Free Republic

Isaiah Esquire danced his way through the Oregon House of Representatives on Wednesday to the sounds of Aretha Franklin, followed closely by fellow Black drag performer Aqua Flora, who held a pride flag aloft as they sashayed down the chamber’s center aisle. “Normally, colleagues, we don’t applaud during performances,” Speaker Pro Tempore David Gomberg, a Democrat from Otis, told the chamber after the lawmakers gave the performers a standing ovation for their lip sync. “But there are times when I think exceptions are appropriate.” Esquire and Flora were featured performers in the House the day before Juneteenth, exemplifying the artistry...

On Tuesday, June 24, federal authorities apprehended an armed subject who advanced on officers with a large knife outside the ICE facility in Portland, Oregon. Julie Mikela Winters, 47, born Christopher Hudson, has been charged with felony attempted assault of a federal officer, according to a press release from the Department of Justice. The incident occurred during the ongoing Antifa occupation at the ICE facility located at 4310 SW Macadam Avenue, which has been under siege by black-clad militants for more than two consecutive weeks. According to an FBI affidavit, Federal Protective Service (FPS) officers observed Winters attempting to ignite...

What do you call a nation where a high school student can graduate with honors—yet cannot read or write?You call it America in 2025.This week, we learned about Aleysha Ortiz, a 19-year-old who graduated from Hartford Public High School in Connecticut with academic distinction—despite being illiterate. She is now suing the school district, alleging negligence, emotional distress, and a complete abdication of duty by the educators and administrators who were supposed to serve her. Her story, reported by CNN, is both infuriating and emblematic of a national crisis that’s been engineered from top down.Aleysha’s early assessments showed severe learning challenges....

A radicalized operative—Alexander R. Wick, 38, of Portland, nonbinary activist, ANTIFA recruiter, and CEO of a far-left climate tech front company, Cascadia Carbon Inc.—was arrested for attempting to detonate an improvised explosive device (IED) on Interstate 5, one of the nation’s most critical highways. This wasn’t a spontaneous act. This was an orchestrated act of domestic sabotage tied directly to the radical Left’s foot soldiers—trained, funded, and protected by the same global elite who are panicking under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump, now restored as Commander-in-Chief after defeating Biden in the rigged 2024 election. Let’s break it...

An alleged intruder was taken to the hospital for treatment after being shot by a Portland, Oregon, homeowner Thursday morning around 1:30 p.m. NBC16 reported the homeowner claiming the alleged intruder banged on the front door for about ten minutes. The homeowner warned the alleged intruder that he was armed but the suspect came through the front door anyway. The homeowner shot him and arriving officers “applied a tourniquet to control bleeding,” according to Sgt. Kevin Allen. KGW8 noted the alleged intruder incurred non-life-threatening injuries, which were treated at the hospital. After being treated, the alleged intruder was then “booked...

A recent Oregon Court of Appeals ruling blew a gaping hole in the state police crime lab’s long-standing technique of matching a suspect’s gun to shell casings left behind at a crime scene. The court found that a forensic examiner relied on “subjective judgment” based on training and experience – not objective scientific methodology – when linking shell casings in a 2018 Portland shooting to a Taurus handgun.The decision threatens an untold number of similar prosecutions across that state that have relied on ballistic comparisons. It already has left prosecutors scrambling to adjust trial tactics while defense attorneys hope the...

Breitbart News @BreitbartNews The Oregon State Legislature opens its session with a drag show for Pride Month 11:25 AM · Jun 19, 2025

A circus Drag Show is happening on the floor of the Oregon House of Representatives right now. I wish I could tell you this is AI folks, but it is very …very real. If this isn’t a perfect illustration of how much of a joke the Democrat-led Oregon government is, I don’t know what is. Just wow.

Afederal judge ordered the University of Oregon to pay $191,000 to Portland State University professor Bruce Gilley to cover his legal fees in a successful First Amendment challenge to its censorship of Gilley's comment "all men are created equal" in his retweet from UO's diversity, equity and inclusion office Twitter page, according to Gilley's lawyers. Gilley secured a preliminary injunction last summer that stops UO Equity's account on X, formerly Twitter, from blocking his interactions or "hiding, muting, or deleting" several kinds of his posts to its account. They settled in full this spring after nearly three years in court,...

Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said Monday on CNN’s “News Central” that President Donald Trump “promoted” the violent environment that brought the shootings of Minnesota lawmakers over the weekend. Co-host John Berman said, “There was a state representative, Democratic leader of the state legislature in Minnesota killed over the weekend, a state senator shot. How would you describe the current political atmosphere in this country this morning?” Merkley said, “I feel like Trump has really popped the lid off of the rhetoric and the the sense of hate and violence and promoted this type of an environment. It’s profoundly disturbing for...

**SNIP** Timber once drove the economies of states like Oregon. But forest harvests nosedived beginning in the early 1990s due to stricter environmental regulations, a changing lumber market and other factors. President Donald Trump hopes to reverse that trend by executive fiat, ordering the U.S. Forest Service to ramp up logging on federal lands in what environmental groups like Earthjustice call a "cynical attempt to justify destructive logging." "It's really just about lining the pockets of timber industry executives," Blaine Miller McFeely, a senior legislative representative at Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law group, told Fox News Digital. The timber slump...

Multiple police officers were injured in Portland, Oregon Saturday night during a violent riot at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility. A mob launched fireworks, smoke grenades and threw rocks at federal law enforcement, as they broke glass and forcibly entered the ICE facility, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News Digital. Four officers were injured during the attack, though federal law enforcement was able to secure the facility. The riot came after the city hosted a "No Kings" protest at 1 p.m., which officials labeled a "large-scale free speech gathering." Tens of thousands of people marched...

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley are co-sponsoring a bill that would ban discrimination against transgender military members.The Fit to Serve Act would prohibit the Department of Defense from banning transgender service members from the military and would ban the department from listing gender identity as a qualification for service.The Fit to Serve Act was led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and co-sponsored by other senators, including Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)

An Oregon middle school encouraged students to dress up as "drag queens" and their favorite "queer hero" this week in celebration of Pride Month, but one parent said families weren't notified ahead of time. At the Arts & Technology Academy in the Eugene School District 4J, students celebrated "Pride Spirit Week" with a different theme each day intended to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, according to a memo obtained by Fox News Digital. On Monday, students were encouraged to "wear as many colors as they could" for "Rainbow-Out" day. On Tuesday, they were told to wear all black "in remembrance of...

Oregon is once again at the center of a national debate over transgender athletes being allowed to compete in women's sports. A video from the high school girls' track and field state championships went viral over the weekend. The video shows two athletes refusing to step on the podium with another athlete, whom they say is transgender. The Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA) policy allows transgender students to "access athletics and activities" consistent with the student's gender identity. Alexa Anderson from Tigard High School was one of the athletes who stepped off the podium in protest. She spoke with KATU...

(Oregon Right to Life) — A radical bill to expand assisted suicide in Oregon received strong pushback during a public hearing on Monday. SB 1003 would expand Oregon’s “Death With Dignity Act” (DWDA) to make it easier for practitioners to end the lives of medically vulnerable people through assisted suicide. SB 1003 came before the Oregon Senate for its second public hearing on June 2 following strong opposition and subsequent amendments earlier in the legislative session. Medical and mental health professionals and advocates for the medically vulnerable expressed vigorous opposition to the bill, noting that the amended legislation still poses...

Ranchers say their hands are tied as reintroduced wolves—listed as endangered—are feasting on cattle instead of hunting elk and deer.. Descendants of rewilded wolves are taking a heavy toll on cattle in Northern California and Oregon, killing calves and full-grown animals and putting stress on cow-calf operations and ranchers’ pocketbooks. Because wolves are listed as an endangered species under state and federal law, ranchers are hamstrung: They can’t shoot or harass these protected predators. The penalty for killing a wolf is steep; federal law carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine, unless a rancher...

Eleven people were stabbed in a church-run homeless shelter in Oregon that is directly across from the local police HQ, according to authorities. At least one member of staff at the Union Gospel Mission in Salem is among the wounded following the shocking scenes at around 7:15 p.m. Sunday, police said. The 11 wounded were rushed to a Salem hospital with “varying types of injuries,” police said. The suspect, who is in custody, had arrived at the mission the previous night and was about to check into the 150-person ministry again for a second night when he started brawling just...

Oregon Senate Democrats passed a bump stock ban late last week and the legislation also allows local municipalities to ban the carry of firearms in buildings where public meetings are held. A bump stock ban once existed at the federal level but the Supreme Court of the United States struck it down on June 14, 2024. In the majority opinion for the bump stock decision, Justice Clarence Thomas made clear the ban faltered in claiming bump stocks turn semiautomatic firearms into machine guns: Semiautomatic firearms, which require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not machineguns. This case...

Oregon is once again at the forefront of expanding assisted suicide—and this time, the consequences won’t stop at its borders. SB 1003—is moving through the Oregon legislature that would dangerously expand the state’s so-called Death with Dignity Act. If passed, because of Oregon’s removal of its residency requirement in 2022, this law would affect vulnerable patients nationwide and further normalize suicide as a “solution” to potential suffering. What’s in the Bill: SB 1003 expands assisted suicide in three alarming ways: Broadens the Definition of Who Can Prescribe Lethal Drugs ○ Replaces “attending physician” and “consulting physician” with “prescribing provider” and...