Congressman Ronny Jackson, a Texas Republican in office since 2021, knows how to pull a fast one in the fundraising festival.
Rep. Ronny Jackson
He’s blanketing email inboxes with a deceptive, plaintive plea from Team Ronny. This one came to me in Oregon:
Ronny’s no stranger to controversy.
In March 2021, a scathing Pentagon inspector general report said he engaged in “inappropriate conduct” while serving as a White House physician, made sexual comments and “disparaged, belittled, bullied and humiliated” subordinates. The report also said he “engaged in inappropriate conduct involving the use of alcohol during two incidents” on overseas presidential trips in 2014 and 2016.
President Trump nominated Jackson to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs during his first term in 2018, but Jackson withdrew his nomination after accusations of drinking on the job and over-prescribing medications to patients.
Texas voters in the heavily conservative 13th Congressional District later elected Jackson to Congress in 2020 anyway with a strong endorsement from Trump.
Now Jackson’s out there playing tricks with emails ostensibly seeking the opinions of recipients on the midterm elections:
“Patriot, we’d like to invite you into the inner circle,” the message says.
“You’ve gone above and beyond to display the traits of someone who truly cares about their country, their community, their family, and the future of traditional conservative civilization. Therefore, we wanted to reach out to you personally, one-on-one, to get your thoughts on the outlook of the upcoming midterm elections.”
To lend a patina of legitimacy to the message, the plea then includes a series of questions:
❓DO YOU SUPPORT PRESIDENT TRUMP’S PLAN TO DEPORT ILLEGALS?
❓DO YOU BELIEVE OUR NATIONAL SECURITY IS AT RISK IF AMERICA LACKS BORDER SECURITY?
❓ARE YOU PLEASED WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP’S JOB PERFORMANCE SO FAR?
❓DO YOU BELIEVE THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE DOING MORE TO STOP ANTI-AMERICAN IDEOLOGY FROM BEING TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS?
❓ARE YOU GLAD DONALD TRUMP IS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?
❓DO YOU SUPPORT THE SECRETARY OF WAR, PETE HEGSETH?
❓DO YOU BELIEVE REPUBLICANS WILL MAINTAIN MAJORITY CONTROL IN CONGRESS AFTER THE 2026 MIDTERMS?
❓If the 2028 Presidential Election were held today, who would you prefer to win?
Then, of course, comes the real message. “Add Your name and submit your answers” along with a $20.26 contribution or show your dedication with a contribution ranging from $47 to $3,500.
“Your contribution will benefit Texans for Ronny Jackson and Trump National Committee JFC”, the email assures recipients.
Ah yes, but how much to each? In tiny barely readable text, the message says you have click through to find out. If any recipients do, they will discover that $19.25 of a $20.26 contribution will go not to Trump, but to “Texans for Ronny Jackson TX-13”. Only $1.01 will go to “Trump National Committee JFC. The same percentage division applies to all contributions. A $1000 contribution will send $950 to Jackson and just $50 to Trump, a $3,500 contribution will send $3,325 to Jackson and $175 to Trump.
To add insult to injury, unless you are careful and uncheck a box, the pledge will become a monthly recurring contribution with an indeterminate end date. In adopting this scheme, Jackson joins other politicians who have been criticized for manipulating contributors.
In 2021, the New York Times reported that the Republican National Committee and the campaign committee for Donald Trump had refunded $12.8 million collected from people in the first half of 2021 who thought they were making a single donation. Instead, the online solicitation signed them up for weekly contributions.
Four state attorneys general have begun looking into the online fund-raising practices of both political parties, specifically seeking information about the use of prechecked boxes to enroll contributors in recurring donation programs that spurred a wave of fraud complaints and demands for refunds last year.
The attorneys general for New York, Minnesota, Maryland and Connecticut sent letters to WinRed, which processes online donations for Republicans, and ActBlue, which processes online donations for Democrats, asking for documents related to the practices.
In 2023, researchers at Columbia University who analyzed millions of campaign contributions found that about half of top Republicans had signed donors up for automatic recurring contributions.
Critics allege that the practice is an attempt to intentionally manipulate small-dollar contributors. In May 2021 the Federal Election Commission (FEC) voted unanimously to recommend that Congress officially ban pre-checked recurring donation boxes, demanding mandatory “affirmative consent”. Congress has not, however, taken action to ban the practice.
Similar efforts at the state level have failed, too. In 2025, for example, the New Jersey assembly considered, but didn’t pass, Assembly Bill No. 5559 (the “Political Donation Transparency Act”) which would have prohibited automatic enrollment in recurring political contributions and established penalties for violators. A 2026 effort in Missouri failed as well when HB 1788, which would have restricted recurring contributions, passed the Missouri House, but ultimately died in the Senate.
Jackson is seeking another term in November. He will face Democratic candidate Mark Nair, who ran unopposed for his party’s nomination.
It wasn’t designed to be a concentration camp with gas chambers for mass annihilation. It was intended to be a waystation, a stopover before prisoners were moved elsewhere.
Terezin, contained within the walls of the fortress Theresienstadt 30 miles north of Prague in the Czech Republic, was established by Germany’s Gestapo.
Terezin concentration camp
More than 150,000 Jews from Czechoslovakia, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Denmark were sent there, including 15,000 children. They were held for months or years. An estimated 33,000 died there from extreme crowding, malnutrition and disease. About 88,000 were sent to their deaths at Treblinka and Auschwitz extermination camps in occupied Poland, as well as to smaller camps elsewhere. Less than 150 children survived.
Access to Terezin during WWII by outside impartial investigators was denied until the King of Denmark demanded it in late 1943 to determine the condition of 466 Danish Jews sent there earlier that year.
In late 1943, Christian X, the king of Denmark, demanded an inspection of Terezin to determine the condition of 466 Danish Jews sent there in October of that year. According to the organizationTerezin: Children of the Holocaust, to hide their cruelty, the Germans initiated a beautification program, “Operation Embellishment,” a ruse intended to mollify the king’s concerns.The area was cleaned up, many of the Jews were sent to Auschwitz to minimize the appearance of overcrowding and even fake shops and cafes were built to imply that the Jews lived in relative comfort.
A photo of Jewish children in Terezin during the inspection by the International Red Cross.
The International Red Cross carried out an inspection hosted by Adolf Eichmann on June 23, 1944. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Red Cross issued “a bland report about the visit, indicating that the representatives were taken in by the elaborate fiction”. Today’s visitors to ICE detention centers should we wary of ICE “cleaning things up” to deceive them.
Today, President Trump’s mass deportation push has resulted in the detention of a massive and growing number of alleged undocumented immigrants in the United States. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reports holding an average of approximately 65,000 to 73,000 people daily in its detention facilities. It’ is a vast network with detainees constantly being shifted around multiple times far from their homes. In theory, all these people are subject to deportation.
KING 5 Seattle television recently reported that ICE is repeatedly flying detainees back and forth across the country. The station cited a case where a Cuban man detained in Florida was subsequently flown from Miami to Denver, Colorado, then to Florence, Arizona, back to Denver, then to Florence again, then Denver, then back to Florence. “A lot of lawyers and judges around the country…believe that ICE is intentionally doing this to put people away from families, from legal representation and just honestly to try to encourage them self-deport,” the station reported.
For concerned people trying to keep track of the detainees the process is a nightmare.
The more frightening nightmare, however, bringing up memories of Terezin, is the use of American detention centers as waystations for deportations back to home countries where great danger lurks and to third countries where they are not citizens, frequently don’t speak the local language, have no personal ties and are subject to God knows what brutal conditions and even death.
More than 23,000 people have reportedly been sent to 26 countries other than their own in 2026, and according to Third Country Deportation Watch, at least 35 countries have signed agreements with the United States to take deported immigrants. The Trump administration pays other countries with documented histories of corruption and human rights abuses millions of dollars to take in deported people under “third country” agreements. As Jonathan Capeheart has said, “…the stories from immigrants swept up in third-country deportations should shock the conscience of a nation that says it believes in equal protection and the rule of law. “
The Guardian recently reported that in August about 20 people were put on a flight in the US, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, and sent to Liberia as part of a major third-country deportation arrangement. When six of them refused to get off the plane, they were dropped off in another African country, Equatorial Guinea, “one of the world’s most repressive and corrupt regimes, where armed men took them to a former luxury hotel turned detention centre in the capital, Malabo, where they have been held ever since,” the Guardian reported.
ICE has deported over 200 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador and deposited many of therm into CECOT (the Center for Terrorism Confinement)—a notorious maximum-security mega-prison. The migrants have testified that they were shot with rubber bullets and beaten on a regular basis. Many of them have alleged that they were routinely raped and tortured.
ICE has also deported migrants originating from countries such as Afghanistan and Iran to volatile regions like the Central African Republic and South Sudan. The U.S. State Department warns “Do not travel to Central African Republic due to risk of unrest, crime, kidnapping, landmines, health, and terrorism” and “Do not travel to South Sudan due to risk of unrest, crime, kidnapping, landmines, and health risks”.
Detainees have also been sent to the African nation of Eswatini, where they were held in a maximum-security prison without charge and with no access to legal counsel. And last year U.S. immigration and federal authorities tried to deport nationals from Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines to war-torn Libya until a federal judge blocked the planned flights.
Even in cases where ICE is deporting people to their home countries, the situations are often dire. There’s been an escalation of deportation flights to Haiti since the June 2026 Supreme Court decision that allowed the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), stripping legal protections from an estimated 330,000 Haitian immigrants. The humanitarian and security crisis in Haiti will expose all such deportees to harm. According to the New York Times, some 3,000 people were killed there in the first six months of this year, many of them in gang-related violence.
“Millions of people in Haiti continue to face a compounding crisis of food insecurity, forced displacement, deadly disease outbreaks, and surging violence,” says Alice Ribes, the International Rescue Committee’s director for Haiti. “Public services in many areas have collapsed under gang rule, leaving people with limited or no access to clean drinking water, food, medical care, and education.”
ICE attempts to minimize or conceal the conditions in America’s detention centers and the threats faced by deportees to their own and other countries are America’s “Operation Embellishment”.
The blood of those in harm’s way will be on our hands.
Of all things, an article in The Cut, a digital section of New York magazine, about the death of Gloria Steinem on September 2 at 92 spurred me to write this piece about Donald Trump and the Smithsonian’s interpretations of history.
Frankly, I’ve never thought much about Gloria Steinem, but for some reason I was intrigued and pored over the entire 5,948-word article. What a fascinating life!
“She was a talented, driven, and powerfully charismatic emblem for a movement that was always more complicated and sometimes more radical than she herself was,” wrote Rebecca Traister. “Her life, her work, and her contradictions together provide a remarkable illustration of the political and social disruption mainstream America is willing to tolerate, occasionally celebrate, and also revile.”
Traister wrote that Steinem frequently said she hoped to live to 100. “I’ve so loved being here,” she said in the HBO documentary. “I love it so much. I never want it to end.”
So what’s the connection of all this with Donald Trump and the Smithsonian?
The Washington Post reported on September 2 that the Trump administration is threatening to cut off executive agencies’ cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution “…if its leaders do not abandon what the administration described as “an ideological agenda that seeks to transform both the Smithsonian and the country.”
Trump set off a misguided attack on The Smithsonian when he launched his campaign against the institution last March. that was when he signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” that instructed his administration to eliminate what it called “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian and restore it as “a symbol of inspiration and American greatness.”
The executive order instructed Vice President JD Vance, who sits on the Smithsonian’s board, to work with Congress and the Office of Management and Budget to withhold funding for exhibits or programs that “degrade shared American values” or “divide Americans based on race.”
What the order really did was order that the telling of America’s history conform to Trump’s ideological view that there be just one public interpretation of American history, his.
But the fact is history is constantly being reviewed, re-interpreted, revised, re-thought. Topics of intense interest to one generation slip back as new topics emerge. Historical revisionism is a fundamental element of the discipline as new evidence emerges and societal perspectives change. Interest in some figures declines as new heroes and villains emerge.
My decision to examine more closely Gloria Steinem’s life was a reflection of a new interest in somebody with whom I was only vaguely familiar. In a similar vein, I’ve been tackling books that offer new perspectives on historical events.
For quite a while there was a widespread belief that North America, for example, was some vast, wild, untouched wilderness barely populated by primitives before more sophisticated and civilized Europeans arrived. You will be dissuaded of that notion if you read Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi by archaeologist Timothy R. Pauketat. Research has revealed that in pre-Columbian America native civilizations built massive urban centers like Cahokia in southwestern Illinois which was populated by tens of thousands of people.
I long admired Apple’s leaps into China to grow its business, but I got a new perspective, and new concerns, on the implications of Apple becoming so deeply intertwined with China when I read “Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company” by Patrick McGee.
As the son of a man who served proudly in the U.S. Navy during WWII, I have always been interested in President Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb, wondering whether it was the right decision, particularly as some revisionists have challenged it. I’ve read multiple books on the war and that decision, arriving at the conclusion it was the right one in the face of up to a million American casualties if an invasion went forward. And, by the way, historians have been constantly re-evaluating Harry Truman the man and his presidency.
I’ve read the first two books of Rick Atkin’s trilogy on the American revolution, Bernard Bailyn’s “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”, Ron Chernow’s “Alexander Hamilton” and countless others to better understand that world-changing event.
Before seeing Ken Burns’ documentary, The American Revolution, were you aware of the astonishing effort led by Boston bookseller Henry Knox to haul 59 heavy cannons and mortars from captured from British forces at Fort Ticonderoga across 300 miles of frozen wilderness to Boston, forcing a British evacuation of the city without a shot being fired? Wow! It spurred me to read an entire book, Henry Knox’s Noble Train by William Hazelgrove, about the endeavor.
The Noble Train
I’ve been taken aback to read of the extent to which slavery extended far beyond the South into into New England, even into the Norman Rockwell-perfect small town of Wallingford, Connecticut where I grew up. As Anne Farrow wrote in “The Logbooks: Connecticut’s Slave Ships and Human Memory”, In Connecticut and elsewhere in New England, “All the best families owned ‘captives’.”
Slaves on a tobacco farm in Connecticut
I grew up as a child idolizing Charles Lindbergh for his single-handed crossing of the Atlantic to Paris in the Spirit of St. Louis. I even made a special trip during a later visit to Hawaii to visit his grave on the grounds of the Palapala Ho’omau Church at the end of the road to Hana on the coast.
t wasn’t until I read numerous books about his life that I learned he was a leading spokesman for the America First Committee that opposed America’s entry into WWII. Also, although many Americans shared his early opinions, Lindbergh went further, blaming “the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration” for pressing for American intervention. I also learned after he died in 1974 that he led a double life, starting a romance with a woman in Munich, Germany in 1957 and having three children with her who knew him only as ”Mr. Careu Kent”.
Charles Lindbergh speaking at an America First Committee rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, October 3, 1941.
Suffice it to say, every time I turn around I find stories that challenge my views on people and issues of historical significance.
On July 4th, of all days, White House Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley released “Saving America’s Story,” a 162-page report accusing the National Museum of American History of “extreme political activism”. The report’s key finding: “museum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.”
What ought to dispirit all Americans is something else. That’s the Trump’s administration’s impulsive and capricious efforts to shut down debate on America’s glorious, and yes, flawed, history.
Corvallis, Oregon has finally gotten its moment in the sun.
The television commercial keeps popping up like a bad penny.
“My name is Karen and I’m the head pharmacist at Corvallis Drug,” it begins. “We’ll get customers come in and they’re looking for a brain supplement and Prevagen is the one I recommend…It’s just a product I believe in.”
Well, good for you, Karen, and probably for your pocketbook, but not so good for your customers.
Because Prevagen is marketed as an over-the-counter dietary supplement rather than a prescription drug, standard celebrity or professional testimonial rules apply rather than strict prescription drug broadcast laws enforced by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That’s Karen’s the escape hatch.
Quincy Bioscience, the privately held company that manufactures Prevagen, used to hype that’s its secret was “an ingredient originally discovered in jellyfish”, a protein called Apoaequorin found in bioluminescent crystal jellyfish, scientifically known as Aequorea victoria.
equorea victoria
In 2024, a jury found Quincy’s advertising deceptive and fraudulent. The ruling, which came on charges first filed by the Federal Trade Commission and Attorney General of New York in 2017, forbid Quincy from making claims that Prevagen-branded products can improve memory or cognition, that Prevagen can show results within 90 days, and that Prevagen is “clinically proven” to work.
But you still see the Prevagen commercials and the product can be found at most major retailers. How come? It’s because Quincy shifted its marketing to vague taglines like “For Your Brain” instead of pulling ads its entirely. And the commercials still work.
Quincy launched Prevagen in 2007. According to the FTC, the supplement had already generated more than $165 million in sales by 2017. Because Quincy is a private company, sales since then are not public, but are believed to be substantial, and the product isn’t cheap. Amazon, for example, is advertising 60 capsules of Prevagen Extra Strength with 20mg of Apoaequorin for $193.89.
Unfortunately, Prevagen is not the only heavily promoted brain supplement. Another is Neuriva, an over-the-counter dietary supplement, not an FDA-approved drug.
Neuriva is marketed to fuel multiple “indicators of brain health” such as focus, memory, learning, accuracy, and concentration. Its key active ingredients are 100mg of coffee cherry extract and 100mg of plant-sourced phosphatidylserine.
But its brain health claims also lack strong support from well-designed clinical trials and Neuriva, like Prevagen, has faced legal challenges over how its products are advertised.
So, don’t take Karen’s advice or rely on yucky jellyfish to make you sharper.
“There’s no evidence to suggest there’s an ingredient in supplements that can improve brain health,” says Dr. Pieter Cohen, an internist with Harvard-affiliated Cambridge Health Alliance, whose research focuses extensively on dietary supplements. “Nothing legally contained in supplements has been proven to improve your thinking or prevent memory loss.”
It used to be that if you didn’t read your local newspaper you simply didn’t know what was going on.
When I was growing up in the small town of Wallingford, Connecticut in the 1950s, my family read the Meriden Record, established in 1867, at the breakfast table and the New Haven Register, around since 1812, in the afternoon.
When I moved to Lake Oswego, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, in 1987, one of the first things I did was subscribe to the local paper, the Lake Oswego Review.
In 2006, Lake Oswego spent $20 million to acquire some property featuring an 89,000 sq. ft. office complex, intending to transform the site into a community center. But all hell broke loose when local opposition to the plan surfaced. Over coming years, the issue generated persistent news coverage in the Lake Oswego Review.
A couple years in, I asked a local friend, an educated professional, “So, what do you think about the controversy over the proposed community center?”
“Huh,” he replied. “Don’t know much about it.” I was shocked. He didn’t subscribe to the Lake Oswego Review, the principal news source for local residents.
That was back when as many as 8,500 local newspapers still played a critical role in the civic health of communities across America.
But since 2000, more than 3,200 newspapers in the country have simply vanished. In 2025, only about 36% of U.S. adults said they got news from their local daily paper at least sometimes, down from around 55% in 2000, and I suspect that percentage has continued to slip, particularly among young people. Overall news trust is also continuing to decline, although the most trusted news brands continue to be local television outlets and regional or local newspapers.
The loss of local media coverage in Oregon has been painful for the producers and consumers.
The Chronicle, which had served the southern Willamette Valley region in Lane County since 1909, focusing on Springfield, Creswell, Cottage Grove and Pleasant Hill, died a painful death earlier this month.
The staff of the Chronicle on their last day.
“We never put our heads down or ran on muscle memory,” Executive Editor Erin Tierney-Heggenstaller wrote in the last edition. “We were strategic, offering communities with virtually no other credible journalistic outlet what people say they want: award-winning hyper-local news about family, friends, and neighbors; practical reporting to make daily life easier; and curated content edited with standards that social media, AI slop, and corporatized commodity news no longer offer. “Build it, and they will come.” But they didn’t.”
The Lake Oswego Review hasn’t been spared from the same tumult.
Founded in 1921 as the Western Clackamas Review, renamed the Oswego Review in 1928, and then the Lake Oswego Review in 1961, the paper underwent several transformations, gradually expanding its readership and impact. By 1976, the paper was being published twice a week, totaling 90 pages and with a circulation of 8,200. In 1978, Eagle Newspapers, an Oregon regional newspaper group rooted in John Day, purchased the paper.
In 1996, former Review editor Steve Clark and his wife, Randalyn, bought the Review and its parent company, Community Newspapers Inc. Over the next few years, the company grew to include nine community newspapers. In August 2000, Lake Oswego residents Robert and Marilyn Pamplin bought Community Newspapers and transitioned it to Pamplin Media Group. Over the next 24 years, Pamplin grew to include two dozen newspapers in Oregon and their corresponding websites, including the Lake Oswego Review and the group’s flagship, the Portland Tribune, which had launched in February 2000.
“The Tribune and its family of newspapers provides the ‘right stuff’ that citizens need to engage effectively — with government, with each other, with the bigger world,” former Metro councilor Rex Burkholder said in 2016. “News, especially news that is about what is happening here and now, in one’s own community, is essential nourishment for anyone wanting to make a difference.”
On June 1, 2024, Mississippi-based Carpenter Media Group bought the entire Pamplin Media Group for an undisclosed sum. Carpenter, founded in 2023, says on its website, “The newspapers, websites and magazines we lead are the cornerstones of their communities, allies to businesses, incubators for innovation, and cultivators of journalistic talent. We aim to forge a well-informed, interconnected, and prosperous society – one community at a time.”
So much for that. In Oregon, a massacre followed.
Among the victims was the Lake Oswego Review, which had built a strong track record of publishing award-winning investigative and enterprise journalism, and two other Pamplin papers in adjacent cities, the West Linn Tidings and the Wilsonville Spokesman.
On February 11, 2026, the three papers were merged into one,The Review, a pale imitation of its three predecessors. The entire August 12, 2026 issue of The Review ran just 24 pages, including one self-congratulatory page promoting local stories in The Review, three pages of public notices and one page urging readers to let Oregon legislators know they value access to public notices in their local paper. The August 19 issue had just 15 pages of news.
With that kind of shrinkage in news coverage, it hardly matters whether my Lake Oswego friend subscribes to the local paper today.
Meanwhile, other local news outlets have shriveled as well.
In October 2024, Carpenter Media Group bought the EO Media Group, which owned Oregon’s Bend Bulletin, the East Oregonian and other rural Oregon newspapers, and proceeded to slash and burn the papers’ staffs. John Carr, Senior VP of Oregon and Washington at Carpenter Media, said the cuts were “necessary financial changes and cost-cutting measures that will stabilize these publications for the future.”
The Portland Tribune had 40-50 newsroom staffers when it launched in February 2001. It ceased printing in June 2025 following major newsroom cutbacks and layoffs and now operates strictly as a digital, online-only news service that requires a paid subscription to access. Although Multnomah County still describes the Tribune on its website as a ” Portland city newspaper, offering comprehensive coverage of news, sports, business, people and entertainment”, it now has just one reporter, Hannah Seibold , who describes herself as “the sole survivor of the Portland Tribune at this point”.
The Oregoniannewspaper, once the Portland area’s dominant local news source, has suffered as well. Founded in 1850 as a four page weekly, its first issue printed in a log shack on Portland’s SW First and Morrison,
I joined The Oregonian as a business reporter in 1987. It was a robust, well-respected paper then, with a proud past and a much-anticipated future. Daily Monday-Friday circulation was 319,624; Sunday circulation 375,914. When I left the paper 10 years later in 1997 to take a corporate communications job, daily Monday-Friday circulation was 360,000, Sunday circulation 450,000. We were on a roll.
Much of that success was attributed to Sandra Mims Rowe, who came on as editor in 1993 and tried to energize the newsroom with a hiring spree, bringing on reporters and editors from around the country. Under her leadership, the newsroom distinguished itself by winning five Pulitzers.
But the paper wasn’t able to escape the tumult of the newspaper business during her tenure. By the time she left the paper in Dec. 2009, she had to cut staff, salaries and benefits as circulation and revenue declined.
In 2009, The Oregonian’s daily circulation sat at 268,572 and Sunday circulation at 344,950, causing the paper to lose its position as one of the top 25 Sunday circulation papers in the country. That same year, the paper announced a long-term policy that protected full-time employees from layoffs for economic or technological reasons would end.
By 2012, daily circulation sank to 228,599, only slightly higher than circulation in 1950, and the declines continued. Talented reporters began departing in droves, some pushed out, others motivated by buy-outs. At the same time the once powerful paper saw its clout diminish as it abandoned rural Oregon and 7-day-a-week print distribution.
When I left The Oregonian in 1997 to take a corporate communications job, the paper employed a newsroom staff of about 400 journalists (reporters, editors, and photographers). The newsroom staff now consists of about 66 employees.
The paper publishes print editions just four days a week, while continuously updating its digital content. Average daily print circulation is 29,325 copies and Sunday print circulation is 44,294 copies. The days are long gone when what was in The Oregonian, particularly its opinion section and columnists, dominated local conversations all day.
So here we are. A once mighty paper hollowed out and humbled. A growing population served by a smaller paper. A weakened paper that no longer drives the daily discussion at the proverbial water cooler (or over a latte). A diminished, editorially impotent presence with a dwindling ability to hold powerful interests accountable.
But is the local news environment as depleted as often presumed? Is the gloomy view unwarranted?
As the size and impact of the traditional major dailies and weeklies in the Portland metro area have shrunk, other news outlets are working to fill the gap. Some of their audiences are limited and their coverage is not very deep, but together they are beginning to fill a continued need and judicious selectivity can provide unexpectedly broad local news coverage.
There is still, however, too much online coverage of national news and not enough of local. As Public Media Company CEO Tim Isgitt recently said to Poynter, “…public media is facing a perfect storm. We’re part of a rapidly changing media and technology landscape that is providing unlimited content — but perhaps not the content we need. We can get any national journalism we need, but we can get very little local journalism from this landscape…We’re part of a media and technology landscape that is largely failing our society — with detrimental societal impacts, whether it’s misinformation, lack of trust or the effects it’s having on polarization, teen mental health or the loneliness epidemic.”
Some local media in Oregon are trying to do better.
Willamette Week, an alternative paper and digital media outlet, continues to offers cultural, civic and political coverage and reaches hundreds of thousands of print and online viewers, even if it tends to focus on only a few topics each week and its daily local online news coverage is limited.
The Portland Mercury, an alternative bi-weekly, offers coverage of local arts, music, and city culture.
Other options include the solid news site OPB, City Cast Portland, a website and a daily podcast for local news, Oregon Capitol Chronicle, part of the States Newsroom, and a relative newcomer, Axios Portland, with two reporters, Meira Gebel and Kale Williams.
And there’s still Oregon Business, around since 1981, that reports on a wide range of topics such as leadership, innovation, technology, culture, politics and environment, and the Portland Business Journal, published since 1984, which delivers local commercial news, data, and networking opportunities for the Portland, Oregon metro area.
Another innovative outlet focusing on local business news is Portland Inno, a digital media outlet powered by the Portland Business Journal, focused on Portland’s local startup, technology and innovation economies. A recent story, for example, broke the news that Mark Ronay, who founded materials company Liquid Wire in 2016, had launched a company is called Spectralsurf, aimed at bringing down the costs of semiconductor manufacturing, with funding from Portland Seed Fund and ONAMI .
Then there are Portland’s television stations, KGW 8, KOIN 6, KATU 2 and KPTV Fox 12, offering varying levels of useful local news.
Portland’s local news outlets sometimes provide mindless drivel and poorly-researched gossip, comparable to the blitzing of the podium done by the Trump administration on a regular basis, and there’s a lot of slop out there, but they can also produce substantial deeply-researched impactful stories and the fact is the public is hungry for reliable local news.
Increasingly, however, that hunger for local news is being met not by the news outlets noted above, but by social media. Young people, in particular, move between podcasts, X accounts and YouTube livestreams where there’s no editorial control, no reviews and no accountability, where skepticism is required, but not often employed. Of course, young people will eventually grow older, but there is little likelihood that they will grow into accessing media as their parents did.
For the first time globally, more people are getting their news from social media platforms featuring independent online news personalities and commentators on platforms like Substack, TikTok and YouTube than television or news websites, according to a new report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. This is particularly the case with younger audiences who often stumble upon information passively, consuming news that is automatically served to them through algorithm feeds, comment sections, and trending topics.
“…most Americans now get their information and form their opinions through creators, podcasts, Substacks, group chats,” says Renée DiResta, an Associate Research Professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. “Most traditional institutions have only minimal engagement or presence in those spaces. So that ecosystem runs on a very different model of legitimacy. People are following people, not institutions. They’re following people that they find appealing or relatable. Somebody coming to you from their kitchen.”
Substack is one beneficiary off this trend. One of the more prolific, and controversial, Substack commenters in the Portland area is Keven Dahlgren, who writes on homeless issues in Truth on the Streets. Another widely read site is Oregon Roundup by Jeff Eager, which says it covers “Oregon’s uniquely dysfunctional state government and the politics that create it.”
One problem, though, is that of the strong, reliable news, even local news, is only available if you are willing to shell out for a subscription, and many people are not. As one commenter on a substack post, Second Rough Draft, recently noted, “…the press sells what the public wants to buy. If there was a greater market for light, the media would cut back on the heat…elite audiences willing to pay are getting ample good information and others choose to pay less and get less.”
The Reuters Institute notes in a report, another troubling sign, that it is seeing stagnation or decline in overall online news engagement. People are turning away from the news. “The trends are worse among younger people and those without a university degree,” Reuters says.
Some of that decline may be simply due to the way social media works. “Social media algorithms are optimised for engagement, with the goal of keeping people on the platform as long as possible, ” according to Reuters. “This has seen social media companies prioritising things like entertaining short-form video and de-prioritising news…Political news caused headaches for them, so they turned away.”
The problem is locally-focused social media can be a swamp and it can be hard to separate truth from the muck.
“… in different, darker corners of the internet, it has become a source of endless misinformation and disinformation dispensed by a panoply of influencers, conspiracy theorists, edgelords, grifters and con men, DIY gurus, hostile foreign actors, and partisan echo chambers full of dittoheads and doxers,” observes John Ramage, a former and Arizona State University professor of English, on Substack. “It is a world without gatekeepers, regulators or arbiters, an epistemic wild, wild west where anyone who relies on evidence-based reasoning is dismissed as an establishment tool.”
Then there’s the problem of what’s happening when news-searchers engage with social media, such as items on X. 404 Media recently noted that X’s algorithm learns what you hate and shows you more of it, according to a new study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The paper, titled Value misalignment of X’s feed algorithm is a reflection of value tensions in engagement, found that the site’s algorithm prioritized engagement above all else when it generated a user’s For You Page.
“When a user on X sees a post that makes them mad — like a press release from a politician from a political party they don’t like — sometimes they’ll fight about the post in the replies,” 404 Media noted. “It doesn’t matter who you follow or what your stated values are, X reads replying as engagement and will send more of the infuriating posts the user’s way.”
Reviewing The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything, New York Times book critic Alexandra Jacobs noted that with social media,”All was sweet, innocent fun for awhile, then the algorithm came along and ruined everything, like a drifter in a Cormac McCarthy novel”, with all sorts of deleterious effects.
Or as historian Anton Jäger said recently on the Ezra Klein Show, “…our attention is fundamentally shaped now by algorithms that care about controversy, that care about newness, that are hunting amorally and constantly for whatever will get a rise out of people.”
It’s also important to realize that slop is proliferating on the web — some studies say 50 percent of online articles are now artificially generated. Then there are so-called “pink slime” sites, publications that mimic the appearance and output of traditional news organizations. Snopes, an online fact-checking and myth-busting website, can help sniff out such sites.
However you consume local news, “Studies have shown that the supply of local news is correlated with higher rates of civic engagement,” says the Agora Journalism Center at -the University of Oregon. “Robust local journalism matters to how informed citizens are, and according to another recent Knight Foundation report, a healthy news and information ecosystem creates “a virtuous circle whereby improved information contributes to improved community outcomes.”
If you want an educated, informed public in a position to make wise judgments, quality local journalism is key. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1787, “The way to prevent irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people.”
The Portland City Council approved a term sheet for a possible Moda Center renovation on August 12, one more step in a potential misguided commitment to a billionaire and his buddies.
The term sheet commits what The Oregonian has dubbed “a torrent of taxpayer money” of up to $573 million in public funds for the renovation of the Moda Center, including a state commitment of $365 million, a Portland commitment of $120 million and a Multnomah County commitment of $88 million. Portland would also commit up to $275 million in maintenance costs on the arena over the next 20 years and Multnomah County would chip in $13 million for capital expenses.
Don’t cry for Texas billionaire Tom Dundon and Rip City Rising, the group he leads in the Blazers deal, under which the group purchased 80.1% of the Trailblazers at a $4 billion valuation and the remaining 19.9% at a $4.5 billion valuation. Whatever they pay is likely to be rewarded with a much bigger payday down the road. At some point they are going to turn it over and probably make a bundle.
On august 21, it was reported that Marc Lore had agreed to sell his control stake in the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves and the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx to billionaire investor Marc Stad at a $4.5 billion enterprise value. Lore and Alex Rodriguez purchased their initial controlling stake in the Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Lynx from Glen Taylor based on a $1.5 billion valuation, completing the process in June 2025.
And look at what one owner just pulled off selling the Los Angeles Lakers.
Earlier this month, Mark Walter sold the Los Angeles Lakers to Bob Iger, the former Disney CEO and Los Angeles notable, and Josh Kushner, a venture capitalist. The deal came together in three days: $12.5 billion for a team that Walter bought less than a year ago for $10 billion.
Dundon and his investment group also stand to reap billions from the Blazers acquisition down the road. What makes ordinary people who would never go along with subsidies for billionaires become willing supporters of such rewards when they become politicians?
The payoffs for other buyers of NBA teams who have subsequently sold their teams have been eye watering.
Boston Celtics: Bought by an investment group, Boston Basketball Partners L.L.C, led by Wyc Grousbeck that purchased the team in 2002 for $360 million; sold to an investment group led by private equity mogul Bill Chisholm in August 2025 for $6.1 billion.
Phoenix Suns: Bought by Robert Sarver, leading an investment group called Suns Legacy Partners, in 2004 for $401 million; billionaire mortgage lender, Mat Ishbia, purchased the majority stake of the Suns and the WNBA’s Mercury for $4 billion in 2023.
Dallas Mavericks: Mark Cuban purchased a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks from H. Ross Perot Jr. in January 2000 for $285 million; Cuban sold a majority interest in the team to Miriam Adelson and Patrick Dumont of the Adelson family casino empire for $3.5 billion in 2023.
Charlotte Hornets: Michael Jordan bought a majority stake in the Charlotte Bobcats (now the Hornets) from founder Bob Johnson in March 2010 for $275 million; sold his majority stake for $3 billion to a group led by Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall in July 2023.
Golden State Warriors: Bought from Chris Cohan by Joe Lacob and Peter Guber for $450 million in July 2010; current valuation estimated at $10.8 – $11.3 billion.
Milwaukee Bucks: Bought by former U.S. Senator Herb Kohl in 1985 for $18 million; sold by Kohl to Wes Edens and Marc Lasry in 2014 for $550 million; current estimated valuation $4.1 – $4.5 billion.
LA Lakers: Bought by Jerry Buss in 1979 for $67.5 million; in June 2025, Buss family agreed to sell controlling interest to Mark Walter, a minority owner since 2021 and owner of the L.A. Dodgers, for $10 billion.
And the money changing hands in these deals is likely to get bigger. “I am absolutely convinced that we have not reached anything close to a ceiling,” Irwin Kishner, a partner at the law firm Herrick and co-chair of its sports law division, told The New York Times. And particularly with the most recognizable teams, he said, “you could only envision the numbers going further north.”
Who knew a remodeled bathroom could change your life. You’ve probably seen one of Jacuzzi Bath Remodel’s TV ads. “Is your bath or shower old and outdated? Our design experts can work with your style to create the customized bath of your dreams without breaking the bank. Jacuzzi Bath Remodel can make your dream bath a reality.”
For many people, one reason Jacuzzi Bath Remodel is assumed to be a high-quality company offering superior service at a reasonable price is because of its tie-in with Costco. Jacuzzi Bath Remodel is one of many companies that have an official marketing and sales partnership with Costco. In this case, it gives Costco members an exclusive promotional rebate in the form of a shop card on qualifying purchases.
But look behind the curtain.
Jacuzzi Bath Remodel is a national brand that operates across the country through a network of authorized dealers and franchisees. There are 33 reviews for Jacuzzi Bath Remodel of Portland on Yelp. They are overwhelmingly negative:
“Jacuzzi customer service is an absolute joke…Trying to get them to do anything or treat us like our issue is a big deal is like pulling teeth…Customer service acts like they are bored to tears when we call.”
“We found out about Jacuzzi from a sales representative at Costco. When we had the sales appointment at our house we were guaranteed to get updates about our materials and project completion date, neither happened. After multiple tries to contact the company we settled on a project date. 2.5 months later. The morning of the jacuzzi employees showed up without a previous courtesy call or text. They worked for 2 hours and 45 minutes and left because “their van broke down”.
“Our 2 day shower replacement was more like 2 or 3 weeks and they had to come back several times later to fix misaligned panels…We thought with their top tier pricing, we’d get a quality product and workmanship. Obviously, high price is no guarantee of either. Very disappointed in this big-name brand.”
“If able I would give Jacuzzi Bath and Remodel a ZERO We arranged a shower remodel with them through a Costco promotion.”
Reddit is replete with complaints about Jacuzzi Bath and Remodel as well:
“Jacuzzi came out with high pressure sales tactics, $26k to replace a walk-in shower if I agreed the day of otherwise it went to $32k for their “1-year” guaranteed quote. Needless to say I laughed them out of my house. I had previous quotes to remodel the entire bathroom for less than what they wanted for just the shower.”
“The project was supposed to start April 6th 2026 And I still haven’t gotten the job completed. I have No shower and now my toilet isn’t working…This was supposed to be a 2 day job. 3 months and still nothing.”
Trustpilot reviews are critical, too, as the site’s summary notes:
“…most reviewers were let down by their experience overall. Many people found the pricing to be excessively high, often tens of thousands more than other contractors, and felt pressured by aggressive sales tactics to commit quickly. Customers also reported significant dissatisfaction with customer service, including unreturned calls, missed appointments, and persistent unwanted contact after expressing disinterest. Furthermore, many encountered poor product quality, with issues like staining, loose parts, and components not working correctly shortly after installation. Installation processes were frequently criticized for not being completed in the promised timeframe, causing damage to homes, and often involving subcontractors whose work quality was inconsistent.”
And then there’s something else to watch out for – financing costs. A Jacuzzi Bath Remodel website says: “Financing offer available through third-party lenders under terms of applicable loan program. No interest for 12 months if paid in full within 12 months. Interest will be charged to you from purchase date if purchase balance is not paid in full within 12 months.” If the cost of your project is $20,000 and you still owe $15,000 after 12 months, the interest due at a 28%. interest rate, for example, would total $2,371.08.
An Oregon City, Oregon couple’s experience with a Jacuzzi Bath Remodel contractor serves as a warning.
The couple, both in their 70s, hired Jacuzzi Bath Remodel in March of 2025. According to their daughter, the total cost of the project was expected to be about $20,000. They paid $10,000 upfront as a downpayment with the understanding that installation would begin in approximately six weeks and that the remodel itself would take about two days.
What followed, however, was months of delays, failed installation attempts, poor communication, and an unbelievable amount of disruption to their home.
About 14 weeks passed before the contractor came to the couple’s home to begin the project, only to discover that the wrong bathtub had been ordered. After another installation attempt was scheduled, the bathtub arrived damaged. A third attempt brought a third damaged bathtub. Meanwhile, the bathroom sat with exposed framing, unfinished walls and an opening in the floor to the basement below.
“Communication had also been extremely frustrating,” their daughter said. “Phone calls and messages would routinely go unanswered for days, and at times, weeks.”
The couple finally gave up on the contractor, but the company tried to charge them a penalty for cancelling their order and they “had to beg for their money back”, their daughter said. Then they spent $20,463 at Home Depot in October 2025 to have the remodel done correctly.
Costco has an overwhelmingly positive public reputation, built on high customer trust. Its membership renewal rate is reported to be over 90% If it wants to maintain its reputation it needs to ensure its marketing and sales partnerships are reliable, on the up-and-up and consistently meeting consumer expectations. Right now it looks like they aren’t.
Karyna Shuliak, a native of Belarus, emigrated to the United States with Jeffrey Epstein’s help, becoming his lover, confidant, beneficiary of his vast wealth and ignorer of his treatment of other women, many of whom would later claim to be victims of his abuse. That’s what the New York Times reported on July 26 in a lengthy expose.
With Epstein’s help, Shuliak married another woman in New York, figuring that “might be the easiest way to gain U.S. citizenship without raising red flags that the marriage was arranged solely to avoid deportation”, according to the Times.
They jetted around the world together and he funneled payments of nearly $1 million to her over the years. He also sent tens of thousands of dollars to her parents in Belarus, the Times reported.
With Epstein’s death, Shuliak could inherit as much as $100 million from his estate, the Times reported.
While much of the coverage of Epstein’s behavior has focused on his exploitation of young girls and woman, the Times article revealed something equally appalling — the extent to which other people were complicit. Throughout his miserable life, Epstein relied on the willingness of other people to accommodate him, to protect him by ignoring his transgressions, to obscure his motives, to assist in his abuses.
One notably complicit player was Alexander Acosta.
According to a May 12, 2026 report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Epstein was arrested on charges of solicitation of prostitution in 2006, after the stepmother of a 14-year-old girl reported to police that an older man had molested her stepdaughter. In Florida, local, state, and federal law enforcement investigated the case for years, compiling extensive evidence from dozens of victims.
But, under pressure from Epstein’s stable of prominent attorneys, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alexander Acosta negotiated a non-prosecution agreement (NPA) under which Epstein served only 13 months in jail on state charges of solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of a minor. Signed in 2007, the deal shielded Epstein and “any potential co-conspirators” from future federal prosecution by Acosta’s office for a set of sex crimes. The NPA negotiated by Alex Acosta, with its narrow guilty plea and lenient sentence, enabled Epstein to continue his abuse and trafficking activities for almost another decade.
Acosta later served as Secretary of Labor under President Trump from April 2017 until his resignation in July 2019.
In Shuliak’s case, the complicit helpers were numerous, according to the Times.
Shuliak had always wanted to be a dentist. In 2012, after Columbia’s College of Dental Medicine initially rejected her, Epstein asked his dentist, Dr. Thomas J. Magnani, a powerful alumnus, to put him in contact with the dental school dean. Mr. Epstein dangled the idea of making up to a $10 million donation. In the end, he would give only about $210,000 to Columbia, according to an accounting by the university, but it was enough to grease the wheels.
Then Dr. James Fine, a dental school administrator, gave Dr. Shuliak a heads-up on the topics she would encounter during an admissions exam in April 2012 to test her practical skills as a transfer student.
By the time she applied to Columbia in 2012, Shuliak had overstayed the student visa she had obtained in 2010. Epstein chose, from the ranks of his assistants, a 30-year-old woman from Minnesota to be her spouse and the women were married three weeks later at the Office of the City Clerk.
After the wedding, a Brooklyn immigration lawyer unnamed by the Times who worked for Epstein submitted an immigration form stating that the woman wanted to list Dr. Shuliak as her wife and beneficiary. The request was approved, and unnamed complicit immigration officials dismissed Shuliak’s pending deportation proceedings. Months after the marriage, Shuliak got a green card, making her a lawful resident. Attempts to use marriage to get a U.S. green card usually face very strict checks, with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) looking closely at applications to stop marriage fraud. In May 2018, she officially became a U.S. citizen, then divorced her spouse a year later.
According to the 2026 report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Shuliak’s former wife claimed she had been forced into marriage. Even though the report concluded that the marriage may have been done to provide Shuliak with the “legal basis to continue residing in the United States” it didn’t recommend any legal challenge to her citizenship. You could consider that failure being complicit in fraud as well.
The congressional report is replete with stories of people who helped Epstein in his pursuit of women to abuse.
According to the report, New York immigration lawyer, Mehmet Arda Beskardes, worked closely with Epstein from 2013 to 2018, helping Epstein arrange visas and other immigration documents for the women in his network. On one occasion, the report said, he may have facilitated an illusory marriage between Shuliak, and one of Epstein’s victims, apparently to provide Shuliak a legal basis to continue residing in the United States.
Epstein’s accountant, Richard Kahn, also wrote a letter to immigration authorities in support of the marriage, later acknowledging that the letter was “embellished”, the report said.
The Times reported further that in 2023, when Shuliak applied for a postdoctoral dental program at Columbia, apparently to fulfill a requirement she needed to obtain a license to practice in the state, the same two dentists who helped her gain admission to Columbia in 2012 once again came to her assistance, according to a copy of her admissions file reviewed by The Times. The file shows that Dr. Fine, the dean overseeing Columbia’s postgraduate residency programs, created a special “faculty internship” for her at the Midtown Manhattan dental practice he shared with Dr. Magnani.
Both men gave her their highest recommendation for the program, the Times said, from which she graduated in May 2025.
It looks like the roster of those complicit in Epstein’s predations also may include some officials at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, which Epstein attended as a teenage bassoonist and later supported with donations.
On July 28, 2026, the New York Times reported that Epstein returned to mingle with students, several of whom later said they had been subjected to his grooming and abuse. A report by a law firm hired by the school included the accounts of two of the three former Interlochen students who have described disturbing encounters with Mr. Epstein. In one case, a woman told the investigators of going to meet him at the campus lodge where “Epstein engaged in sexual conduct with her….”
The Times said the report included additional claims by a former Interlochen student who told investigators that Epstein had paid for her to fly to New York the summer after she graduated, and that she had given him a massage at his home and he “may have asked her to remove her top.” Her mother called Interlochen, her mother told investigators, to warn the school that Mr. Epstein was “preying on their students,” but they said no one from Interlochen had followed up.
And the list of those complicit in Epstein’s behavior goes on. It’s criminal.
Will all these complicit people pay a price. Maybe not in the courts, but, hopefully in their souls. As Dostoevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov, “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.”
In Colorado’s June 2026 primaries, 29-year-old Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros unseated 15-term incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in the dark-blue 1st Congressional District, which consists largely of Denver residents.
As the overwhelming favorite against her Republican opponent in November’s general election, Kiros, 29, is expected to be the first self-identified socialist to be elected to Congress in Colorado history.
“We just proved that if you organize the people, you can beat the organized money,” Kiros told Colorado Newsline after her win. “And we’re going to replicate it in races all across the state.”
Will they?
Before pundits and the public accept this assertion, let’s step back and examine what just happened in Colorado’s 1stCongressional District.
The numbers suggest that the real victor was voter apathy, as in so many political contests across the country. Non-voters default to being led by the preferences of voters. That, combined with the creation of safe party districts, is increasingly turning primaries into the real elections.
Bear with me now.
In looking at the 1st Congressional District race, it’s important to recognize that it was limited to registered Democrats and unaffiliated voters. There are 477,098 active registered voters in the district. Of those, 187,317 are registered as Democrats and 236,454 are registered as Unaffiliated voters. So, the number of eligible voters in the Democratic primary totaled 423,771.
But only 157,645 people, or 37.2 % of those eligible, voted in the primary.
That translated into 83,855 for Kiros, 62,715 for DeGette and 11,075 for the Democratic party candidate, Wanda James. In other words, the Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros won the primary with just 19.79 % of eligible voters, only a few more than would fit in the Denver Bronco’s stadium.
Overwhelming? A massive sign of a cultural shift? A rejection of a more moderate political climate? I don’t think so.
A similar situation in New York City is why caution is warranted in interpreting recent races.
“Turnout in New York’s closed primary races is typically small—even Mamdani won last year’s Democratic mayoral primary with less than 7 percent of the city’s overall population backing him,” City Journal reported. “Tuesday’s results do not prove, then, that the majority of residents in New York are hard-left socialists. They instead suggest that, since most potential voters remain politically apathetic, a small but well-organized machine like the DSA’s can deliver big results.”
There’s a parallel here with Democratic Socialist Janeese Lewis George’s victory in Washington, D.C’s mayoral Democratic primary, which has led some to declare her win a mandate. There are approximately 357,000 registered Democrats in Washington, D.C., making up roughly 75% of all registered voters in the District. Only about 38% of registered Democrats voted and George won with just 75,000 votes. A mandate? Hardly.
So, calm down folks.
This isn’t to say that the new socialist legislators in the House won’t be able to muck things up.
As commentator Gerard Baker has observed, “The victory by “democratic socialists” and their allies in New York Democratic primaries last week is a signal moment in the nation’s descent into political dystopia. Sure, we can overstate its importance. New York isn’t America. What passes for cool radicalism in Brooklyn’s Park Slope would get you a psychiatric evaluation in most of the country.”
In addition, if Democrats retake the House in November, their margin is likely to be slim and an enlarged cadre of disruptors will be able to challenge leadership. Republicans are also likely to try to tar the entire Democratic Party for its association with the Democratic Socialists. President Trump has already called the socialist nominees “godless” communists who are threatening the country. At a Faith and Freedom Coalition gathering, he urged religious conservatives to prevent a “communist” victory in the midterms,saying his pro-Christian policies would be reversed if Democrats returned to power.
Lafayette Park north of the White House is one of the most prominent hubs for political protests in the country and a beacon for the first amendment.
So, of course, President Trump, not content with destroying the Rose Garden and the West Wing, is continuing his rampage through Washington’s landmarks with a move to permanently surround the park with an 8-9 ft. fence. That would allow the park to be closed at Trump’s discretion.
On Thursday, July 16, the Commission of Fine Arts, a federal design panel stuffed with Trump supplicants, indicated support for the plan.
“This is definitely the president’s park, but also the people’s park, and it’s to be made open, but also closeable, so that it can be made safe,” James C. McCrery II, the vice chair of the Commission, told the New York Times.
Safe for whom? Safe from whom?
The park has long been the site of multiple political protests, including picketing by suffragists demanding voting rights, protests for women’s rights and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), demonstrations by civil rights and anti-war activists, LGBTQ activists, anti-nuclear war encampments, and Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
In 2021, the National Park Service and the White House Historical Association added three wayside markers on the north side of the park that tell the story of protest in the park, the construction of the White House by free and enslaved laborers, and the influence of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in preserving the character of the park.
In this Library of Congress photo from 1917, suffragists march with banners, picketing outside on the sidewalk in front of the White House.
The Secret Service, the Executive Office of the President and the Department of the Interior claim they want to install the permanent fence so the park can be closed during “heightened conditions.”
A demonstrator hold up flags at a rally for D.C. Democracy in Lafayette Park near the White House in Washington, Saturday, June 25, 2011. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)
NPR ran the AP photo above by Luis Alvarez of a rally in Lafayette Park to show how close protesters were able to get to the White House without barriers in 2011. Trump wants to push them back, way back.
“What this fencing represents, to me, is the worst of what the new attitude toward politics represents,” Marty Pearl, 83, who brought a “Hate Won’t Make America Great” sign to the area, told NPR. “And that is imperialism, fascism, dictatorship, because what dictators do is isolate themselves from the people they rule. That is not, for me, the way democracies can possibly work.”
He’s right. Putting our political leaders more and more behind barriers and keeping them more and more distant from the people they serve diminishes our democracy.
And Trump doesn’t want to stop with the fence.
In June, the Washington Post disclosed that Trump is secretly planting a monument to himself in Lafayette Square in the form of 47 maple trees as a nod to being the 47th president.
I felt a profound sense of sorrow as our plane descended into Washington, D.C., last Thursday. I hadn’t been to our nation’s capital since 2008.
As we drove to our hotel, a deep heaviness settled over me. We passed National Guard troops stationed on street corners and around monuments. It was deeply unsettling to see armed American soldiers patrolling the streets of our nation’s capital.
Passing the Labor Department, I saw two enormous, Stalin-esque banners of Trump and Teddy Roosevelt hanging from the building. I couldn’t help but wonder how we had reached a point where the president of the United States was being glorified on government buildings in a way that felt more like a personality cult than a democracy.
The next morning, we walked toward Dupont Circle and saw more armed troops, ICE agents, and Secret Service personnel patrolling the streets. When we headed toward the White House, police and military vehicles blocked the usual road.
We were directed to a small viewing area where we could barely see the White House through a sixteen-foot fence surrounding Lafayette Park.
Americans, Australians, Colombians, and people from around the world were gathered there, straining to catch a glimpse of the people’s house through the massive barrier.
I was horrified.
The White House belongs to the American people. Lafayette Square belongs to the American people. These are symbols of our democracy—not private property to be barricaded and hidden from the public.
ThinkingOregon 