“Don’t take the bait.”
That’s the phrase numerous leaders used when addressing Portlanders concerned about the impending incursion of federal forces into Portland. It’s not without some merit, albeit a little strained.
Surely, like in 2020, the authoritarian Trump regime hopes to provoke Portlanders. And make no mistake, President Donald Trump is an authoritarian. He believes his opinions and directives should be the law of the land. Look no further than the U.S. Department of Justice’s appeal of a temporary restraining order barring a federal invasion of Portland, which states the judge “impermissibly second-guessed the Commander in Chief’s military judgments.” Is he king, or president? (Asking for about 635,000 friends.)
Second only to quiet acceptance, authoritarians welcome a spectacle of disorder. It allows them to manufacture a hysteria in which people are more likely to accept others’ loss of rights, freedom, safety and dignity, and eventually their own. It gives them cover to contain disorder and crush resistance. Therein lies the “bait,” officials have urged Portlanders not to take.
There’s something there that shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand, as even sympathetic parties may lose sympathy if protests become destructive. Additionally, should the Trump regime and Republican governors like Greg Abbott of Texas choose to heed the courts’ current block on invading Portland and future rulings, the nature of protests may matter in forthcoming court proceedings.
However, there are still several problems with this analogy and the line of thinking producing it. First and foremost, this regime isn’t fishing with bait. It’s fishing with dynamite.
After the Trump regime weaponized the U.S. Department of Justice, arrested judges, deemed critics “domestic terrorists,” conducted extrajudicial bombings of foreign nationals in international waters and persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to condone racial profiling, local and state leaders’ statements were shocking. It’s clear Trump doesn’t care about what’s right, correct, just, legal or even real.
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I know it’s hard to stomach, but we’ve left the territory where a leader believes he needs any valid pretense for his regime’s actions. The truth is something he determines, not something he experiences. It’s a tale as old as power itself, and it’s a hallmark of authoritarianism. It doesn’t really matter if there’s a spectacle of disorder. He’ll simply lie about it or be very confidently wrong — he’s already doing it.
To believe the populace can avoid conflict by not ‘taking the bait,’ or that we can submit our way out of Trump’s attacks, is foolhardy. There’s an air of privilege that, for many Oregonians, is truly unimaginable. As though if they only stay quiet enough, they’ll be alright.
What of Moises Sotelo-Casas, the Newberg vineyard manager taken by federal agents outside of his church on June 12? What bait did he take? Or what about Mahdi Khanbabazadeh, a chiropractor arrested outside of his child’s school in Beaverton on July 15? Or in Washington D.C., where Trump workshopped the approach, what about homeless residents confronted by the U.S. military for being visibly impoverished in the nation’s capital?
After months of federal agents unleashing chemical weapons on small, generally nonviolent protests at the waterfront ICE facility, Trump notified local leaders Sept. 26 he planned to send in the cavalry to neutralize the fictitious war zone we inhabit. What bait did Portlanders take to cause that? Just mere days after ordering a military operation against civilians in our city and authorizing “full force,” Trump spoke to hundreds of military leaders and referred to Portlanders, among other urban populations, as “the enemy from within,” on Sept. 30.
“This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control,” Trump told military brass in a rambling speech in which he likened the atmosphere in Portland to World War II. “It won’t get out of control once you’re involved at all.”
Later that day, the White House released an unhinged statement claiming Portland was suffering a “reign of terror,” and “Antifa-led hellfire.” Trump began trying to federalize the Oregon National Guard to invade Portland. Who took the bait to provide cover for a truly horrifying escalation of authoritarian rhetoric between Friday, Sept. 26 and Tuesday, Sept. 30? The answer is “no one.” But again, it hardly matters.
U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, said as much when granting a temporary restraining order blocking the invasion Oct. 3. She said the president’s characterization was “untethered from the facts.” She had to reassert this truth two days later when granting a second restraining order after the federal government brazenly attempted to defy a federal court ruling and simply bring troops from other states.
Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, referred to the initial restraining order as “legal insurrection,” as though it diverged from normalcy. This is, again, a hallmark of authoritarianism — to subvert the most basic facts and systems in an attempt to further execute their agenda. A conservative judge ruling that the U.S. military can’t invade a U.S. city for no good reason is, in fact, much more aligned with normalcy than the government trying to launch an extrajudicial operation against its civilians.
Unfortunately, it would seem some local, state and federal leaders have, themselves, taken the bait. They’ve implicitly agreed to meet Trump on his terms. Whether it’s discussing the need for more inefficient and harmful sweeps to appease Trump in recent months, or discussing how the already nonexistent Portland crime wave has flattened, the truth doesn’t matter to him or his baying sycophants. But for those uncertain, it lends credence to the debate.
And yet, our leaders gathered, released statements, and posted on social media about how ‘we don’t need the military to address public safety,’ while stressing Portland’s reduced crime and subdued protests. Well, no shit. You’re dealing with a guy who says he doesn’t believe in climate change and thinks Tylenol and/or vaccines cause autism. If your big plan is to point out how profoundly incorrect the president is, you might as well go fishing with a Dixie cup.
And, here’s the thing: Even if the mythical Portland crime wave happened, and was still happening, there’s absolutely no excuse for the federal government to invade Portland. That’s the message leaders should be stressing.
Instead, urging Portlanders to deploy decorum in hopes of stifling an authoritarian regime just validates an invalid argument — that Portlanders are violent, vicious and dangerous, and that the city is always on the brink of pure chaos.
Portland does have a long, rich history of nonviolent, non-destructive activism and protesting. As far as I know, that’s protected by the same Constitutional right that allows Street Roots to publish this letter. To finger-wag constituents over hypothetical concerns, rather than showing a singular focus on fearlessly defending their right to free speech, is to unintentionally do Trump’s bidding. Some Democrats even urged constituents not to protest at the ICE building. It’s giving in to what is clearly an agenda aimed at chilling free speech and muddying the waters of presidential power.
It’s also creating a rhetorical weakness that could be exposed in future court proceedings, as though even destructive, disruptive or unlawful protests could justify a literal “federal invasion,” as it was called by a U.S. Department of Justice attorney Oct. 5. Even when protests were at their height in 2020, the presence of federal officers did nothing but inflame a tense situation.
Make no mistake. If Portland becomes “little Beirut” again, the responsibility lies with Trump first, and the officials who failed to stop him second.
Gov. Tina Kotek and Mayor Keith Wilson unquestionably deserve credit for suing in an effort to stop the military occupation of our city, and maybe that will work. However, elected leaders’ rhetoric and seemingly very short list of material responses are failing to meet the moment. And it’s not the only option.
In Broadview, Illinois, federal agents are subjecting protestors and press to indiscriminate violence at an ICE facility. Rather than a public show of pearl-clutching, their city responded by launching criminal investigations into federal agents’ actions. City and state buildings are refusing federal agents’ access to restrooms and staging areas. Illinois officials, including Gov. JB Pritzker, have encouraged community members to record federal actions anywhere they see them. They seem to understand it’s federal agents posing the most acute risk to their communities, not the reaction from their communities.
If officials wish to play into the regime’s hand by urging acquiescence more forcefully than they’re asserting solidarity with Portlanders, I suppose that’s their decision. But, they should know that while they’re hemming and hawing about Portlanders not taking the bait, they’re already being reeled in.
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This article appears in October 8, 2025.