Free Republic

The United States Department of Education announced on February 17 that it was opening an investigation into Portland Public Schools (PPS) over a complaint that the district’s Center for Black Student Excellence (CBSE) violates the federal Civil Rights Act. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating a complaint filed in December, alleging the CBSE violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which banned discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in education programs and activities that receive federal funding. According to Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey: “Civil rights law—and basic fairness—demand that...

A Portland City Council anti-discrimination proposal would redefine families as any consensual relationship, even those with multiple partners, non-monogamous lovers, multigenerational households and stepfamilies. The measure would prohibit discrimination of such families by landlords, employers, city government and businesses. Portland is set to join Somerville, Mass., Berkeley, and Oakland as cities recognizing polyamorous relationships. This comes at the same time as Oregon couples were featured on a polygamy TV reality show called PolyFamily. It was also featured nationally as a way to save on daycare expenses. This is not helpful for Portland’s decline. • Making Portland an icon for polygamy...

Oregon Rep. Maxine Dexter (D), a woke physician who downplayed the risks associated with COVID vaccines and has since championed so-called "gender-affirming care," recently raised eyebrows by characterizing an innocent Make America Healthy Again initiative as racist. After repeatedly calling for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be "dismantled" during a town hall on Saturday, Dexter launched into an unhinged attack on the Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "RFK Jr. is one of the biggest threats to our community and to the health of this country," said Dexter. "When you don't follow the...

The Senate bill to swap the gas tax vote from a November General election to a May election has hit a Constitutional wall. As a result the bill is stalled. The petition itself on the front page in bold sets the election date. Politicians cannot just move the election date — if they could, they then could conceivably move it to 10 years in the future. Our legal commentators shared this analysis: “In 1902 the voters of Oregon voted the referendum into our Constitution by an 11 to 1 margin. They gave the legislature an explicit message: When you try...

Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez—whose Washington swing district makes her one of the most endangered members of Congress—has repeatedly claimed she was forced to work three jobs after her father cut her off financially because she stopped going to church. She says she struggled to pay her tuition at Reed College, a prestigious private institution in Portland, Ore., and resorted to unorthodox living arrangements to avoid paying rent. But documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon cast doubt on Gluesenkamp Perez's tale of woe. Her father, Jose Perez, whom she describes as a volunteer evangelical pastor in Houston, loaned Gluesenkamp...

‘It is tragic that Oregon’s current Democratic lawmakers are so committed to their party’s radical abortion agenda that they will not, at the very minimum, take action to ensure that babies who survive abortion attempts are treated with the same standard of care as any other newborn.’ Oregon Right to Life Pro-abortion Oregon lawmakers voted against bringing a bill to the House floor Monday that would ensure that babies born alive during failed abortions are treated with the same standards of care as newborns delivered under usual circumstances. Representative Court Boice made a motion during a February 16th House floor...

A petition to ban hunting in Oregon is picking up steam. Animal rights advocates are fighting to change the law in Oregon, including banning most hunting, fishing and animal research.One of the people leading the charge of getting this petition out there says they have been trying to get this on the ballot for years, getting more and more signatures each time, though he knows it won’t likely pass. Supporters call the proposal the PEACE Act, short for People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions.

Portland’s economy is not working for the majority of residents and businesses. Housing is too expensive. Companies are shrinking their presence in the city. Job numbers are going down. And the city’s most promising indicator of growth can’t be relied upon in today’s political climate: international in-migration. Those are some of the findings from ECOnorthwest, a research and consulting firm headquartered in Portland. The city’s business advocacy group, Portland Metro Chamber, partners each year with the firm to research and analyze economic indicators in the region. In the latest report released Thursday, economists at ECOnorthwest looked at population, housing affordability...

SALEM, Ore. (KATU) — Two Democratic Oregon Senators will introduce a bill that would change how the state’s personal income tax “kicker” is distributed when revenues exceed forecasts. The resolution would amend the Oregon Constitution. Under current law, when state revenues exceed projections by at least 2%, most of the excess personal income tax revenue is returned to taxpayers as the kicker. Under the resolution, that system would largely remain in place, but with a new threshold. If the total personal income tax surplus exceeds $300 million in a biennium, only half of that excess would be returned to taxpayers....

A federal judge in Oregon dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking Oregon’s unredacted voter rolls on Monday in another setback to wide-ranging efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to get detailed voter data from states. In a hearing, U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai said he would dismiss the suit and issue a final written opinion in the coming days. The updated docket for the case showed that Oregon’s move to dismiss the case was granted. Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield welcomed the move. “The court dismissed this case because the federal government never met the legal standard to get these...

After weeks of mounting backlash and public outrage, the Salem City Council voted to remove Kyle Hedquist — a man convicted of murdering a teenager — from boards advising the Oregon city’s police and fire departments, undoing a controversial reappointment approved just weeks earlier. The council voted 6 to 2 during a special meeting to revoke Hedquist’s appointments to the Community Police Review Board and the Civil Service Commission, according to the Salem Statesman Journal. The decision overturned a narrow 5-to-4 vote on Dec. 8 that reappointed Hedquist to multiple public safety-related boards despite a recommendation from the Boards and...

More details are emerging in the case of a woman charged with attempted murder in a stabbing outside the Portland Art Museum. PREVIOUS COVERAGE | Spacal has a long history of attacking people and pets Katelynn Amanda Spacal, 33, was arraigned Wednesday on charges of attempted murder, three counts of assault, and one count of unlawful use of a weapon. According to court documents, police responded on November 18, 2025, to a stabbing outside the museum. According to a witness, he said the man called Spacal a sexual slur, and she threw a pie at him but missed. The man...

PORTLAND, Ore. (KPTV/Gray News) - The Department of Justice announced criminal charges against the man who was shot by Border Patrol in Portland, Oregon last week. The DOJ said Monday that Luis Nino-Moncada was charged with aggravated assault of a federal officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon and depredation of federal property in excess of $1,000. The Border Patrol-involved shooting happened after 2 p.m. on Jan. 8. According to a probable cause affidavit filed in federal court, agents were targeting Yorlenys Zambrano-Contreras at the time. Documents state she was arrested by Border Patrol three years ago in Texas and...

Oregon election officials are set to begin removing hundreds of thousands of inactive voters from the state’s registration rolls, a move that comes after years of inaction, mounting public pressure, and lawsuits filed against the state in recent months.

After authorities said two people were injured in a shooting involving a federal agent on Thursday, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson called "on ICE to halt all operations in Portland until a full and independent investigation can take place."

I just wrote about some of the billionaires fleeing California to avoid the proposed "one time" wealth tax which would take 5% of everything they own. But the LA Times points out it's not just the very wealthy who are fleeing the state. Once again, California topped a list put together by U-Haul showing the most out-migration.U-Haul’s survey of the more than 2.5 million one-way trips using its vehicles in the U.S. last year showed that the gap between the number of people leaving and the number arriving was higher in California than in any other state.While the Golden State...

Details are scarce at this hour, but local media outlets are reporting that two people were shot by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents earlier in the day on Thursday in Portland, Oregon.From KATU:U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents shot two people in Portland on Thursday afternoon, according to the FBI, Portland police and city officials.[...]Portland police said at a 2:24 p.m., they had learned that a man who had been shot called to request help near Northeast 146th Avenue and East Burnside. Arriving officers found a man and a woman wounded from apparent gunshot wounds. Police confirmed federal agents...

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) - Two people were shot by federal agents in Southeast Portland on Thursday afternoon, according to police. At 2:18 p.m., Portland police officers responded to the 10200 block of Southeast Main Street on a report of a shooting. Officers confirmed that federal agents had been involved in a shooting, PPB said. The FBI office in Portland confirmed that the two agents involved in the shooting were working for Border Patrol on X/Twitter. But a short time later they deleted that statement. There’s no word on the condition of the people who were shot.

A convicted murderer who gunned down a 19-year-old girl has sparked community outrage after being voted back onto the city’s police review board. Kyle Hedquist, 47, was jailed for life without parole for murdering Nikki Thrasher in 1994. The Oregon native led Thrasher down a remote road and shot her in the back of the head to prevent her from telling people about a burglary spree he had embarked on. In 2022 Hedquist was released, with former Governor Kate Brown arguing that he was 17 at the time of the crime, which means 'he shouldn't be locked-up for life.' Now,...

Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley are advocating for a bill that would stop President Trump from replacing immigration judges with what the senators call “inexperienced attorneys.”The bill is led by Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and co-sponsored by Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) alongside Senators Wyden and Merkley.