Free Republic

Officials in Portland, Ore., are worried the far-right rally planned for this weekend could turn into “another Charlottesville.” Fears of violent protests in the area are rising ahead of the rally scheduled on Saturday by Patriot Prayer, a conservative group founded by far-right Senate candidate Joey Gibson. In a “Hate Watch” report, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) warned “threats of violence” are looming over the upcoming rally, which it suggested could be “another Charlottesville.” The report comes days after Gibson said in a Facebook post last week that the “Freedom March” rally would be held at a location that...

A 22-year-old man who admitted to causing the death of his then-girlfriend's 2-year-old son in 2016 was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison. . . . . . Multnomah County prosecutors said Kraig was Zachariah's sole caretaker on the day the child went into extreme medical distress, and he waited more than an hour before trying to get the boy help. Zachariah later died at OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital. He had bruises on his head, face, abdomen, buttocks, thighs and feet and a tear to his anus, court documents said.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler on Tuesday denied claims by the union representing Immigrations and Customs Enforcement employees that city police officers would not respond to their urgent calls for service during a recent occupation by protesters. Through attorney Sean Riddell, the union on Monday criticized the mayor for his laissez faire approach to a protest at the local ICE field office, which lasted five weeks. When the protest began, Wheeler announced that he would not allow Portland police officers to be "sucked into a conflict" over the protest and said federal police would be responsible for protecting their own building...

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday called for Twitter to ban the account of an independent congressional candidate in Oregon who made offensive remarks about first lady Melania Trump. “This attack on @FLOTUS is disgraceful,” McCarthy said in a tweet, referring to remarks made by candidate Mark Roberts on Monday. “Comments like these have no business on any platform," the California Republican said, while also tagging Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in the tweet. "This account should be banned ASAP.”

Cleanup has begun at what, for five weeks, was the Occupy ICE PDX camp. Portland Police Bureau officers limited access to the site earlier today, calling it a biohazard

Melania Trump is a “hoebag” who “works by the hour,” according to an Oregon congressional candidate via Twitter. Mark Roberts is an Independent Party candidate for Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District, according to Ballotpedia. And on Monday night, he made a tweet that he may yet wind up regretting (as of now, he hasn’t – but more on that in a few paragraphs).

Portland’s mayor violated the Constitution by ordering his police officers to stand down, allowing protesters to menace ICE employees over the last six weeks, according to agency employees who sent a cease-and-desist letter to the city Monday. The Oregon city has been at the forefront of nationwide anti-ICE protests this summer, after Mayor Ted Wheeler encouraged Occupy ICE, saying he supported their cause and didn’t want Portland’s police to interfere with their demonstration. That left protesters free to shut down the building leased by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, build an encampment on nearby land, and mount a harassment campaign...

ICE officers sent a cease-and-desist letter Monday to the mayor in Portland, Oregon, demanding he apologize for ordering city police to stand down as protesters ravaged the immigration agency’s headquarters and menaced its employees. Agency employees say they were harassed, followed and had their personal vehicles damaged when protesters tried to block them from leaving. They say Portland police refused to respond, under orders from Mayor Ted Wheeler, who said he backed the protesters over the feds. With police on the sidelines the Occupy ICE protesters shut down U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s building on Macadam Avenue for a week...

Synopsis: Beth Bernard is executive director of the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association. Kevin Looper is perhaps Oregon's most influential Democratic political consultant. Looper moved to Oregon in 2002 after nearly a decade as an itinerant political campaign consultant. His specialty: registering new voters and getting them to the polls. In 2005, Looper became executive director of Our Oregon, the public employee union-financed advocacy group that waged war—always winning under his leadership—against conservative ballot measure activists Bill Sizemore and Kevin Mannix. In 2010, he persuaded voters in the depths of a recession to approve income-tax increases in Measures 66 and 67....

An Oregon high school student who was suspended over a shirt that touted President Trump’s proposed border wall has agreed to settle his lawsuit after the school agreed to pay $25,000 for his legal fees and have its principal write him an apology. Addison Barnes, who graduated this year from Liberty High School in Hillsboro, Ore., outside Portland, filed a lawsuit in federal court in May alleging that the school violated his First Amendment rights when it punished him for wearing the shirt to a politics class discussion about immigration. The shirt said “Donald J. Trump Border Wall Construction Co.,”...

Video at link. Portland police Wednesday morning cleared the last remaining protesters from an encampment at the Southwest Portland offices of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. About a dozen protesters had remained at the headquarters in South Waterfront after the camp five weeks ago was created by demonstrators saying they were acting against the immigration policies of the Trump administration. Police released a statement about 4:30 a.m. saying Portland officers were assisting in cleaning up the Occupy ICE Camp near Southwest Macadam Avenue and Bancroft Street. The city had warned remaining campers Monday night that they needed to...

If there's a "blue wave" coming in 2018, someone may have forgotten to tell Oregon's voters. A Republican challenger has pulled even with blue state Oregon's Democratic incumbent governor, according to a new poll. The news comes as a surprise in a state that hasn’t seen a Republican governor since late 1980s, sparking fears of the end of Democratic Party’s total domination of the state. The poll indicates that Republican state Rep. Knute Buehler is waging a serious challenge to Gov. Kate Brown, a vocal critic of President Trump, with both candidates getting support from 45 percent of likely voters,...

If there's a "blue wave" coming in 2018, someone may have forgotten to tell Oregon's voters. A Republican challenger has pulled even with blue state Oregon's Democratic incumbent governor, according to a new poll. The news comes as a surprise in a state that hasn’t seen a Republican governor since late 1980s, sparking fears of the end of Democratic Party’s total domination of the state. The poll indicates that Republican state Rep. Knute Buehler is waging a serious challenge to Gov. Kate Brown, a vocal critic of President Trump, with both candidates getting support from 45 percent of likely voters,...

USGS reported 11 earthqaukes (the largest a magnitude 5.6) off the Oregon coastline today, right at the Oregon-CA border on the Juan de Fuca rise associated with the subduction zone of the Pacific plates and North American plates. This area, the Juan de Fuca fault subduction zone, has been quiet since 1700 - when a magnitude 9.0 quake occurred dropping land as much as 2 meters (9 feet) over the entire 800 mile Vancouver-Washington-Oregon coastline. That quake in 1700 caused documented 10 meter (30 foot) high tsunami's recorded in Japan that crushed many villages and towns. Many previous large earthquakes...

An Oregon woman recently came home to an unusual surprise: a mountain lion, which continued taking a nap for six more hours behind her sofa. The odd encounter took place on July 8 in the Ashland, Ore., home of Lauren Taylor. After drinking from a pond in Taylor’s backyard, the cat likely entered her home through an open back door, she explained in Facebook. The post had garnered more than 17,000 reactions and shares as of Tuesday morning.

PORTLAND, Ore. – A local non-profit food cart in Southwest Portland say they have been forced to close due to alleged harassment and threats coming from protesters across the street at Occupy ICE. The Happy Camper is run by Scott and Julie Hakes. They use the food cart to raise money for their non-profit organization, Operation Off The Grid, which helps the homeless around Portland. “It's our passion due to the fact that Julie and I were both homeless in our past,” said Scott. “We had always said that if we ever get to the point where we could give...

Recordings and summaries of emergency calls show Washington wildlife officials at first objected to an air rescue of a woman treed by wolves, or help from the Okanogan County sheriff. Washington wildlife managers initially opposed sending a helicopter or a search-and-rescue team to save a woman treed by wolves in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, according to recordings and summaries of emergency calls. ... Notes from a call between DNR dispatcher Jill Jones and a wildlife officer summarized WDFW’s position, and her position, shortly before the helicopter launched. “No helicopter. Federally listed species. 3 WDFW personnel saying so,” according to DNR’s...

In a dramatic move Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell withdrew the nomination of President Donald Trump’s pick for the Ninth Circuit, Ryan Bounds, after reports surfaced that his nomination didn’t have enough votes for confirmation. Bounds, an assistant U.S. attorney in Oregon for the last eight years, was the Trump administration’s first nominee to the Ninth Circuit, named in September to replace Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, for whom Bounds clerked. O’Scannlain took senior status at the end of 2016. Both of Bounds’ home-state senators, Democrats Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, opposed his nomination. They withheld their blue slips for Bounds,...

The nation's top voting machine maker has admitted in a letter to a federal lawmaker that the company installed remote-access software on election-management systems it sold over a period of six years, raising questions about the security of those systems and the integrity of elections that were conducted with them. In a letter sent to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) in April and obtained recently by Motherboard, Election Systems and Software acknowledged that it had "provided pcAnywhere remote connection software … to a small number of customers between 2000 and 2006," which was installed on the election-management system ES&S sold them....

An art gallery in Portland, Oregon, removed a window drawing that depicts President Donald Trump being beheaded ISIS style. The horrific image shows a man whose face is concealed holding Trump’s head with one hand. In the other hand, he is holding a knife to the throat of Trump, who is bleeding profusely from his nose as well as his slashed neck. The image has the words ‘F*** TRUMP’ underneath it. The cartoon Trump is seen wearing a pin of a burning American flag on his lapel. The founder of One Grand Gallery in the Northwest city told KPTV-TV that...