Free Republic

On Nov. 6, the day after a national election that sent Donald Trump back to the White House, Elijah Graham and Owen King, who attend high schools on opposite sides of the Willamette River, were each greeted by the same Turkish proverb posted on their classroom bulletin boards: “When a clown moves into a palace, the clown does not become a king—the palace becomes a circus.” A similar mood met students across Portland that Wednesday morning. “The air was pretty intense,” says Camila Sahagun, a sophomore at Lincoln High School. Connor Jacobsen, a senior at Benson Polytechnic High School,...

Oregon high court decides 10 Republican state senators cannot seek re-election after record-long walkout The Oregon Supreme Court decided on Thursday that 10 Republican state senators who participated in a record-long boycott last summer to block bills extending access to abortion for minors, transgender procedures and medical intervention, as well as another measure on ghost guns, cannot seek re-election this year. The Oregon Senate Republican Caucus charged that the "Democrat-stacked supreme court sides with Democrats and union cronies on Measure 113 despite plain language of Constitution." The caucus stressed that the state high court's decision is "effectively ending the service...

After years of trying to “protect democracy” and “fortify democracy”, Democrats finally succeeded in Oregon where they banned Republicans from running for office. That’s what the Democrat flavor of democracy looks like. When the Tennessee House of Representatives temporarily expelled two Democrats who had taken part in an insurrection on its grounds, the media quickly turned it into a national story. The move by the Republican majority was an “attack on democracy”. But when the Democrat majority in Oregon banned half the Republican Senate delegation from running for reelection, that has been treated as a local story. And not an...

The State of Oregon continues to defend a state program that distributes federal coronavirus relief funds to black people only — after two separate lawsuits challenged the program as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. The Oregon state legislature created the Oregon Cares Fund this summer — with nightly Black Lives Matter riots raging in Portland — to allocate $62 million in funds from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to black residents (out of $200 million in total funds). The Oregon Cares Fund website states: "The Fund is a targeted investment in the Black community...