Free Republic

The civil rights group says it is nonpartisan and doesn’t get involved in candidate races but is spending heavily to support Kotek. You can tell the governor’s race is close when supporters of Gov. Tina Kotek take unusual measures to maintain Democrats’ nearly 40-year monopoly on the statewide office. First, the carpenters union in September dumped an unprecedented (for Oregon) $10 million into a PAC and have so far given $750,000 of it to Kotek. Then, on Oct. 15, the ACLU of Oregon announced it had formed a political action committee—something the organization confirmed it had never done before. “ACLU...

“ PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — Federal election monitors will be watching over Multnomah County's voting process on Election Day. The Oregon Secretary of State’s office said the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice told them on Thursday the agency would send monitors to the county. "It is not legal for these observers or anyone else to interfere with Oregon's elections – even the Department of Justice. We are prepared. We will follow the law and we will make sure the Department of Justice does the same," Read said. Multnomah County and other counties allow observers but protect...

Kaylub Giamanco woke up and got his kids ready for school that Thursday like it was any other day. The family made breakfast and packed lunches. He and his wife spent a little extra time dressing up their two girls because Oct. 15 was picture day at Silver Rail Elementary. Giamanco dropped the girls off as usual, then the 36-year-old carpenter headed to a job site northeast of Bend. He had brought a packed lunch in his truck, but when afternoon came around, he decided to go home instead to eat leftover tacos with his wife. He thought about running...

“PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — More human remains discovered during a cleanup at a homeless camp in Downtown Portland on Monday may be linked to remains found in the Old Town area less than a week ago. According to the Portland Police Bureau (PPPB), officers were called out to an area near W. Burnside Street and Interstate 405 just after 12:30 p.m. when a cleanup crew located the remains in a homeless encampment. Investigators did not say what remains were found or in what condition they were in. On Tuesday, Oct. 13, a crew with Rapid Response discovered human remains in...

Let me get one thing out of the way before the hate mail starts: Kaylub Giamanco is a hero. Full stop. Understand that right now before reading further. Giamanco is the 36-year-old father who grabbed his pistol from his truck, followed a 16-year-old gunman into Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Ore., and put him down. Three children and a teacher died before he got there. Nobody knows how many more would have died if he hadn't. And I want Oregon to charge him for carrying a loaded firearm on school property. Yeah, I know. “Say what?” Hear me out,...

Laws against guns on school grounds don’t deter murderers and shouldn’t threaten good Samaritans.Last week, not only did Oregon's restrictive gun laws fail to stop a shooter intent on killing innocent people, but a passing good Samaritan had to violate those laws to end the murder spree. Fortunately, authorities don't appear intent on prosecuting Kaylub Giamanco, father to two girls who attend the school, for ignoring the ban on guns on school grounds to save lives. But the law is clearly more of a threat to people with good intent than it is to those bent on doing harm. Such...

The shooter who attacked the Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, is dead. John Griffin, 16, used a shotgun, blasted open the locks on the doors to gain entry, and murdered a teacher and three children. A second teacher chucked her phone and tackled him, buying time. An armed bystander, Kaylub Giamanco, intervened and killed Griffin. Oregon already has universal background checks, a ghost gun ban, and safe storage laws. In fact, every gun control law pushed by anti-gun groups is codified here so these people can pipe down. Will Griffin’s mother be charged? She bought the shotgun around...

The weeping mother of the crazed teen gunman who carried out a mass shooting at an Oregon elementary school insisted her son was “a good boy” and that she would have tried to prevent the massacre if she could. Shauntai May Nickerson, the mother of 16-year-old John J. Griffin II, waved off reporters on the porch of her apartment complex as she smoked a cigarette and cried, the New York Times reported. The mother insisted Griffin — who killed three students and one teacher at Silver Rail Elementary School on Thursday — was “a good boy, he really was” and...

A hero dad was driving home for his lunch break when he heard gunshots and ran into an Oregon elementary school special education room to stop a crazed teen’s deadly mass shooting, according to a report. Kaylub Giamanco, a carpenter and father of two girls who attend Silver Rail Elementary, was driving home from his break on Thursday when he heard gunfire, his brother, Kyle Giamanco, told NBC News. Kaylub Giamanco, 36, who owns a concealed weapon, bravely pursued teen gunman John J. Griffin II into the school building’s special education room and fatally shot him, his brother described. Despite...

The teen gunman who killed three children and a teacher at an Oregon elementary school on Thursday was shot dead by a hero bystander who chased him inside, police said.

A Portland jury was faced with an unusual question: Should a 71-year-old man who shot a stranger flashing his genitals at him on a MAX train be convicted of any crimes? It was after midnight when Michael Grover Phill and his legally blind life partner boarded a MAX train in North Portland in January.Later, a 40-year-old man with a gaping hole in the crotch of his pants and his penis clearly visible boarded the train. The man walked up and down the aisle, past the three passengers who were fumbling with some aluminum foil, a straw and what Phill presumed...

For more than 30 years, the path to high school graduation in New York State has required Regents exams, the rigorous end-of-year tests that have determined whether students receive a diploma. The New York State Board of Regents, the governing body for its schools, voted on Monday to take a major step in its yearslong plan to phase out the exam as a graduation requirement, a far-reaching overhaul intended to eliminate barriers to graduation for some students. The changes represent New York’s most substantial education policy overhaul in decades, a sweeping rethinking of student expectations and diploma requirements in a...

PENDLETON, Ore. – To resolve a lawsuit brought by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys, Oregon child-welfare officials agreed to a court order freeing Jessica Bates to seek a license to adopt children from foster care without violating her religious beliefs about human sexuality. Bates filed a lawsuit in April 2023 challenging an Oregon Department of Human Services rule that categorically excluded her from adopting any child—no matter their age or beliefs—because she would not lie to children about their identity by promoting the view that girls can become boys and vice versa. Under the agreed-upon court order, Bates may now...

After three years of focused federal prosecution of armed drug dealers in downtown Portland, Oregon’s U.S. Attorney Scott E. Bradford announced Tuesday that law enforcement officers will now expand their efforts to target dealers operating in public housing and outside drug treatment clinics. “We saw fentanyl dealers being arrested in the morning, being released in the afternoon and back out on the streets in the evening, dealing this death and poison to our community members,” he said. Bradford described the multi-agency partnership as an “innovative solution” to the state’s fentanyl crisis. “If you talk about a lot of street-level dealers...

A burglar will not become a multi-millionaire after a Portland, Oregon, jury ruled Tuesday in favor of the business owner the burglar sued for shooting him three times. Kenneth Voyles claimed that he was trying to find food and possibly some items to steal when he broke into Touchstone Granite & Marble in March 2023, only to be confronted by the business owner, James Grant, who was living in the back room, the Portland Oregonian reported. After the initial confrontation in which he threw a cup of urine into the intruder’s face, Grant retrieved a firearm and shot Voyles three...

Oregon's spending on low-income housing has exploded in the past five years. The state has given developers an unprecedented $1.4 billion, and the cost of developing each apartment has nearly doubled, to $540,000. Dozens of projects are lined up for an additional $850 million in future state funding. Federal tax credits, which the state oversees, will bring even more money to bear. Yet one thing has remained constant: The public isn't allowed to see the details of how all these dollars are being spent. Oregon is one of the only states in the country with a carve-out in its public...

A Christian mom and her husband are fighting back in court after Oregon’s Department of Human Services determined that they caused “mental injury” to her daughter by refusing to “affirm” her transgender identity. “It has destroyed our lives,” Nicole Calaway, the mother of two daughters who are now estranged because they both claim a transgender identity, told the Daily Signal in an interview Sunday. Child Protective Services took custody of her then-15-year-old daughter, K.A., on July 18, 2024, one day after Calaway and K.A. terminated the services of K.A.’s therapist, Jennifer Forster. According to court documents, Forster filed the complaint...

While one Oregon school social worker lost an appeal after displaying children’s books in his office affirming biological sex, over a dozen books sit on the very same school district’s children's library shelves that are considered too explicit for even adult prison bookshelves. Key Takeaways: * Social worker Roderick Theis was fired from Oregon's Intermountain Education Service District after displaying books affirming biological sex in his office behind his desk. * The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, claimed that displaying the books was not speech protected by the First Amendment. * Two of the books Theis...

Forty-three percent of the people Portland police arrested at protests against immigration enforcement have had their cases dismissed or dropped with no complaint or they’ve been acquitted, a WW analysis has found.Of the eight defendants who went to trial, five were acquitted, and those convicted received only short probations. That suggests juries have largely found that the charges don’t pass muster.“When arrests are made, they’re based on probable cause that a crime was committed by the person. When a public order situation is becoming dangerous, there are times where arrests are made based on probable cause to prevent a situation...

Initiative Petition 28, a controversial measure that would ban the commercial slaughter of animals as well as fishing and hunting across the state, has failed the first level of signature verification necessary to place it on the November ballot. Connor Radnovich, a spokesman for Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read, the state’s chief elections officer, confirmed to WW that the initial sample of signatures the Elections Division tested failed to meet the state’s validity threshold. The IP 28 campaign submitted 142,784 signatures on July 2. To qualify for the ballot, the petition needs 117,173 verified signatures. That would require 82%...