of thousands of people</a>. While city officials touted the event as a &#8220;large-scale free speech gathering,” eventually the focus became on an ICE facility. Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/officers-injured-portland-rioters-breach-ice-building-explosives-rocks">told Fox News Digital</a> that the rioters broke glass and forcibly entered the building. During the attack, they threw rocks and launched fireworks and smoke grenades at federal law enforcement. Officials say at least four officers were injured.  Four rioters were initially arrested for what the Portland Police Bureau stressed was “violent activity,” and they said in a press conference early Sunday that more could be rounded up.
We saw yet <a href="https://apnews.com/article/no-kings-protest-trump-philadelphia-los-angeles-immigration-raids-a3b67d23733cd060f8d01aef1e391dbf">more violence</a> in Los Angeles, which has become the epicenter of these protests and riots. Law enforcement used tear gas and other crowd-control munitions to clear out rioters over the weekend. Then there was Salt Lake City, where a “No Kings” protest featured a shooting. Police said Sunday that three people were taken into custody, including the shooting suspect, and that the motive was still being investigated.
These “No Kings” demonstrations were planned nationwide in response to Trump holding that massive celebration of the U.S. Army. The military parade marked the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Army, which came a year before the Declaration of Independence. It also happened to coincide with Trump’s 79th birthday.
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<h2>Assassination Shakes Minnesota</h2>
<div id="attachment_934575" style="width: 840px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-934575" class="size-full wp-image-934575" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-14-at-10.47.41-AM.png" alt="" width="830" height="506" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-14-at-10.47.41-AM.png 830w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-14-at-10.47.41-AM-300x183.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-14-at-10.47.41-AM-768x468.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 830px) 100vw, 830px" />MN State Senate//Melissa Horton via Facebook</div>
Topline: The assassin suspected of killing a Minnesota state lawmaker and critically injuring another was captured by authorities late Sunday night after a two-day search.
The nation was rocked over the weekend after a prominent Minnesota lawmaker and her spouse were gunned down in an apparent politically motivated assassination. Early Saturday morning, Democratic state Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were left in critical condition after being shot inside their home. Police, fearing the crime was politically motivated, proactively checked the homes of several other lawmakers, including Melissa Hortman, the top Democrat in the State House. When officers arrived, they found what appeared to be a police SUV with flashing blue lights in the driveway, and a man dressed as a cop exiting the house. That man immediately opened fire on police before fleeing the scene on foot. When officers searched the home, they found Hortman and her husband dead. 
Footage from a home security system shows a man dressed as an officer approaching the front door, wearing a life-like rubber mask.
Immediately after the shootings, police issued a shelter-in-place order for a three-mile radius surrounding the home, but the killer was able to flee the area on foot and make it to another car he owned. Authorities quickly identified 57-year-old Vance Boelter as the suspect, a Minnesotan with no past criminal history. While Boelter escaped the crime scene, by Sunday afternoon, police had located his second vehicle 50 miles southwest of Minneapolis in Sibley County. By 10 pm Sunday, he was in custody after being caught hiding out in a patch of woods. 
Police say a manifesto was found in Boelter’s car, but they have not released it to the public, although they’re confident this was a politically motivated attack. Authorities say a list of potential targets was also found in Boelter’s car — it reportedly included a number of prominent Democrats, along with abortion providers in the state. The suspect’s roommate told reporters he believed Boelter voted for Trump, but was unaware of his views on state politics. 
 Boelter also had ties to Democratic Governor Tim Walz, who appointed him to the Governor’s Workforce Development Board back in 2019. Previous Democrat Governor Mark Dayton had appointed Boelter to the same position in 2016.
<h2>Iran vs Israel: Dueling Airstrikes</h2>
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Topline: As Israel and Iran trade blows, President Trump ratchets up the pressure on Tehran.
Things have changed rapidly since Israel launched its attack on Iran on Thursday, and the situation will likely keep changing fast. Since launching Operation Rising Lion, Israelis have carried out more than 700 different strikes against nuclear sites, military, and leaders of the Iranian regime. In retaliation, Iran has fired salvos of drones and missiles at Israeli population centers.
“These missiles have been coming in by the dozen over the last couple of nights,” Jonathan Schanzer, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who has been sheltering in place in a bomb shelter inside Jerusalem, told The Daily Wire. “Last night there were a couple of direct hits, destroying buildings, destroying a full half of one building or even a half of a city block in one case. I think, you know, what we&#8217;re looking at is a potential war of attrition if things go the way that Iran would like them to go. The regime understands that there&#8217;s a finite number of missile defense interceptors that the Israelis can use. And they have a lot of ballistic missiles… The one kind of wrinkle that I&#8217;m watching right now is that the US is helping to defend the skies over Israel, and it appears that a number of Western countries may also be deploying assets to the region as well.”
American involvement in the broader conflict is uncertain. In the opening hours after the first Israeli airstrikes, officials from the Trump administration denied any American involvement in the operation. However,  they appear to have been given prior warning. 
Many of Israel’s key military platforms – including the F-16 and F-35 fighters, both of which have featured prominently in its air war against Iran – are American-made, and the two countries are close allies.
“I think there&#8217;s also a high degree of intelligence sharing,” Schanzer told The Daily Wire. “The fact that the Israelis attacked on day 61 after Donald Trump&#8217;s 60-day deadline does suggest that there was some degree of coordination here. The big question that I think everyone is asking right now is whether the United States will get involved.”
Some of Iran’s nuclear facilities, including an underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordow, appear to be hardened against conventional attacks, although larger “bunker buster” bombs in the American inventory could break through their defenses. Israel lacks an equivalent stockpile and has asked America to join its air campaign.
Publicly, President Trump continues to call for negotiations with Iran and has pressured Tehran to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for peace. “Iran and Israel should make a deal and will make a deal, just like I got India and Pakistan to make,” the president wrote on <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114687664442020232">Truth Social</a> on Saturday. “We will have PEACE, soon, between Israel and Iran! Many calls and meetings [are] now taking place.”

US-Army-250th-Celebration

Morning Brief: Minnesota Gunman Captured & ‘No Kings Riots’

assassination

California

Donald Trump

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Iran

Israel

Los Angeles

Media

Military parade

Minnesota

Morning Wire

Oregon

Politics

Portland

Protests

One of the hardest things to do, especially when you&#8217;ve got a million other things going on in your life, is to think about the political tactics of people you don&#8217;t agree with. If you&#8217;re a conservative with a full-time job for example, it&#8217;s hard enough to keep track of what Republican politicians are saying, and what policies they&#8217;re implementing. It&#8217;s even harder to track what&#8217;s going on with the other side — especially since, if we&#8217;re being honest, we usually don&#8217;t want to think about it.
But there&#8217;s a significant change in tactics that&#8217;s taken place recently on the Left in this country that, at this point, cannot be ignored. We&#8217;ve known for a while that the Left is now, once again, openly celebrating political violence. That&#8217;s been obvious since the BLM era. What&#8217;s changing, more recently, is that the Left is becoming far more targeted in its attacks. Instead of torching random car lots in Kenosha and shooting security guards in St. Louis to demonstrate their solidarity with George Floyd, Leftists are now becoming more specific, if not necessarily discerning. Like all terrorists, they&#8217;re carefully choosing their victims, to maximize political impact. They tried to assassinate Trump twice, as we all remember. And now that Trump, as president, has the full protection of the Secret Service, they&#8217;re unleashing targeted violent attacks on people they perceive to be supporters of Trump, or enemies of their ideology. That started with the murder of the UnitedHealthCare CEO, but as we predicted, it&#8217;s not stopping there. We&#8217;re entering a potentially long-lasting phase of deliberate, targeted Left-wing terrorism in this country — like the Weather Underground, on steroids.
This is a change that is not happening by accident. In some cases, it&#8217;s coordinated and deliberate — and it&#8217;s very well-funded. But I want to start by highlighting exactly what&#8217;s happening, because for the most part, the national news media isn&#8217;t doing so. All across the country, Kamala Harris voters have made the conscious decision to attack anyone who owns a Tesla, or who works at Tesla. I&#8217;m not talking about one or two people here. I&#8217;m talking about mobs of Democrats who are assaulting other people, in public, because of their perceived political views.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mws-ep-1553-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
You may have seen the footage of shootings, firebombings and riots that have taken place at Tesla stores all over the country. And I&#8217;ll get to that in a second. But some of the most remarkable footage in this respect comes from New Orleans, this past Mardi Gras weekend. As part of the &#8220;Orpheus&#8221; parade, five Tesla Cybertrucks were carrying passengers through Uptown New Orleans. As the vehicles passed, for several miles, onlookers pelted the trucks with objects they found on the street — everything from beads to road barriers. At one point, a man charged the trucks and began punching the glass, which he ultimately shattered. He also threw an object at one of the passengers, after he gained access to the back of the vehicle. The footage from this convoy of Cybertrucks is truly incredible to watch. It&#8217;s like something out of a foreign country. Here&#8217;s some of it, as recorded by the camera on one of the trucks:
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Police were stationed all along the parade route. They saw everything that happened. But they made no arrests. They sat by, doing absolutely nothing, as the mob inflicted thousands of dollars&#8217; worth of property damage, solely because of the politics of the CEO of the company that made those trucks. As you might have seen, at one point in that footage, a mother encouraged her young child to join in with the mob and pummel the truck. 
Here&#8217;s what one of those vehicles looked like afterwards:
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-890215 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GlM_fuwXMAAnlLk-432x576.jpeg" alt="" width="432" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GlM_fuwXMAAnlLk-432x576.jpeg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GlM_fuwXMAAnlLk-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GlM_fuwXMAAnlLk-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GlM_fuwXMAAnlLk-1152x1536.jpeg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GlM_fuwXMAAnlLk.jpeg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px" /></div>
Check out this footage from this parade, this time from the mob&#8217;s perspective. And as you watch, listen to the glee in their voices as they throw objects at people inside the CyberTrucks. And then ask yourself: When was the last time a mob of Right-wing protesters decided to team up and attack someone, solely because that person had purchased a product they don&#8217;t like? Has it ever happened in the entire history of this country? As critical as we were about Bud Light, did any mob of conservatives ever chase someone down and pummel them for ordering a Bud Light at a bar? I don’t think so. But that’s basically what happened in New Orleans just a few days ago. Watch:
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This footage is not the most extreme example of violence I could find, but it does illustrates how widespread this mob-like mentality has become on the Left. It&#8217;s not just a handful of Left-wing NGO&#8217;s who are pushing this (although that&#8217;s certainly happening, too). In reality, we&#8217;re talking about hundreds, if not thousands of people who are willing to make an American city feel like Fallujah for people who happen to be inside a truck they don&#8217;t like. And of course, this footage received thousands of positive &#8220;upvotes&#8221; on Reddit, which has become a central breeding ground for organizing and promoting Left-wing terrorism.
You&#8217;ll also find a lot of support on Reddit for the 41-year-old man who allegedly just threw Molotov cocktails at a Tesla location in Oregon, before returning shortly afterwards to open fire on the business with an assault rifle. Watch:
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Andy Ngo has reported that Adam Lansky, the man accused of committing these attacks, is a Portland trans activist who uses the alias &#8220;Allison Tesla&#8221; in his activism (and his pornography career). Meanwhile, another trans activist — Justin Thomas Nelson aka &#8220;Lucy Grace Nelson&#8221; — is accused of repeatedly attacking another Tesla dealership in Loveland, Colorado. Justin Nelson allegedly spray-painted the words “Nazi cars” on some of the vehicles, and then returned days later with Molotov cocktails before he was arrested. So he was booked, then let out on bond, then attacked the same Tesla location again. Of course, local news reports refer to &#8220;Justin&#8221; as a woman, because even when trans-identifying males are allegedly committing acts of arson, we have to respect their false identities.
Odds are, if you get your news from the mainstream press, you weren&#8217;t aware of any of this. You didn&#8217;t know that two trans-identifying Antifa activists are accused of attempting to firebomb Tesla dealerships in just the past month. And for that matter, you certainly weren&#8217;t aware that a trans-identifying suspect named Ryan Michael English — otherwise known as &#8220;Riley English — was arrested just a month ago, after arriving in D.C. with Molotov cocktails with the intention of assassinating members of Trump&#8217;s Cabinet. That&#8217;s according to court documents, which state. that Ryan has confessed.
This is an awful lot of violence that&#8217;s coming from a small subset of the population, in a very short period of time. It&#8217;s enough to make you wonder if men who pretend to be women might not be the most mentally stable individuals. And these are just the suspects we know about. Just a day after the FBI identified the suspect in the first attack on the Tesla store in Oregon, there was another shooting at a different Tesla location near Portland. Watch:
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These attacks aren&#8217;t just happening on the West Coast, of course. In Massachusetts, someone set fire to several Tesla &#8220;supercharger&#8221; locations, which Tesla owners use to charge their vehicles away from home. They’re like gas stations for electric vehicles. Watch:
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Within about 48 hours, Tesla had this location up-and-running again. So they were able to recover quickly from this particular act of vandalism, which every sane person would object to. But if you go on the Boston sub-reddit, you&#8217;ll find that they don&#8217;t object to this arson attack at all. Here&#8217;s one post on the Boston sub-reddit, for example:
<div id="attachment_890227" style="width: 398px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-890227" class="wp-image-890227 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GlNuwhfWsAA_MQU-388x576.jpeg" alt="Screenshot: Reddit" width="388" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GlNuwhfWsAA_MQU-388x576.jpeg 388w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GlNuwhfWsAA_MQU-202x300.jpeg 202w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GlNuwhfWsAA_MQU.jpeg 754w" sizes="(max-width: 388px) 100vw, 388px" />Screenshot: Reddit</div>
As you can see, they&#8217;re sarcastically saying that weather probably caused the blaze, and that it&#8217;s no big deal. Thousands of people are up-voting posts like this. There&#8217;s similar enthusiasm in New York, where protesters were just removed after attempting to shut down a Tesla store there. Those are protests, according to Elon Musk, that involved — at least in part — organizations that have received substantial funding from George Soros&#8217; nonprofit over the years.
But regardless of George Soros&#8217; culpability, there&#8217;s really no other way to interpret what&#8217;s happening here: We are witnessing a campaign of terrorism by the Left, which is openly being celebrated (if not coordinated) by thousands of Leftists using platforms like Reddit. And it&#8217;s leading everyday people to physically assault Tesla owners at every opportunity. This is footage from New York for example:
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We don&#8217;t have sound for this one, so in case you can&#8217;t see it, it&#8217;s some guy running alongside a Cybertruck, punching it repeatedly and giving the middle-finger to the occupants. And then at the end of the footage, a police car appears in frame. And of course the officer does nothing.
These kinds of attacks are becoming so common now that it&#8217;s impossible to keep up with them.
Late Sunday, the reporter Jonathan Choe uploaded this footage of Cybertrucks on fire in Seattle, in yet another suspected arson attack:
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No matter how hard you look, you will not find a single Democrat Party politician who is willing to condemn any of this violence. The &#8220;party of Democracy&#8221; is completely silent as Left-wing terrorists commit acts of political violence, all over the country, for the express purpose of intimidating Elon Musk and anyone who dared to vote for Donald Trump. And we all know why that is. They endorse all of it. The Democrat Party, and the media outlets they effectively control, have no problem with destroying the property of anyone they believe is a conservative. They also don&#8217;t mind destroying Tesla — one of the most important companies in the United States, which employs more than a hundred thousand people — in the process.
These are people who are not interested in progress, or the advancement of human civilization. They are the enemies of both. And, as if to prove that point, MSNBC anchors recently celebrated the explosion of SpaceX&#8217;s starship during a recent test launch. This is a test launch that, in case you missed it, included the &#8220;catch&#8221; of the booster rocket, which is one of the most remarkable technological achievements imaginable. But over at MSNBC, they didn&#8217;t even mention the booster catch. Instead, they burst out into song because the starship itself had exploded. Watch:
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We&#8217;ve done a lot of segments recently about how utterly dumb and inane Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) is. But really, all we had to do is play that clip. &#8220;If only Musk had more DEI hires, maybe Starship wouldn&#8217;t have exploded.&#8221; That&#8217;s the logic they&#8217;re going with at MSNBC. That is how utterly shameless these people are. Because as we all know, when you need to achieve something that&#8217;s never been achieved before in human history, you call in the DEI hires. After all, DEI hires are how NASA landed on the moon.
Of course, none of these people — even Jasmine Crockett — believe any of this. For all their demonization of billionaires and corporations, the truth is that the Left has this intense hatred for Elon because they see him as a class traitor. They know that the wealthy are supposed to be on their side. Elon is not only an Uber-wealthy man, but also a man of great scientific achievement, and he should be a devotee to their cause. That&#8217;s why they reserve for him the special kind of hatred that you have not for enemies, but for traitors.
Just think for a moment about the absurdity of the clip you just saw. The man is building reusable rockets, for the purpose of making space travel affordable enough that we can colonize Mars in the near future. The whole point of these test launches is to gather data so that the next launch — in just a few weeks — can be a success. That&#8217;s why no one was or is onboard the Starship. It&#8217;s a test flight. And these test flights clearly work, as anyone familiar with SpaceX&#8217;s history — and its progress in just the past decade — understands very well.
But increasingly few people on the Left actually care about SpaceX, or Tesla, or Elon Musk, or any of that. Instead, they care about political control, which they&#8217;re obviously losing. So, in some cases, they&#8217;re resorting to terrorism instead. And on television, they&#8217;re turning to juvenile, barely-literate criticism of a space program they can&#8217;t begin to comprehend. It&#8217;s difficult not to be reminded of Roosevelt&#8217;s famous speech on insufferable people like this, from all the way back in 1910. &#8220;It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.” I won’t recite the whole thing for you. But if you don’t know it, google it. There is no better way to describe cable news hosts who laugh while a man builds rockets to Mars.
Shut out of political relevance, Leftists are turning to violence and terrorism. They will only intensify their efforts in the coming weeks. But with every arson attack, and every insufferable segment on MSNBC, they&#8217;re only highlighting two things. First of all, they are irrelevant. And secondly, the men in the arena — the people who are actually committed to moving this country forward — aren&#8217;t going anywhere.

President Trump Speaks Alongside Tesla Vehicles At The White House

Exposing The Coordinated Terror Campaign Against Elon Musk And Tesla

Boston

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Electric cars

Elon Musk

Fire

Leftists

Matt Walsh

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Tesla

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/portland" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Portland&#8217;s</a> leftist district attorney is trying to reduce the sentences for several violent prisoners, including a convicted murderer just days before his tough-on-crime replacement takes over.
Mike Schmidt, district attorney of Multnomah County, was voted out of office on Election Day last month, but that has not stopped him from petitioning an Oregon judge to reduce or get rid of charges for eight people, some convicted of murder, violent assaults, or robbery, The Oregonian <a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2024/12/outgoing-multnomah-county-da-seeks-to-reduce-conviction-in-violent-assault-urges-early-release-for-convicted-murderer-repeat-burglar.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
Schmidt will be replaced by Nathan Vasquez, who has <a href="https://apnews.com/article/portland-oregon-progressive-district-attorney-election-430d10da16f9446201925e940d715d98" target="_blank" rel="noopener">promised</a> a tougher approach to crime in the Portland area.
“These have all the appearance of a last-minute giveaway,” Vasquez said of his predecessor&#8217;s petitions for lenience. “They’re extremely violent individuals who have committed horrible crimes, and they’re being given some kind of a break.”
Vasquez starts his term January 6.
Districts attorneys and convicts can petition a judge together to reconsider a conviction and reduce a prison sentence, according to a 2021 state law. This can result in a judge releasing a convict from prison.
One convict petitioning the court is Frank F. Swopes Jr., who was convicted of murder, robbery, burglary, kidnapping, unauthorized use of a vehicle, and eluding police in 1993 when he was 30.
Swopes was convicted of killing a 75-year-old woman by asphyxiation as he and another person robbed her Portland home. She died after his fellow robber pushed her to the ground when Swopes said to &#8220;keep her quiet,&#8221; the case found. The robbers took her wedding ring and $8.
Swopes then robbed another 76-year-old woman a week later, tying her to a bed frame. He &#8220;terrorized&#8221; her until she gave him her ATM code, &#8220;touched her sexually&#8221; and took her robe off, “at which point she believed he either urinated or ejaculated on her,” documents say. Swopes had a cocaine habit, court documents said.
Another convict petitioning the court is Shane Ebberts, 46, who along with two friends attacked two community college students with a mallet handle when he was 16. He served seven years and got out of prison in 2003 and is now married and runs his own general contracting company.
However, Ebberts wants a judge to let him withdraw his guilty plea and enter a new guilty plea to the lesser charge of attempted second-degree assault. Two years ago, his defense lawyer tried to get his conviction changed to the lesser charge so Ebberts could then apply to get the lesser charge expunged.
Both of the victims in that case, the community college students who were attacked, are opposed to throwing out the more serious convictions, the petition notes.
Other convicts petitioning the court include a man convicted of robbing a pub and firing a gun at the floor with nine people inside, two women with child neglect convictions, a man who delivered drugs near a school, another burglar, and a man who delivered heroin.
Schmidt told The Oregonian that the petitions are similar to others he has supported this year.
His office stands “for more than just convictions – but striving for justice,” Schmidt said.
“We have an established and extensive process, including input from our community advisory board. Each of these petitions have been considered in a thorough process over a number of months,” he told the outlet. “This is the same work we’ve been doing throughout my term.”

Portland Reacts After Fatal Shooting During Violent Night Of Protests

Portland DA Tries To Reduce Sentences For Convicts Days Before Tough-On-Crime Replacement Takes Over

Courts

Crime

U.S.

Two ballot drop boxes 15 miles apart were lit on fire Monday morning in Washington and Oregon, likely destroying hundreds of ballots cast in the 2024 election.
Smoke was seen pouring out of a ballot drop box at the Fisher&#8217;s Landing Transit Center in Vancouver, Washington — which is just north of Portland, Oregon — around 4:00 a.m. Footage captured by KATU ABC 2 showed firefighters pry open the back of the ballot drop box and extinguish a fire that appeared to have burned hundreds of ballots. KATU <a href="https://katu.com/news/local/vancouver-ballot-box-seen-smoking-same-morning-as-portland-ballot-box-arson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that authorities said only a few of the ballots could potentially be saved.
WATCH:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="BREAKING: Hundreds of ballots possibly destroyed in Vancouver ballot box arson" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UaBmxv2VNSM?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) said after arriving on the scene, officers saw smoke coming from the drop box and &#8220;located a suspicious device next to the box.&#8221;
&#8220;Members of the Metro Explosive Disposal Unit (MEDU) arrived and safely collected the device, and the fire was extinguished. Detectives from the Vancouver Police Arson team and the Vancouver Fire Marshals also responded,&#8221; VPD added.
The police department said the investigation was handed over to the FBI. Officials told voters that if they dropped off a ballot at the location after 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, they should immediately contact the Election Auditor&#8217;s Office for a new ballot.
A few hours before the ballot box in Vancouver was set on fire, police just across the state border in Portland, Oregon, responded to a fire at a drop box in the southeast part of the city. Authorities said an incendiary device was also set off in the Portland drop box, according to KATU. Authorities did not disclose whether any ballots in the Portland drop box had been destroyed.
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/?_gl=1*jtghwp*_gcl_au*ODQ1NjYzNTg2LjE3Mjg5MDk3OTE.*_ga*MTc2NzM0NDQ2NS4xNzI4OTA5Nzkx*_ga_CZKR9ZYKJP*MTczMDEyMDgwOS40OS4xLjE3MzAxMjA4MzkuMzAuMC4w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+</a>
Clark County, Washington, where Vancouver is located, is a competitive area for Republicans and Democrats. The ballot drop box in Vancouver is located in Washington&#8217;s 3rd Congressional District, where voters are casting ballots in a tight U.S. House race between incumbent Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republican Joe Kent, CNN <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/28/us/ballot-box-fires-oregon-washington/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
Presidential election results have also been close in Clark County, with President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton barely beating Donald Trump in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-washington.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2020</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/washington" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2016</a>.

Ballot drop box fire

2 Ballot Drop Boxes Lit On Fire, Hundreds Of Ballots Likely Destroyed: Report

2 Ballot Drop Boxes Lit On Fire, Hundreds Of Ballots Likely Destroyed

2024 Election

ballot box

ballots

Elections

Washington

An Oregon high school track coach claimed the school district terminated his contract because he pushed for the state to change the laws around trans-identifying athletes.
John Parks, head track and field coach at Lake Oswego High School just south of Portland, <a href="https://katu.com/news/local/lake-oswego-coach-says-district-ousted-him-after-pushed-change-in-transgender-athlete-law-osaa-track-field-peter-weber-john-parks-rob-wagner-mary-kay-larson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> a pair of letters to the executive director of the Oregon Student Activities Association and a state senator.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Lake Oswego high school track &amp; field coach was terminated after demanding fair competition for his female athletes.
He&#39;s taken his team to the state championship 3 years in a row.
The problem is his stance was way too reasonable, so they ousted him.<a href="https://t.co/qYLfHwZ9Y1">https://t.co/qYLfHwZ9Y1</a>
&mdash; Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) <a href="https://twitter.com/Riley_Gaines_/status/1803107581361025164?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 18, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In his letters, which were written before and after the state championships in May, Parks argued that Oregon law, which currently allows trans-identifying biological males to compete with female athletes, is harming girls&#8217; sports.
Parks called for student sports in Oregon to follow the lead of other sports organizations like the International Olympic Committee that require hormone testing for trans-identifying athletes.
&#8220;My proposal to encourage transgender participation is to offer an open division that is so named so it doesn&#8217;t identify or discriminate but offers an opportunity to participate,&#8221; Parks wrote.
Parks said that part of his concern is for trans-identifying athletes themselves.
&#8220;I want them to be able to participate where they&#8217;re not booed,&#8221; Parks told KATU, adding that he saw the crowd boo a trans-identifying athlete who won a girls&#8217; event at the state championships.
The Lake Oswego School District&#8217;s communications director <a href="https://katu.com/news/local/lake-oswego-coach-says-district-ousted-him-after-pushed-change-in-transgender-athlete-law-osaa-track-field-peter-weber-john-parks-rob-wagner-mary-kay-larson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Parks is no longer employed at the district but did not give a reason, saying the district does not discuss personnel matters.
Parks is appealing the school district&#8217;s decision to terminate his contract.
&#8220;I&#8217;m going to fight now because I got wronged,&#8221; he <a href="https://katu.com/news/local/lake-oswego-coach-says-district-ousted-him-after-pushed-change-in-transgender-athlete-law-osaa-track-field-peter-weber-john-parks-rob-wagner-mary-kay-larson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> KATU. &#8220;I am &#8230; fighting for girls, I&#8217;m fighting for female sports, and I&#8217;m fighting that it be fair for everybody.&#8221;
&#8220;When you come to championship events, these things involve scholarships, they involve things that they have an unfair advantage in at the highest level when it comes to physical things,&#8221; Parks said. &#8220;We&#8217;re not talking about political. This is not a political issue to me and never has been.&#8221;
A petition to reinstate Parks as coach has already <a href="https://www.change.org/p/reinstate-coach-john-parks-as-head-coach" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gathered</a> more than 100 signatures.
Riley Gaines, former college swimmer and women’s sports activist highlighted Parks&#8217; situation in a social media post.
&#8220;He&#8217;s taken his team to the state championship 3 years in a row,&#8221; she posted on X. &#8220;The problem is his stance was way too reasonable, so they ousted him.&#8221;
Female athletes at high schools and colleges in several states have spoken out against competing against biological males, some arguing that they missed out on awards and scholarships after losing to their male competitors.
High school girls have also been injured playing with trans-identifying males. Last year in North Carolina, a female high school volleyball player <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/female-high-school-volleyball-athlete-suffers-serious-head-injury-after-transgender-player-throws-abnormally-fast-ball/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suffered</a> severe trauma to her head and neck after a trans-identifying male player spiked a volleyball that hit her head.

Legs of a group of girls running on a track

High School Coach Says School District Ousted Him For Pushing Transgender Athlete Rule Change

Gender

Sports

Transgender

Women's sports

The Portland Association of Teachers, an affiliate of the state teachers’ union which has 4,500 members, reportedly created an anti-Israel and anti-America curriculum for children as young as kindergarteners that says Zionists are “bullies” and blames Israel and the United States for “settler colonialism.”
Journalist Christopher Rufo, the author of <a href="https://manhattan.institute/book/americas-cultural-revolution-how-the-radical-left-conquered-everything" target="_blank" rel="noopener">America’s Cultural Revolution</a>, <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/in-portland-the-intifada-begins-in-kindergarten" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published the information</a> and obtained the curriculum materials called &#8220;Teach Palestine!&#8221; Pre-kindergarten teachers are urged to use a workbook by the Palestinian Feminist Collective with a story of a fictional Palestinian boy named Handala who states, “A group of bullies called Zionists wanted our land so they stole it by force and hurt many people.”
“Students are encouraged to come up with a slogan that they can chant at a protest and complete a maze so that Handala can ‘get back home to Palestine’—represented as a map of Israel,” Rufo notes.
Other leftist tropes are urged for the pre-kindergarteners, including a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BFil0gN8Ql0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">video</a> stating, “I feel safe when there are no police,” and a <a href="https://www.wokekindergarten.org/teachpalestine/visualhistoryinstazine" target="_blank" rel="noopener">slideshow</a> that salutes the First and Second Palestinian Intifadas. According to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Institute_for_Counter-Terrorism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">International Institute for Counter-Terrorism</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_Second_Intifada">during</a> the Second Intifada from September 2000 to February 2005, 887 of the 1,137 Israelis murdered in the attacks were civilians.
“The recommended resource list also <a href="https://www.wokekindergarten.org/teachpalestine/so-you-made-it-to-a-protest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">includes</a> a ‘sensory guide for kids’ on attending protests. It teaches children what they might see, hear, taste, touch, and smell at protests, and promotes photographs of slogans such as ‘Abolish Prisons’ and ‘From the River to the Sea,&#8217;” Rufo writes.
Once the children are in kindergarten through second grade, a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTGX9wjjqX4S2Au0c8gFe5ir18Ex6Tw73pcezd5VQxj5hph0MJVHeQh-VqtQ6PCPa1QtQg2Woxe0_ue/pub">lesson</a>, “Art and Action for Palestine,” is provided to teach the children to “connect histories of settler colonialism from Palestine to the United States” and to “celebrate Palestinian culture and resistance throughout history and in the present, with a focus on Palestinian children’s resistance.”
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“75 years ago, a lot of decision makers around the world decided to take away Palestinian land to make a country called Israel. Israel would be a country where rules were mostly fair for Jewish people with White skin,” the lesson reads. “There’s a BIG word for when Indigenous land gets taken away to make a country, that’s called settler colonialism.”
Among the “suggested materials” are “keffiyehs, flags, and protest signs.” The curriculum also <a href="https://actionnetwork.org/user_files/user_files/000/098/772/original/All_Out_Palestine_Toolkit_3.0.pdf?fbclid=PAAaaGnQ7Ub7uar7rFqlTaVoBEH4SJ7X0yF-AZNoAjumR5BZW2DTVtVhlsTmY_aem_AbjMoHW4HB3HGHoSsk0D2LO9UewWamevwaDlwAtfE0NGXhxeLy1RXQdsvP7XKxsqtxQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">includes</a> a pamphlet called “All Out for Palestine,” which states, “STOP THE GENOCIDE! END U.S. AID TO ISRAEL! FREE PALESTINE!” The pamphlet refers to “Zionism‘s long genocidal war on Palestinian life,” adding, “End all US aid to Israel and nullify all joint US-Israeli agreements and collaboration in arms trade and policing.”
“The pamphlet includes chants that teachers can adopt in the classroom,” Rufo points out. “Some imply support for militancy and political violence: ‘Resistance is justified when people are occupied!’; ‘We salute all our martyrs! mothers, fathers, sons and daughters!’; ‘Justice is our demand! No peace on stolen land!’”

Toddler is playing with a wooden toy block

Portland Teachers’ Group Offers Kindergarten Curriculum Teaching Anti-Israel Hate

Anti-Semitism

Education

Kindergarten

Palestinians

teachers union

Teachers Unions

A pro-abortion woman physically assaulted a pro-life activist in Portland after she claimed that miscarriages are abortions and he disagreed.
As RedState <a href="https://redstate.com/bonchie/2024/05/29/watch-scary-scene-as-biden-rushes-a-reporter-and-shows-his-derangement-n2174791">reported</a>, the pro-lifer had a sign emblazoned “abortion is murder” when he was accosted by the pro-abortion woman, who was accompanied by her young daughter.
“Women are being airlifted from Idaho to Oregon right now because they can’t get life-saving emergency abortions,” the woman claimed. “Doctors are saying it’s only a matter of time before somebody bleeds out in a helicopter. Any day now it’s going to happen. We’re gonna have the first death on a helicopter of a woman being moved to Oregon for an abortion. Are you cool with that?”
“No, that&#8217;s very sad. What percentage is it of those women?” the pro-lifer responded.
“What do you mean what ******* percentage? All of them. That&#8217;s the only way they can get abortions, is by coming here,” the woman snapped.
“Every woman that&#8217;s getting an abortion is due to medical procedures?” he asked,
“No, most abortions are,” she claimed.
“No, they&#8217;re not,” he responded.
“My abortion was of a dead embryo. That&#8217;s most abortions,” she said.
“Okay, I&#8217;m sorry to hear that,” he answered.
Then she claimed, “That&#8217;s most abortions.”
“That&#8217;s not most abortions,” he countered.
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“Yes, it is, because have you looked at the statistics? Most abortions are clean-ups after miscarriages, and women can&#8217;t even get those. No, you&#8217;re a ******* moron because miscarriages are extremely common and most women opt to have&#8230;” she started.
“Miscarriages and abortions are different,” he pointed out. “What is an abortion?”
“No, a miscarriage is a medical abortion,” she insisted.
“No, it&#8217;s not. Let me educate you,” he offered.
That prompted the woman to take a swing at him and the woman filming the incident before he forced her to the ground as her daughter started crying.
“The woman is also lying about access to the medical procedure she describes,” RedState noted. “There is not a single state in the union that outlaws real doctors at real medical facilities from removing a baby&#8217;s body after a miscarriage.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="I was attacked." width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/41-P6oxxkqc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

pro life

Pro-Abortion Woman Assaults Pro-Life Activist, Says Miscarriages Are Abortions

Abortion

Assault

Social Issues

Multnomah County, Oregon, District Attorney Mike Schmidt — who oversees the progressive bastion of Portland — lost his re-election bid on Tuesday night to a moderate candidate who promises to carry out tough-on-crime policies.
Schmidt, the George <a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2024/05/multnomah-county-da-mike-schmidt-campaign-gets-boost-from-progressive-philanthropist-george-soros.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Soros-backed</a> incumbent, fell to Nathan Vasquez, who previously served as the Multnomah County deputy prosecutor under Schmidt. The leftist DA conceded on Wednesday with results showing that Vazquez had secured around 54% of the vote, Portland&#8217;s NBC affiliate KGW 8 <a href="https://www.kgw.com/article/news/politics/elections/multnomah-county-district-attorney-race-election-results/283-e5b76f7a-9497-488b-b432-08dc9deec27d" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
“It is looking as if I will not be serving another four years as Multnomah County District Attorney,&#8221; Schmidt said. &#8220;I have called Nathan Vasquez to congratulate him on his victory. While we do not always see eye to eye, I am committed to a smooth transition.&#8221;
On Tuesday night before the race was called, Vasquez said that he was &#8220;hopeful&#8221; that the direction of the community was about to change.
&#8220;This is a time where I think a lot of people in our community are looking for that belief, that hope, and I think tonight is going to be a change in that direction,&#8221; Vasquez told KGW 8. &#8220;And I really want to deliver that to our community in a way that feels positive and hopeful, so that everyone in this community feels included, everyone feels like they can have a safe community where they can go to parks, they can go down the street and can really enjoy this wonderful, amazing city and county that we live in, and I&#8217;m just so hopeful for tonight.&#8221;
Schmidt was elected in 2020, winning 77% of the vote. He started his role as the district attorney in August of that year, a term that began during the summer of the George Floyd riots that saw numerous businesses looted and vandalized and a police station <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/08/24/portland-protests-police-precinct-set-fire/3427950001/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">set on fire</a>. One of Schmidt&#8217;s first acts as DA was to <a href="https://katu.com/news/local/multnomah-co-das-policy-on-protest-arrests-focused-on-property-damage-theft-violence" target="_blank" rel="noopener">institute</a> a new policy stating his office would not prosecute George Floyd demonstrators who were charged with certain crimes such as interfering with a police officer, disorderly conduct, criminal trespass, harassment, or rioting unless they committed “deliberate property damage, theft, or threat of force against another person.&#8221;
After the riots died down, Portland continued to face high rates of violent crime. Despite a decrease in violent crimes in 2023 in the city, the homicide rate in Portland remained higher than reported numbers prior to 2019, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Shoplifting arrests also skyrocketed by 88% in 2023.
Schmidt&#8217;s opponent Vasquez also promised to crack down on open-air drug use in Oregon&#8217;s largest city, a problem that has persisted since Oregon voters decriminalized possession of small amounts of drugs such as fentanyl and heroin in 2020. Last month, Oregon Democratic Governor Tina Kotek <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/oregon-recriminalizes-drug-possession" target="_blank" rel="noopener">signed</a> a bill into law that again criminalized the possession of hard drugs.
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“The voters have made it clear that they are ready to take our county in a new and safer direction,&#8221; Vasquez <a href="https://apnews.com/article/portland-oregon-progressive-district-attorney-election-756eff76ca7391a18fd703417b788f94" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> on Wednesday. &#8220;I am committed to ending open air drug dealing and drug use while helping connect individuals to treatment, to rebuilding the broken relationships between the DA’s office and the community, and to ensuring that victims are the number one priority of my office.&#8221;

Mike Schmidt

Leftist DA Overseeing Crime-Ridden Portland Loses Re-Election Bid

District Attorneys

Election

While blue states in the West are losing police officers who are disillusioned with soft-on-crime policies, conservative Idaho is gathering them in great numbers.
The Idaho Peace Officer Standards &amp; Training (POST) reported that between 2019 and 2021, the number of officers from other states applying for certification more than doubled, Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/blue-line-getting-thinner-west-coast-states-police-take-refuge-idaho" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
“They come to Idaho where they can enjoy their career and make a difference,” Idaho Fraternal Order of Police President Bryan Lovell stated. “They see that, in large part, our communities are supportive of law enforcement and public safety.&#8221; Lovell stated that officers from other states said they were fed up with policies that defunded police departments or decriminalized drugs.
“The Seattle Police Department has lost more than 700 officers in the past five years and is at its lowest staffing level since the 1990s,” King 5 <a href="https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle-police-staffing-shortage-action-needed-councilmembers-say/281-c3f43855-f877-4ba9-a37b-aeaf27e1ec67" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> in March.
“We&#8217;re already at critical levels &#8230; We are really struggling to make sure we maintain all the calls that are impacting, not just to maintain the calls, but also investigating those calls and also doing the other type of tactics that actually make for safer outcomes for the community,” Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz said.
“I think if rock bottom was ever a thing, we are probably here,” councilmember Rob Saka echoed.
Regarding Portland, Oregon, which has just 1.26 officers per every 1,000 residents, 48th among the nation’s 50 largest cities, the Manhattan Institute <a href="https://manhattan.institute/article/portlands-police-staffing-crisis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posited</a>, “In the short run, the city’s particularly harmful riots following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, as well as its leadership’s embrace of the ‘defund the police’ movement, dealt a massive blow to police morale, driving mass resignations and retirements, which have continued to hamstring operations.”
“The LAPD is hemorrhaging officers, with more leaving the force than are joining it. Police Chief Michel Moore reported last week that sworn staffing had fallen to 9,103, down nearly 1,000 from 2019, the year that preceded the outbreak of COVID-19,” The Los Angeles Times <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/lapd-lost-nearly-1-000-120008003.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> in April 2023.
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Former California Highway Patrol officer Seth Horst, who moved to northern Idaho, commented on the tremendous public support for the police in Idaho, saying, “That is so powerful for the men and women in uniform up here to have that backing. It&#8217;s a pretty phenomenal place to do the job.”
He said of the blue states, “The district attorney doesn&#8217;t back them, there&#8217;s too much liability, so the department won&#8217;t let them enforce the law, which is their job. And that bugs a lot of people. They get a job up here, oftentimes taking a huge pay cut because the pay here does not compare to a lot of states. But it&#8217;s worth it to them to raise their families in a place that is safe and has those old-school values.”

City of Moscow Idaho police department

Red-State Idaho Sweeping Up Cops Disillusioned With Blue West Coast States

Defund The Police

Idaho

Police

Seattle

Oregon has made possessing small amounts of hard drugs a crime again after a failed experiment with decriminalization.
Governor Tina Kotek, a Democrat, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/oregon-drug-recriminalization-law-signed-governor-96e36ed60e999572bbf47c160b412a73" target="_blank" rel="noopener">signed</a> a bill into law on Monday that makes personal use possession a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail.
The new bill rolls back Measure 110, which was approved by about 58% of Oregon voters in 2020, and scrapped criminal charges for possessing small amounts of any drug, even hard drugs like fentanyl. The measure was the first of its kind in the country.
Instead of criminal penalties, offenders were hit with a maximum fine of $100 that was rarely enforced. Drug users could also get their fine dismissed if they called a hotline to get an addiction screening, but in the law’s first year, only 1% of people who received tickets for drug possession called the hotline, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-health/ap-oregons-first-in-the-nation-drug-decriminalization-law-faces-growing-pushback-amid-fentanyl-crisis/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to state auditors.
In the years since Measure 110 took effect, however, the law has become increasingly unpopular as residents deal with public drug use in their daily lives.
Two years later, more than 6 in 10 voters said they thought decriminalization has made drug addiction, homelessness, and crime worse in Oregon, according to a May <a href="https://www.dhmresearch.com/oregon-voters-support-bringing-back-criminal-penalties-for-drug-possession/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">survey</a> from DMH Research. A combined 63% said they “strongly” supported or would be “somewhat” interested in once again criminalizing hard drugs.
Meanwhile, fatal drug overdoses in Oregon have spiked, driven by the fentanyl crisis.
The state is on track for 1,250 overdose deaths last year, <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2024/01/28/data-show-overdoses-deaths-rising-in-oregon/#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20280%20people%20died,year%2C%20reaching%20628%20in%20June." target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to data that is still being compiled. This is a stark rise from the 280 people who died of an overdose back in 2019.
Some of the worst scenes of the drug crisis come out of Portland, where addicts shoot up daily in broad daylight downtown.
In September, the Portland City Council passed a ban on using hard drugs on public property.
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However, Portland&#8217;s new rules have been in limbo while drugs were still decriminalized at the state level.
Mayor Ted Wheeler, another Democrat, has expressed support for Oregon&#8217;s new law, which takes effect on September 1.
&#8220;People are exhausted from feeling like they’re under siege. They want order restored to their environment,&#8221; Wheeler <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/01/us/oregon-drug-law-portland-mayor.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.
Although the new state law brings back criminal penalties for drug possession, it also encourages law enforcement to establish programs to send drug users to addiction and mental health services rather than the criminal justice system if possible.

US-HEALTH-DRUGS-OREGON

Oregon Recriminalizes Drug Possession

Drugs

Fentanyl

General

Opioid Crisis

A parental rights group has filed a federal complaint against public schools in Portland, Oregon, for taking gender identity and race into account when disciplining students.
On Thursday, Parents Defending Education filed a federal civil rights <a target="_blank" href="https://defendinged.org/complaints/ocr-complaint-portland-public-schools-2/" rel="noopener">complaint</a> with the Department of Education against Portland Public Schools, criticizing the district&#8217;s new discipline policy.
&#8220;Portland Public Schools has enacted several concerning policies that treat students and educators differently based on race and gender identity,&#8221; including &#8220;disciplining some students and not others, solely based on immutable characteristics,&#8221; reads the complaint.
&#8220;Accordingly, we ask that the Department promptly investigate the allegations in this complaint, act swiftly to remedy unlawful policies and practices, and order appropriate relief,&#8221; the complaint says.
The new discipline policy is part of a collective bargaining <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pps.net/cms/lib/OR01913224/Centricity/Domain/56/Tentative%20Agreements%20Combined%2011.27.23%20PAT.pdf" rel="noopener">agreement</a> between Portland Public Schools and its unionized teachers, which ended a nearly month-long strike in late November.
When a student engages in “continuous disruptive behavior,” school officials must develop a “support plan” for the student that “must take into consideration the impact of issues related to the student’s trauma, race, gender identity/presentation, sexual orientation, disability, social emotional learning, and restorative justice as appropriate for the student,” the agreement <a target="_blank" href="https://defendinged.org/complaints/ocr-complaint-portland-public-schools-2/" rel="noopener">states</a>.
“Teachers in Portland Public Schools are encouraged to discipline students based on their race and it&#8217;s appalling,&#8221; said Caroline Moore, vice president of Parents Defending Education.
&#8220;The teachers wanted to amend the policy so desperately that they included the provision in their strike agreement. This is corrupt and un-American. I’m anxiously awaiting the U.S. Department of Education’s investigation into this district&#8217;s unlawful practices,&#8221; Moore said.
The new disciplinary policy also <a target="_blank" href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/portland-teachers-will-take-gender-identity-race-into-account-before-disciplining" rel="noopener">prohibits</a> suspending a student who threatens or harms other people. Those students may now only be removed from their classroom and sent to a “self-regulation space” within the school.
Previously, Portland schools <a target="_blank" href="https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-public-schools-changed-suspension-policy-teachers-strike/283-57387413-23d3-46e9-aea7-c532fd91b37f" rel="noopener">could</a> suspend middle and high school students for at least five days for extreme cases of students causing physical harm or threatening violence. Now, through the union agreement, the district has expanded its rapid response teams, which are supposed to intervene early in these situations.
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The agreement replaces the term “unacceptable” student behavior with “continuous disruptive” behavior and refers to “support plans” rather than “behavior correction plans.”
Student discipline has been a growing concern in Portland’s public schools.
Portland teachers have <a target="_blank" href="https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-public-schools-changed-suspension-policy-teachers-strike/283-57387413-23d3-46e9-aea7-c532fd91b37f" rel="noopener">said</a> they are seeing “more students in crisis” with mental health issues, which can lead to fights.
In response, the Portland school district has been working to beef up its “restorative justice” practices over the last two years. However, after the pandemic, the district saw a spike in requests for the district’s restorative justice services, highlighting the discipline issue.

Rear view of teenage girls and boys learning in classroom

Parent Group Files Federal Complaint Against Portland Schools For Disciplining Based On Gender Identity, Race

Parents rights

Public Schools

Investigators said this week that a fire outside of Portland mayoral candidate and City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez&#8217;s home may have been intentionally set for political reasons. 
Early Friday morning, a car belonging to a family member of Gonzalez <a href="https://www.portlandtribune.com/news/multco-da-says-gonzalez-arson-could-be-politically-motivated/article_1c040f9a-b18a-11ee-a12b-9bd54e5c92b7.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">was found</a> on fire outside of his home. After the fire was put out, police said it may have been arson. Gonzalez is a Democrat who ran for public office on a platform of cracking down on homelessness and increasing police funding.
“Acts of political violence and acts of political vandalism are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Commissioner Gonzalez and everyone else in a public leadership role is here to serve this community because they love this community,” Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt <a href="https://www.portlandtribune.com/news/multco-da-says-gonzalez-arson-could-be-politically-motivated/article_1c040f9a-b18a-11ee-a12b-9bd54e5c92b7.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. 
“Everybody is free to agree or disagree with me, the Commissioner, or any public servant or political candidate. But threats, vandalism, arson, violence, or any other form of illegal coercion will not be tolerated. If confirmed arson, we will find and prosecute those responsible for this act to the fullest extent of the law,” Schmidt added. 
Gonzalez thanked the fire department for their quick response after they called to report the fire. 
“Thanks to the prompt response of Portland Fire &amp; Rescue, the fire was unable to spread to any neighboring homes or vehicles. My neighborhood is filled with both families and seniors, and we must do everything in our power to protect them. I am grateful that nobody was physically harmed as a result of this incident,” he said. 
Gonzalez, who is challenging several other city commissioners to replace far-Left Mayor Ted Wheeler in 2024 is considered the moderate in the race. 
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During his campaign for commissioner in 2022, Gonzalez <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2022/10/20/rene-gonzalez-portland-oregon-city-council-jo-ann-hardesty/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> that he wanted to hire hundreds of more police, increase arrests for shoplifting and trespassing, and get all of the homeless people off the streets and into a shelter. He was also attacked by fellow Democrats for his advocacy for schools to reopen during COVID.
“If you’re doing crimes in the city of Portland, I don’t care if you’re unsheltered, I don’t care if you’re an addict or suffer [from] mental illness,” he told Oregon Public Broadcasting in 2022, “You will start in the criminal justice system.”
Portland has been plagued by homelessness, drug use, and crime in recent years at the same time many officials have pushed soft-on crime policies. 
“I think Portland went so far Left that we see and feel that the future of our city’s at stake,” he said. “I don’t think Portland can continue to be a functioning city if it continues on the path it’s going,” Gonzalez said in 2022.

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