Kristi Noem visits Portland Ice office with Maga influencers in tow
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, is currently touring the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Portland, Oregon accompanied by conservative influencers who arrived in her motorcade.
Portland police cleared the street outside the Ice office in the city’s south waterfront neighborhood ahead of Noem’s arrival, keeping a handful of protesters, one dressed as a chicken and another as a baby shark, at distance.
A country-style song, with the refrain, “Trump is in the Epstein files, yes he is”, blared from a protest encampment down the street and one protesters shouted to a government videographer on the roof of the facility, “Did we rename the department of homeland security the ministry of propaganda?”
Reporters from local news outlets were also held behind the police line outside, as the partisan influencers in Noem’s entourage, Benny Johnson, Nick Sortor and David Media, shared social media updates of the secretary leading federal officers in prayer inside, giving a pep talk, and telling a member of the Oregon national guard to “Get ready.”
Noem has previously echoed Donald Trump’’s claims that a small band of protesters, who have rallied in their dozens outside the Ice facility since June, including one who wears an inflatable frog costume, are “terrorists” who have placed the office “under siege”, making the deployment of federal troops essential.
On Saturday, a federal judge in Portland blocked Trump’s effort to federalize Oregon’s national guard, determining that the president’s claims that the peaceful city was “burning to the ground” were “untethered to the facts.”
A day later the same judge, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, expanded her order to block national guards troops from any jurisdiction from being deployed in Portland, after Trump tried to deploy members of the California national guard, previously federalized in response to protests in Los Angeles, to Oregon.
Since Trump has drawn attention to the small but persistent protest outside the Ice facility, and made false claims that Portland is “war ravaged”, a growing number of his supporters, including Maga influencers, have turned up to confront the protesters, which has resulted in fistfights and to a series of arrests, including of Sortor. After an outcry in the conservative media, and from the attorney general, Pam Bondi, charges against Sortor were dropped.
Johnson, a former journalist who reinvented himself as a Christian nationalist influencer after he was fired from Buzzfeed for plagiarism, just shared video of Noem looking down from the roof of the Ice facility at the small group of protesters below, including Jack Dickinson, a protest organizers who wears a chicken costume to mock Trump.
Johnson captioned the video of Noem inspecting the placid scene below: “DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stares down army of Antifa and a guy in a chicken suit”.
Her exchange with Senator Whitehouse wrt Epstein was similar. Just attack and ignore the question.
The way these people speak and behave is so unprofessional to me. But I suppose if you look at how Trump carries on, he isn’t presidential. Embarrassing.
What do our American friends on SF think?
Ashamed.
You have my sympathies. 
It seems like the entire country is begging to be serfs. Or at least a working minority who don’t understand the term.
Populists seem to be able to get people to vote against their own best interests. Some of the UK populist politicians are just as bad but I won’t go on about that because we’re talking about the US atm.
Someone on Threads pointed out that what Noem did (standing on a roof, clearly visible, no protection etc) is not something that anyone in a war zone would ever do. Clearly it was just propaganda. My daughter lives in Portland, and says that there is absolutely nothing going on. The Portland Marathon was held on Sunday; 12,000 runners from all over the US as well as overseas showed up. The fact that people still think that it’s a “war zone” just shows how incredibly ignorant and uninformed people are in the US. Apparently, Trump and Co. think that Americans are stupid, and they’re right.
According to the National University, “Approximately 45 million U.S. adults are functionally illiterate, reading below a fifth-grade level. 21% of U.S. adults are classified as functionally illiterate, unable to complete basic reading tasks. The average American reads at a 7th- to 8th-grade level.” (That’s 12 and 13 years old, in case anyone is unfamiliar with the US school system.)
How do we feel? Ashamed, appalled, terrified, heartbroken…yeah, it’s been a year.
I’m heartbroken for you.
I would love to go back to Hawaii but I’m not going to the US while the Tangerine Tyrant is in power. If border control looked at my social media I’d be locked up or deported.
Do you agree with the opinion that he’s going to try to cancel the next presidential elections using a state of emergency excuse? I’ve long thought that what he wants is a dynasty.
My daughter is always telling me about pupils with problems as she is a dept manager for one of the big online education companies for the state of Texas in the US. She says that you would not believe the ignorance of both pupils and their parents over simple things but they also do have a lot that graduate with good passes. Much of the time, the ignorant ones are the more affluent families with the poorer pupils trying to get somewhere in their lives by learning all they can.
@Jennifer11, I do agree, but I am not at all convinced that he’ll be successful. Seriously, I don’t think that he enjoys being president, but he didn’t want to go to prison, either, so this was the easiest way to avoid that. He’s not really in charge anyway.
That would be Discount Goebbels- aka Stephen Miller…
Good one. I read yesterday someone called him “Pee-wee Vermin”.
I am surprised people are surprised, entirely predictable before the President was elected based on his past behaviours both when President and pre 2nd term.
The US is now well on the way to a dictatorship.
Saying that, if people are illegally resident in a country I have no issues with their removal.
It’s more complicated than that. There are plenty of people who were legally resident and then had the rug pulled out from under them.
I presume you are living legally in France. How would you feel if France suddenly changed the rules and now you are OQTF?
That’s what worries me. Three more to go.
Not even…not quite 10 months..look what happened in the first 2 months…
I don’t think that even Gestapo covered their faces. The ICE officers look like brutes and they seem to enjoy their work.
Anyway, the engine is a BMC A or B series, not a Nazi. You’re thinking of the VW flat four. Now that, as was its designer Ferdinand Porsche (member of the SS with the rank of general) a Nazi. It sold tens of millions. I’ve not noticed any mention of Porsche’s background in any 911 brochures I’ve perused 
Funny that.