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Kseniia Petrova’s Ordeal: Do You Hear The Jackboots Coming?

Kseniia Petrova at Harvard Medical School

Remember when the eight-time WNBA All-Star, Britney Griner, was arrested in 2022 at a Moscow airport on drug-related charges? She was detained for nearly 10 months, spending much of that time in prison. American public and political outrage was severe and her supporters pressed the White House hard to bring her home.

“I’m terrified I might be here forever,” Griner said in a handwritten letter to President Biden appealing for her freedom.

Apparently, America learned a lesson from Griner’s imprisonment. But it was the wrong one. 

Kseniia Petrova, a 30-year-old Russian-born scientist at Harvard Medical School, has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since February. Her detention occurred when she was returning to Boston from a trip to France. Her story was reported by Geoff Bennett, who serves as co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS News Hour. 

Returning to Boston’s Logan International Airport from a trip to France, she brought back frog embryo samples for her lab. The PBS News Hour reported on April 24 that ICE said she knowingly broke the law in failing to properly declare the embryos. According to the News Hour, A typical customs violation results in a fine, but Petrova had her visa revoked, was detained and flagged for deportation.

In moves more common in a police state, where people are swiftly moved from place to place to avoid detection, ICE first sent Petrova to a cell at the airport. The next day they transferred her to a jail in Vermont. She spent the next week there. Then ICE flew Petrova to detention in Louisiana. She has now been imprisoned at the Richwood Detention Facility in Louisiana for two months in a one-room facility with 89 other women, wall-to-wall beds and almost no personal privacy. Yes, for two months now.

She has an immigration court hearing scheduled for May 7 in Jena, Louisiana, related to her asylum case.

The News Hour reported that Petrova has been a vocal critic of the Russian government and its actions in Ukraine and fears persecution if deported there. “I am afraid that, if I come to Russia, I will be arrested, because we have in Russia special law,” she said. “If you say something against current war, you will be imprisoned, and you can be imprisoned for 15 years.”

“ICE is required to detain individuals … only if they are a flight risk or a danger to the community. Ms. Petrova is neither,” said her attorney, Gregory Romanovsky. “Her continued detention serves no purpose and wastes limited government resources.”

He has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Vermont, arguing that a declaration issue doesn’t justify detention and the government failed to follow standard protocol.

NPR reported that earlier this week, during a preliminary hearing, a Louisiana immigration judge found the government’s case to be legally insufficient and ruled that the Notice to Appear, the document that initiates deportation proceedings, did not meet legal standards. The judge gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement one week to submit stronger evidence.

The Trump administration, banking on the support of its most dedicated backers, is running roughshod over human rights right here in America. 

Where is the outrage? 

I despair.

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Shameful: Trump’s Law Firm Deals Could Skirt Public Records Laws

President Donald Trump has pressured nine of the nation’s largest and most prestigious law firms to capitulate to demands that they provide nearly $1 billion in free, or pro bono, legal work to causes Trump supports.[1]

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said one of the firms, the Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP law firm (“Paul, Weiss”) agreed that:

  • Paul, Weiss will take on a wide range of pro bono matters that represent the full spectrum of political viewpoints of our society, whether “conservative” or “liberal.”
  • Paul, Weiss will dedicate the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services over the course of President Trump’s term to support the Administration’s initiatives, including: assisting our Nation’s veterans, fairness in the Justice System, the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects.
  • Paul, Weiss affirms its unwavering commitment to these core ideals and principles, and will not deny representation to clients, including in pro bono matters and in support of non-profits, because of the personal political views of individual lawyers.  

Trump said in his Truth Social post that Paul, Weiss also “… acknowledged the wrongdoing of former Paul, Weiss partner, Mark Pomerantz”, who had worked as a prosecutor in Manhattan and had pushed for Mr. Trump to be charged criminally. A copy of the agreement provided to the media by Brad S. Karp, the chairman of Paul, Weiss, did not, however, include any mention of Pomerantz. The New York Times also reported that five people briefed on the matter said Mr. Karp said he did not criticize Mr. Pomerantz with the president, in spite of Mr. Trump’s assertion to the contrary.

In a particularly hypocritical move, Trump added to his Truth Social post, “Our Justice System is betrayed when it is misused to achieve political ends,” despite the fact that Paul, Weiss only agreed to Trump’s terms after he threatened the firm,

Initially, the compliant law firms are said to have agreed to the free legal work assuming it would be for such uncontroversial causes as helping veterans. But Trump, who has a habit of wandering into unexpected territory in his remarks, now appears to have a broader view of what the law firms may be pressured to work on. 

“Over the last week, he has suggested that the firms will be drafted into helping him negotiate trade deals,” the New York Times reported on April 16. “He has mused about having them help with his goal of reviving the coal industry. And he has hinted that he sees the promises of nearly $1 billion in pro bono legal services that he has extracted from the elite law firms…as a legal war chest to be used as he wishes. White House officials believe that some of the pro bono legal work could even be used toward representing Mr. Trump or his allies if they became ensnared in investigations.”

Whatever issues Trump chooses to rope the law firms into working on, what will the public know?

On one side, even though the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) applies to records created by federal agencies within the executive branch, the White House Office itself is exempt from FOIA. This means the public cannot directly request information from the White House Office[2] under FOIA. 

A FOIA memo from the U.S. Department of Justice on White House Records states:

“By its terms, the FOIA applies to “the Executive Office of the President,” 5 U.S.C. § 552(f), but this term does not include either “the President’s immediate personal staff” or any part of the Executive Office of the President “whose sole function is to advise and assist the President.”  Meyer v. Bush, 981 F.2d 1288, 1291 n.1 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (quoting H.R. Rep. No. 1380, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. 14 (1974)); see also, e.g., Soucie v. David, 448 F.2d 1067, 1075 (D.C. Cir. 1971). This means, among other things, that the parts of the Executive Office of the President that are known as the “White House Office” are not subject to the FOIA.”

Records originating with the Office of the Vice President or any of its component offices, are likewise not subject to the FOIA.

Similarly, the records of communications between the law firms and the White House or of work done by the law firms at Trump’s request would not be subject to the FOIA. 

So how will the public know what Trump’s White House and the law firms bending the knee to Trump are doing? It won’t. And how will Congress  know what Trump’s White House and the law firms are doing? It won’t. And how with the media know what Trump’s White House and the law firms are doing? Unless they are particularly aggressive, they won’t either.

The nearly $1 billion of pro bono work the nine law firms, and potentially more, will be doing for Trump could have a major impact on American life. And it looks like it can all be done in secret. 

Shameful. 

[1] The nine firms are Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; Latham & Watkins; Milbank; Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; A & O Shearman; Kirkland & Ellis; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.

 

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The Future of Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) Under Trump? Precarious.

Update: May 2, 2025: President Trump signed an Executive Order on May 1, 2025 stating, “I therefore instruct the CPB Board of Directors (CPB Board) and all executive departments and agencies (agencies) to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS.” It’s not clear how this order can be implemented since the president has also asked Congress to approve a recission package for there Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has not been acted upon by Congress.

Update: April 14, 2025: The Trump administration said today it would end funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS and NPR. It said it would   ask lawmakers to cut more than $9 billion in funding for the Public Broadcasting Service, National Public Radio and foreign aid in the current fiscal year,. The proposal — known as a rescission package — would codify cuts identified by the Department of Government Efficiency an attempt to employ a little-used legislative tactic for reducing spending already approved by Congress.

The White House plans to send the package to Congress on April 28, starting a 45-day period during which the administration can legally withhold the funding. If Congress votes down the plan or does nothing, the administration must release the money back to the intended recipients. The Congressional Institute has written a detailed explanation of how the rescission process works. 

________________________

The Trump administration has made no secret of its hostility to public broadcasting.

Even before the Nov. 2024 election, Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan to transform the federal government during the next conservative administration, called for the government to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting(CPB). CPB is a private, nonprofit corporation fully funded by the federal government which is the largest single source of funding for public radio and television. CPB was created by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967. (A video on the history of PBS is available at https://shorturl.at/7o1X2.)

CPB funds National Public Radio (NPR), which serves as a national syndicator to a network of more than 1,000 public radio stations in the United States, and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the private, non-profit corporation that distributes programming to public television stations in the United States. 

Mike Gonzalez, a Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation who authored the section on the CPB in Project 2025’s policy guide, argued that both NPR and PBS have a liberal bias and that the “government should not be compelling the conservative half of the country to pay for the suppression of its own views.” Gonzalez also argued that the federal government cannot afford to spend half a billion dollars “on leftist opinion” each year because it is trillions of dollars in debt.

In an all-caps April 10, 2024 post on Truth Social, his social media platform, candidate Trump wrote: 

Donald J. Trump @realDonald Trump NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM! EDITOR SAID THEY HAVE NO REPUBLICANS, AND IS ONLY USED TO “DAMAGE TRUMP'” THEY ARE A LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE. NOT ONE DOLLAR!!!

Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025 as a whole in his 2024 campaign, but he has vigorously pursued many of its proposals since becoming president and has appointed many of its authors to key government posts.  

As president, Trump has restated his opposition to funding non-commercial public broadcasting, as has Elon Musk, Trump’s crony.  And because CPB has no ongoing federal funding mechanism, annual Congressional appropriations are required. That opens the door for Trump.

Dick Tofel, the former President of ProPublica, wrote on Substack, “ …they will very likely, sometime this year, have the votes they need to smash the current arrangement. That will occur, I think, in significant part because the current regime does not have the political will to materially cut federal spending and thus feels compelled to cut immaterial spending (federal aid to public broadcasting costs Americans about $1.50 per person) in a performative manner that, they hope, fools their base.”

Tofel’s view is that whether Trump wants to force public stations off the air altogether or just eliminate their national news programming, “the distinction will hardly matter” in communities that can’t afford to mount substantial operations of their own.  Funding cuts at the national level would, he says, most likely mean the loss of shows such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered, the NPR morning and afternoon shows, PBS’ Frontline and PBS News Hour.  In larger, richer (bluer) cities (such as Portland), some parts of local efforts will likely be salvaged, he thinks. 

For fiscal year 2025, Congress appropriated $535 million for CPB. This year, Republicans have introduced multiple bills to defund CPB and on March 25, 2025, a day before the heads of PBS and NPR testified before a House subcommittee, trump said he’d be “honored” to see funding for public broadcasting end.

In a January 16, 2025, message, Rachel Smolkin, OPB ‘s president and CEO, raised the alarm about potential cuts in federal support to her station and others around the country, but took care to note that “Federal support represents a relatively small portion of OPB’s operating budget “. In fiscal year 2023, government grants to OPB totaled $4,679,653 or 9.5% of the station’s $49,370,988 in revenue from contributions.[1]  In most instances, sponsorships are considered charitable contributions by the underwriters.  On OPB’s IRS Form 990, these sponsorships are included in the $49,370,988 reported as contributions and grants. There is also a small amount of sponsorships that meet the definition of advertising, which primarily occur on OPB’s digital platforms.  For FY 23, advertising is included in the program service revenue of $1,381,015 and in unrelated business revenue reported on OPB’s IRS Form 990-T.  

For FY 23, advertising is included in the program service revenue of $1,381,015 and in unrelated business revenue reported on our IRS Form 990-T.  Sponsorships are not otherwise disclosed on the tax filings.  Total revenue was $56,821,607.

Notable Sources of Revenue$Percent of Total Revenue
Contributions$49,370,988            86.9%
Program Services$1,381,015               2.4%
Investment Income$3,446,034               6.1%
Bond Proceeds$0 
Royalties$0 
Rental Property Income$415,851                0.7%
Net Fundraising$0 
Sales of Assets$2,207,719                 3.9%
Net Inventory Sales$0 
                                                                       

Could OPB survive without the federal grants? Probably, but the hit would be hard. 

The impact of any cut in OPB’s programming would be felt particularly by Oregon and Southern Washington’s more educated and higher income populace (71% of OPB’s TV audience, 82% of OPB’s digital audience and 85% of OPB’s radio audience has attended college). The public broadcast audience also typically falls into higher household income categories and have for years, primarily because households that listen to public media tend to have more formal education.

But that is part of the problem. An increasing number of the rest of the population is tuning out.

NPR‘s weekly broadcast audience has been experiencing audience declines, as have NPR’s podcasts, and sponsorship revenue has dipped. And CPB took  a big hit last year when former NPR business editor Uri Berliner posted an essay on the Free Press substack site accusing the organization of adopting a left-wing stance in which “race and identity” were “paramount.”

Earlier this month, the NY Times reported on an NPR document that detailed what would happen if the Treasury stopped cutting checks to CPB. “NPR can weather the funding cut… thanks in part to aggrieved listeners: Executives predict a sudden boom in donations if Congress defunds it, as listeners rush to defend their favorite programs.,” the report said. “But they will likely give more in big-city markets.”

Public television in the United States would likely be in worse shape, the report said, because PBS receives much more of its budget from the federal government.

In a weird sort of way, the collapse of so much of the traditional news media and the rise of one-sided communications might be public broadcasting’s savior. 

Some analysts think things have gotten so bad in a fractured media environment that public broadcasting is more critical. A reason for hope, the Los Angeles Times wrote in March 2025, is that “… the American media landscape is in such poor shape that NPR is more necessary than ever. Across the country, print journalism has imploded. Commercial TV and radio news operations are also in decline. Especially in red states, NPR is sometimes the only source of local news. True, people everywhere now get information from cable channels, random websites or social media, but many still want what NPR offers.” 

With that in mind, the debate over funding for public broadcasting, and OPB’s future, is a reminder that depending on government money for a service can be a trap. That money is always subject to the political winds.  If a free press is dependent on whether a Trump-like personality is in office, more local public support may be vastly preferable.

[1] Figures are from Form 990 which non-profits are required to file annually with the IRS. These CPB grants are included in the Contributions and Grants revenue of $49,370,988 on OPB’s FY 2023 IRS Form 990. CPB grants are not included in government grants on the Form 990 as CPB is a private, nonprofit corporation, not a government agency. 

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Say “No” to Oregon Republican Push for No Taxes on Tips

What’s in the water in Salem?

On one side you have a phalanx of Democrats proposing the ludicrous idea of paying strikers unemployment benefits, which would make Oregon the only State in the country to grant unemployment benefits to striking public and private sector workers.

Not to be outdone in making nonsensical proposals, now you have a raft of Republicans, mimicking President Trump, proposing that the state forego taxing tips.

Here’s a tip – exempting tips from state taxes is a bad idea.

In their determination to position themselves as supporters of the working man (and woman), 21 of Oregon’s House Republicans have proposed a bill, HB 3914, to end taxation of tips, which are generally perceived as discretionary payments determined by a customer that employees receive from customers.

As written, the bill would not count “service charges” as tips. A restaurant, for example, recently added an automatic service charge equal to 18% of my bill. Even if that was intended to cover for a “no tipping” policy, it would be part of the server’s wages because it was not discretionary.

The 129-word Oregon bill gets right to the point, “There shall be subtracted from federal taxable income any amount of tips properly reported as wages on the taxpayer’s federal income tax return.”  That would automatically subtract tips from taxable income in Oregon, too. 

The bill deserves a quick death.

According to the IRS, “All cash and noncash tips received by an employee are income and are subject to Federal income taxes. All cash tips received by an employee in any calendar month are subject to social security and Medicare taxes and must be reported to the employer.” So, tip income is taxable income.

Charges automatically added to a customer’s check by an employer and subsequently distributed to employees are not tips; they are “service charges”. These service charges, which are appearing more often on Oregon restaurant bills, are non-tip wages and are subject to Social Security tax, Medicare tax, and federal income tax withholding.

Many consumers think the expanding pressure on customers to leave tips is already out of hand. A no tax on tips policy would likely expand the use of tipped work even further, potentially leading to consumers being asked to tip on virtually every purchase everywhere. 

A  New York Times article about tipping generated a lot of comments, many of which lamented the seeming spread of tipping expectations to multiple businesses and regardless of the amount of actual service by an employee. “Collectively, we cringe when the iPad is swiveled into our face at the coffee counter or deli; we know it is extortion rather than appreciation for services rendered,” said one person.  

There’s also a sense that some businesses are customizing the tip configuration on screen to exploit customers. Most people tip between 15-20%. If you buy a $2.85 espresso and the screen offers 15%, 20% and 25% tip options, you are likely to hit 15%, generating a tip of 43 cents. If a business wants to jack that up, however, it can give you $1, $2, or $3 options on purchases below $10, instead of a percentage. If you pick $1, you have paid a 35% tip. Devious, but effective.

Despite the massive increase in tipping expectations in recent years at multiple businesses, tax experts say a relatively small share of the workforce depends on tips. Only about 2.5% of American workers are in occupations that depend on tips, according to the IRS.  Among those workers, 37% earn less than the federal standard deduction. So, they already don’t have to pay federal income taxes.

Other tipped workers benefit from the earned income tax credit (EITC) and/or child tax credit (CTC) to the extent that they don’t have any federal income tax liability. In addition, because tipped workers would keep more of their income, employers could use this law as a justification for lowering workers’ base pay if it is currently above the minimum wage.

In fact, exempting tips from taxation can actually lead to situations where low-income workers end up effectively losing income through losing eligibility to tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC).

The Budget Lab at Yale, a non-partisan policy research center, estimates that less than 3 percent of families would benefit from a broad-based income tax deduction for tips in 2026, but it would still cost the federal government more than $100 billion over the next decade. Restricting eligibility to workers in the leisure and hospitality industries would reduce the cost by more than 40 percent, but that would still leave a big hit on the deficit unless taxes were raised elsewhere.

Even the liberal Oregon Center for Public Policy opposes the no tax on tips idea.

In October 2024, Daniel Hauser, Deputy Director of the Center, said that ending taxes on tips “makes the tax system less fair” because workers receiving tips would get a tax break, but not low-paid workers in general.

If you have two workers, one a bartender who earns about $10,000 of his $40,000 annual income in tips and the other a warehouseman who makes all of his $40,000 income in wages, it wouldn’t make sense to give the bartender a tax break but leave the warehouse worker hanging out to dry, Hauser argued. 

 It also “creates openings for people to think about, how can my income be categorized as a tip and get this tax break too?,” Hauser wrote.  Third, he said, “if the goal is to help the economic security of low-income workers, it’s not very effective…and there are much better ways for us to try and help low-income families in Oregon.” 

He’s right.

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Like a Bad Penny, Former Portland Businessman Andrew Wiederhorn is Back in the News

Andrew Wiederhorn

Like a bad penny, Andrew Wiederhorn just keeps coming back. 

Wiederhorn, once a high-flying business star in Portland, ended up in federal prison for 14 months after being convicted of paying an illegal gratuity to a co-conspirator and filing a false tax return. 

After prison, Wiederhorn moved to Southern California and became the CEO of a publicly traded company, FAT Brands, Inc, that runs the hamburger chain Fatburger.

In May 2024, he re-emerged in the news when the federal government accused him of taking millions of dollars in bogus loans from companies he controlled — loans which were later forgiven. Over 11 years, the government said, Wiederhorn took bogus loans totaling $47 million for his personal benefit. That income, the government said, should have been reported to the IRS. The government argued he should have paid taxes on the money because it was income. 

Now he may have found a savior. The New York Times reported on Sunday, March 30, that on Friday, March 28, Adam Schleifer, a federal prosecutor working on Weiderhorn’s case, was sitting at his computer in Los Angeles when he received an email from a White House official, Saurabh Sharma, saying that he had been terminated. No reason was cited. 

“Given that the case has drawn headlines recently and that Mr. Wiederhorn has donated to political action committees supporting Mr. Trump, his colleagues suspected that may have played a role in his dismissal,” the New York Times reported. 

UPDATE – New York Times, July 29, 2025

The Justice Department moved Tuesday to end two high-profile criminal cases in Los Angeles whose handling by the Trump administration had been criticized by veteran prosecutors as alarming.

The moves by the leader of U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, Bill Essayli, came on the same day the administration said it would use a legally untested maneuver to ensure that Mr. Essayli remains in charge of the office beyond his interim appointment, which was set to expire Wednesday.

Mr. Essayli filed court papers asking a judge to dismiss pending criminal charges against Andrew Wiederhorn, the founder of Fatburger, who was fighting accusations of wire fraud and other crimes related to the company. While it is ultimately a judge’s decision whether to dismiss charges, a prosecutor’s request to do so makes it nearly impossible for the case to proceed to trial.

The move to end the Wiederhorn case comes months after White House officials fired the prosecutor in charge of it, Adam Schleifer, whom the right-wing influencer and close Trump ally Laura Loomer had publicly attacked on social media.

Mr. Schleifer’s dismissal unnerved Justice Department veterans, who could not recall any similar instance in which a White House staff member directly dismissed a lower-level career prosecutor. Along with Mr. Schleifer, the White House used the same method to fire a career prosecutor in Memphis.

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How Effective Are Oregon’s Members of Congress?

Oregon’s new Democratic Congresswoman is learning quickly how to play the game.

On March 24, 2025, Democratic Rep. Janelle Bynum and two other House members, Reps. Cleo Fields (D-LA) and Sam Liccardo (D-CA), introduced a bill, H.R. 2287. The bill would require the Federal Reserve to study the impact of certain U.S. tariffs on the cost of goods and services in the United States. 

“Every day I hear from my constituents that they’re struggling to afford groceries, rent, healthcare, and other necessities,” Bynum said in a press release. “Lowering costs has always been priority number one for me.”

Liccardo assailed Trump’s controversial tariffs “misguided economic measures” and said the study would allow Congress to advance “common-sense legislation that would provide much-needed relief to hard-working Americans.”

Of course, Bynum’s full-throated plea for a study on an issue of concern to her constituents got media coverage in Oregon – and that was the point. In fact, that was likely the whole point.

When I was a reporter at The Oregonian years ago, after serving on the staff of a House of Representatives subcommittee, I argued against giving a lot of coverage to bills when they were initially proposed by Oregon members of Congress. Far too often, they were just messaging bills, attempts to get publicity on a topic of interest to Oregonians, not serious legislative proposals with a high potential for enactment. 

After all, any member can go to legislative counsel and get a bill drafted. And a lot do. In the 118th Congress (2023-25), 10,564 bills were introduced in the House and 5,649 in the Senate. In contrast, the 118th Congress, which began on January 3, 2023, and ended on January 3, 2025, enacted just 274 public laws. 

What really matters is whether a bill gets a committee or subcommittee hearing and moves through the legislative process or key elements of the bill are incorporated in other legislation that does the same and become law. 

Truly effective lawmakers go beyond press releases.

The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL), a joint program of the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, does deep dives into the work of every member of Congress and develops Legislative Effectiveness Scores based on a combination of fifteen metrics capturing the bills that each member of Congress sponsors, how far they move through the lawmaking process, and how substantial their policy proposals are.

The Center’s newest report on the Legislative Effectiveness of the 118th Congress (2023-25) was just released. 

Getting a little wonky, the Center provides a comprehensive explanation of its methodology.

For example, a Legislative Effectiveness Score for each member of the U.S. House and Senate captures the proven ability of a legislator to advance his or her agenda items through the legislative process and into law.

In the House, for example, the Center begins by identifying the number of bills that each member of the House of Representatives sponsored and the number of those bills that received any action in committee or action beyond committee on the floor of the House. The Center than categorized all bills as being commemorative, substantive or substantive and significant. A commemorative bill, for example, satisfied any one of several criteria, such as providing for a renaming, commemoration, private relief of an individual, and the like. 

For those bills that received any action beyond committee, the Center identified how many of those bills subsequently passed the House and how many became law. Members also get credit if a substantial portion of the language in their sponsored bills is incorporated into other legislators’ bills that become law. 

None of Oregon’s Representatives made the Center’s top 10 list of lawmakers in the 118thCongress (2023-25). 

Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, however, came in 5th in the Center’s top 10 list of Senate Democratic lawmakers in the118th Congress. Merkley chaired the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, as well as chairing the Chemical Safety, Waste Management, Environmental Justice, and Regulatory Oversight Subcommittee of the Environment and Public Works Committee. He successfully advanced two sponsored bills into law: the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, and the Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act.

The Center also highlighted 12 High-Performing Freshmen who scored in the “Exceeds Expectations” category in their first terms in office. Notably, two of them were from Oregon, Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (6th) and Democrat Rep. Val Hoyle (9th). Hoyle was re-elected in November to represent Oregon’s 4th District. Chavez-DeRemer was defeated in her race, but was subsequently appointed Secretary of Labor by President Trump. 

Every member on this High Performing list had at least one of their sponsored bills become law or at least had the language from one of their sponsored bills substantially incorporated into another measure that ultimately became law.

“Given that…research suggests that performance in a legislator’s freshman term is highly correlated with subsequent lawmaking effectiveness, as well as with their overall career trajectory, we might expect to see these Representatives continuing to be effective lawmakers and setting the agendas of the Democratic and Republican parties in the future,” the Center’s report noted. 

So don’t take a slew of bills introduced by a member of Congress as an assurance of their impact. For a real understanding of legislative effectiveness, you have to dig a lot deeper.

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The Hegseth Follies: Lies, Insults and Obfuscations

In early March, the Pentagon sent an advisory to all military personnel warning that a “vulnerability” had been identified in the commercial messaging app Signal and warned against using it for classified information., according to the New York Times.

Ignoring that caution, when senior members of President Trump’s administration discussed upcoming military strikes in Yemen on Signal, they unknowingly included the editor in chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg, who disclosed the error and the contents of the communications.

“Rather than admit their mistake, apologize, and make sure not to do it again, administration officials are spinning hard and smearing Goldberg,” the Free Press observed today. “The White House has chosen to deflect attention from the substance of the leak and, instead, viciously attack Goldberg and the Atlantic.”

The most noticeable aspect of the comments by President Trump and his administration is the unusual coarsening of political debate. Heated political rhetoric is at every turn. American politics has never been a like pot luck dinner of neighbors, but neither has it always been today’s dumpster fire of venomous insults , caustic personal attacks, and threatening behavior (online and offline).

To say we are seeing an appalling decline of political eloquence is likely not an original thought and perhaps civility in today’s fractured country is a forlorn hope, but surely we can do better than the remarks below in our political discourse. 

Comments by President Trump

The Atlantic is “a failing Radical Left Magazine”.

“I happen to know the guy  (Goldberg) is a total sleazebag” and “a slimeball reporter”. 

“The Atlantic is a failed magazine, does very, very poorly. Nobody gives a damn about it.”

 “I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business.”

 “He’s (Goldberg) made up a lot of stories and I think he’s basically bad for the country.”

Comments by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt

“The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans. This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”

“This administration is working hard on behalf of the American public every day, but the mainstream media continues to be focused on a sensationalized story from the failing Atlantic magazine.”

“If this story proves anything, it proves that Democrats and their propagandists in the mainstream media know how to fabricate, orchestrate, and disseminate a misinformation campaign quite well. And there’s arguably no one in the media who loves manufacturing and pushing hoaxes more than Jeffrey Goldberg.”

“We are not going to be lectured about national security and American troops by Democrats and the mainstream media.” 

Comments by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth

“So you are talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist (Goldberg) who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes. Time and time again. This is a guy that peddles in garbage.” 

“As I type this, my team and I are traveling the INDOPACOM (the Asia Pacific) region, meeting w/ Commanders (the guys who make REAL ‘war plans’) and talking to troops. We will continue to do our job, while the media does what it does best: peddle hoaxes.” 

Comments by Steven Cheung, White House communications director

“The Atlantic story is nothing more than a section of the NatSec establishment community running the same, tired gameplay from years past.” 

“At every turn anti-Trump forces have tried to weaponize innocuous actions and turn them into faux outrage that Fake News outlets can use to peddle misinformation. Don’t let enemies of America get away with these lies.”

Comment by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz 

Mr. Goldberg is “scum”.

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Pay Striking Workers Unemployment Benefits? No Way!

People gathered together for strike

We don’t have enough money for this, we don’t have enough money for that, Oregon legislators moan. And then the Oregon Senate votes for SB 916, a bill to pay striking workers unemployment benefits.

The Oregon Employment Department projects the bill could add $11.2 million in payments to striking workers. The Legislative Revenue Office predicts it could cost $5.6 million in the next two biennia, based on striking activities between 2015 and 2024.

SB 916 would make Oregon the only State in the country to grant unemployment benefits to striking public and private sector workers. Oregonians can be proud of some of the state’s groundbreaking legislation, but this is not one to be praised. 

 Russell Lum, a Political Organizer with the Oregon Nurses Association, said in written testimony to the Senate Committee on Labor and Business, “SB 916 … can bring about fair contracts faster”, but that is unlikely. 

I bet it will cost a lot more as public and private worker unions extend their strikes, safe in the knowledge they will get compensation during their strike.  As Terry Hopkins, the President & CEO of the Grants Pass & Josephine County Chamber of Commerce, said in written testimony to the Senate Committee on Labor and Business, ”By providing UI benefits during strikes, SB 916 could inadvertently incentivize prolonged labor disputes, as the financial pressure to reach a resolution is alleviated for striking workers. This potential for extended disputes not only disrupts the operations of the directly involved businesses but also has ripple effects throughout the supply chain, impacting small businesses that are indirectly connected.”

What makes Democrats’ strong support for this bill particularly egregious is that it is aimed at benefiting unions, an extremely small portion of the labor force, but a sector that overwhelmingly favors the Democrats in campaign contributions.

In 2024, just 15.9% of wage and salary workers in Oregon were union members, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Dig deeper and you find that the union membership rate for public sector workers in Oregon, about 51%, is considerably higher. That is consistent across the country, where unionization is about five times higher nationwide in the public sector compared with the private sector.

The bill has now gone to the Oregon House, where Democrats hold a 36-24 majority. Two Democrats in the Senate showed great wisdom in voting against the bill, Jeff Golden, D-Ashland and Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro. “Counties, cities and schools are scrambling to just maintain current services,” Sollman said. “Now is not the time to be adding more uncertainty and more expenses.”

Amen.

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Trump is Putting Radio Free Europe Journalists in Harm’s Way

Donald Trump loathes the media. 

Shortly after assuming the presidency in January 2017, he accused the press of being an “enemy of the American people”. He hasn’t held back from continuing his war on the press in succeeding years. 

As an American citizen, and a former journalist at Oregon’s leading newspaper, The Oregonian, I wince every time Trump levels another unseemly attack on the media. 

Now, his decision to withdraw funding from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a move endorsed by his sidekick Elon Musk, who has described the media group as “just radical left crazy people talking to themselves,” is angering me even more because it is putting journalists’ lives in danger.

In a sudden, but not out-of-character, slash-and-burn move, the Trump administration sent out an email to employees at Voice of America (VOA) on March 15, 2025 putting them on paid administrative leave “until otherwise notified” and instructing them not to enter the VOA offices or access its internal systems. Radio Free Asia, also funded by the US, has lost its funding as well.

The moves have left exiled Russian journalists working for RFE/RL “high and dry” and at risk of being stranded overseas without any legal status. “If it can’t find funding soon, the company won’t be able to pay its staff and the consequence would potentially put a very large number of journalists who are exiled from authoritarian regimes at grave risk,” a source told The Guardian.

“Many of RFE/RL’s Russian journalists operate from Prague, Riga and Vilnius, with their work visas often tied to their employment,” the Guardian is reporting. “Terminating the broadcaster’s funding would trigger visa expirations, leaving them without legal status within months. Deportation to Russia for any of them would expose them to criminal prosecution. “

According to the Guardian, RFE/RL journalists are regarded as “foreign agents”, making them the target for arrest should they return to Russia.

RFE/RI is suing the Trump administration in an effort to reverse the cancellation of its funding, but its success is uncertain. 

In the meantime, if any of the RFE/RI’s journalists suffer harm because of Trump’s actions, the blood will be on his hands. 

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Oregon’s “Illegals Industry”

You may have already heard of the term “homeless industrial complex” . It’s usually a derogatory term referring to a network of organizations involved in addressing homelessness that actually perpetuate it due to the jobs and financial incentives involved in the effort.  While multiple outreach entities rake in millions, the steady supply of people living on the streets persists and even grows.

It’s not so much a nefarious conspiracy as blind ideology, argues an article in CityWatch, an opinion, and news website out of Los Angeles, where homelessness has grown as spending on it has accelerated. 

In the same vein, it looks like many of the efforts in Oregon to help immigrants in the US illegally have spurred the creation of an “Illegals Industry” that, while claiming to be positively managing a problem is spurring it. And in the process, just as with homelessness, government is lighting our money on fire. 

As scholar Clay Shirky says, “An organization that commits to helping society manage a problem also commits itself to the preservation of that same problem, as its institutional existence hinges on society’s continued need for its management”. That’s the Shirky Principle at work: “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” 

The current debate in the Oregon legislature over a Food For All Oregonians program proposed by  SB 611  illustrates the the problem Illegals Industrial Complex. The program proposes providing nutrition assistance to residents of Oregon who are under 26 years of age or 55 years of age or older and who would qualify for federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits but for their immigration status. In other words, it would extend to people in the United States illegally food benefits equivalent to those provided under the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program. 

Written testimony supporting SB 611 submitted by the Oregon Food Bank to the Senate Committee on Human Services noted that the bill is supported by a coalition of more than 165 Oregon organizations.[1]

The endorsers include churches, unions, groceries, educational institutions, refugee organizations, anti-poverty groups, Planned Parenthood, health services, foster care programs, ethnic interest groups, immigrant aid groups, homeless advocates, farmers markets and a host of other social service groups. 

“Immigration status shouldn’t exclude anyone from being able to feed themselves or their family,” Food for all Oregonians says. 

While all may have a sincere concern for the non-citizens in Oregon, supporting state funding of free food for non-citizens also encourages immigrants to come here illegally, perpetuating the problem. As the Economic Policy Innovation Center, a conservative think tank, puts it, ” Many illegal aliens become eligible for taxpayer-funded welfare programs, costing billions of dollars annually. These benefits… are a significant pull factor for illegal immigration.”

Oregon has already expanded free health insurance that mirrors Medicaid to all residents who qualify, regardless of their immigration status. Non-citizens, including undocumented residents, also have access to Oregon driver licenses, despite Oregonians voting 66% to 44% in 2014 against giving driver’s license privileges to people without proper U.S. government documentation. The Legislature overrode voters in 2019 by pushing a bill through (HB 2015) with a clause that didn’t allow for a citizen referendum.

Several bills are also before the 2025 legislature that would offer other benefits to non-citizens.

SB 703, for example, directs the Department of Human Services to provide grants to non-profit service providers to assist individuals who are non-citizens to change their immigration status or obtain lawful permanent resident status. The bill is sponsored by 4 Democratic senators, 5 Democratic representatives and 1 Republican representative. 

You can be sure Oregon’s Illegals Industry will support all of these bills, regardless of the cost or impact. .

[1] Food for All Oregonians, Campaign Endorsers 

1st Baptist HOPE Food Pantry, 211 Info, Accent Network, Access Care Anywhere, Adelante Mujeres, Afghan Support Network, Afghanistan Oregon Association, AFL-CIO, African Refugee Immigrant Organization (ARIO), African Youth & Community Organization (ayco), APANO, Arab American Cultural Center of Oregon, ARISE and Shine, Basic Rights Oregon (BRO), Beyond, Toxics, Black Oregon Land Trust, Blanchet House of Hospitality, CAMPO, Cascade Aids Project (CAP), Catholic Community Services of Lane County (CCSLC), Central City Concern, Centro Cultural, Children’s Institute, Clackamas Community College, Clackamas Service Center, Clay Street Table, Columbia Gorge Women’s Action Network, Community Alliance of Lane County (CALC), Community Connection of Northeast Oregon, Inc., Community for Positive Aging – Asian Food Pantry, Community Pulse Association, Consejo Hispano, Consolidated Oregon Indivisible Network, Eastern Oregon Association for the Education of Young Children (EOAEYC), Eastern Oregon Center for Independent Living (EOCIL), Eat Drink Washington County, Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, Educate Ya, Estacada Area Food Bank, Ethiopian and Eritrean Cultural and Resource Center, Eugene-Springfield SURJ, EUVALCREE, Familias en Acción, Family Forward, Farmers Market Fund, Feed’em Freedom Foundation, First Tech Credit Union, Food Corps NW, Food for Families, FOOD For Lane County, Food Roots, Forest Grove Foundation, Friends of Family Farmers, Gorge Grown Food Network, Growing Gardens, Guerreras Latinas, HAKI Community Organization, Hand Up Project, Healthcare for All Oregon, High Desert Food and Farm Alliance, Hood River County Board of Commissioners, Hood River Latino Network (HRLN), Human Services Coalition of Oregon, Innovation Law Lab, Interfaith Alliance on Poverty, Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice (IMIrJ), IRCO, Iu Mien Association of Oregon, Ka Aha Lahui Olekona, Klamath Grown, Lane Community College, Latino Community Association, Latino Network, Lending A Helping Hand, Lift UP, Living Islands Non-profit, Maihan Social and Cultural Community, Malheur County Democratic Central Committee, Medford Food Co-op, Metro City Council, Mercy Connections Inc, Micronesian Islander Community (MIC Oregon), Milwaukie Spanish SDA Church, Montavilla Farmers Market, Muslim Educational Trust, National Partnership for New Americans, Neighborhood House, New Seasons, Next Up Action Fund, Nonprofit Association of Oregon, North Coast Food Web, Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides, Northwest Family Services, NOWIA Unete Center for Farm Worker Advocacy, Nutrition Garden RX, OneAdonaI (we help!), Ontario Mini Market, Oregon AFSCME, Oregon Association of Relief Nurseries (OARN), Oregon Center for Public Policy (OCPP), Oregon Farm to School & School Garden Network, Oregon Food Bank, Oregon Health Equity Alliance, Oregon Human Development Corporation, Oregon Hunger Task Force, Oregon Just Transition Alliance, Oregon Latino Health Coalition (OLHC), Oregon Law Center (OLC), Oregon League of Conservation Voters (OLCV), Oregon Organic Coalition, Oregon Public Health Association, Oregon Rural Action, Oregon School Based Health Alliance, Oregon State University-Extension, Oregon Synod, Oregon Worker Relief, Our Children Oregon, Our Community Birth Center, Pacific Refugee Support Group, Partners for a Hunger Free Oregon, Partnership for Safety and Justice, PCUN, People’s Food Co-op, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon, Plaza de Nuestra Comunidad, Portland Central Kitchen, Portland Open Bible Community Pantry, Raíces, Reedsport Collective, Right To Health, Inc, RISEN Community, Rogue Farm Corps, Rogue Food Unites, Rural Organizing Project (ROP), Sanctuary Committee of Temple Beth Israel, Sarah’s Foster Care, Seed to Table Oregon, SEIU Local 503, Sisters of the Road, SnowCap, Social Justice Coalition, Central Lutheran Church, Portland, Somali American Council Of Oregon (SACOO), Somali Oregon Service Center, Springfield Eugene Tenant Association, St. Timothy Episcopal Church, Start Raising Young African Lives, Ten Rivers Food Web, Tides of Change, Tikkun Olam Committee of Temple Beth Israel, Tillamook County Board of Commissioners, Tualatin Food Pantry, Tualatin Valley Gleaners, UFCW, Unite Oregon, United Congolese Community Organization of Oregon, Urban League of Portland, VIVA Inclusive Migrant Network, We Do Better Relief, Welcome Home Coalition, Western States Center, William Temple House, Willowbrook Food Pantry, Working Theory Farm, Zenger Farm