Anyone who moved through the Rosenstadt on Saturday, where Donald Trump announced that they would send armed national troops here – with license to kill – saw a sun-soaked metropolis full of late summer energy.
Kajaks slid into the Willamette River. Sunlight flashed in mimosa lesern in street cafes. Teenagers screamed happily in the shady amusement park under oak. Clubkids in black denim stood in front of a concert that you have never heard of. The only thing that seemed militant was the green-claded quantities of the Timbers Army-the exuberant fans of the local major League soccer team-who flocked to a game against FC Dallas, on (PSSST, not Stephen Miller) “Hispanic Heritage Night”.
This morning Trump had tried Truth on Truth Social to stir up with conflict in this pride. A place where he had already served me – in 2020 he tried the authoritarian manual, which he now used in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, and with which he threatens Memphis, Chicago and other liberal strongholds.
Trump’s command
Trump explained that he had instructed his “Minister of War” Pete Hegseth to send “all the necessary troops” in order to put down an alleged “siege” by Antifa in the Rosenstadt. The President sold his threat with government violence as a higher asset. In order to protect “the war -soaked Portland” from “domestic terrorists”, Trump wrote, he authorizes “full violence, if necessary”.
We live in the age of the cold civil war in America. But some want him hotter. Trump identified large parts of America as “inner enemy”. And he seems eager to accelerate as an accelerator – to break the nation – by mobilizing armed federal powers inside to target unsolved minorities and ideological opponents.
The reality in Portland
In truth, Portland is devastated by nothing – except perhaps by a mysterious graffiti artist who sprays the words “queso queso” everywhere (Spanish for “cheese cheese”). This is a city full of living quarters, a world -class food culture and an quirkness that cannot be invented. Of course there are challenges: homelessness, drugs, empty office towers. But violent crime is in free fall, murders decreased by 51 percent in the first half of 2025. Thanks to artists, lare and bohemian shop owners, dead shopping centers fill up again. Even the once extinct city center has experienced the best number of visitors since the pandemic.
And yet Portland is less a real place of wrestling for the 47th president and the effort as a canvas for his fever dreams of urban violence, which must be answered with an iron fist. It is a test field for Trump’s darkest ambitions – a place where he obviously had no problem with the troops who actually sworn to protect them.
Small conflict field on the ICE building
As I reported this summer, there is actually a small conflict zone in Portland. It focuses on a single, unscrewed entrance-access to the local ICE building south of the city center, which has been a protest since June. Wicked between old tram rails and the Interstate 5, the facility acts like a prison with a low security level. The access runs over an increased sidewalk and forms a bottleneck for the civil servants.
During the day, the demonstrations are usually calm. At night you can experience cat-and-mouse games between stubborn anti-Ice demonstrators and even more stubborn federal riding cops. These scenes can end brutally – with protesters thrown towards the ground, shots with pepper balls or gas attacks with green clouds of smoke.
Impressions on Saturday
But when I passed the bike on Saturday afternoon – without a helmet, bulletproof vest or press card – the place looked peaceful and astonishingly well -kept. The ICE building was freshly painted, a large part of the angry graffiti was covered. Plywood panels removed on the windows.
Yes, there were some threatening sayings: “Molotovs Melt Ice”. Others, on the other hand, were gentler: “Antifa = anti-fascist. What does that make you?” stood in rainbow -colored chalk. Even the base of the most determined activists had moved on.
In short: the mood in front of the building reminded more of a Saturday market than in the civil war. A man in the yellow chicken costume stood at the entrance, a US flag with hearts instead of stars around his neck, and held a cardboard sign with the inscription: “Portland will Outlive Him”. A woman in the Panama hat, tank top and Doc Martens carried a sign around her neck: “Fuck off fed!” More camera teams than actual demonstrators recorded the non-events.
A single federal official opened the gate to drive away two demonstrators with signs, including: “Ice is small dick energy. Micro.” When he retired, a woman increased the volume level with a “Fascism is Unamerican” sign and asked if he saw videos in which ICE children were separated from her parents. “If you are against it, why the hell will help you? Are you standing up for something! Where are your values? This is not the country in which I grew up!”
Political reactions in Oregon
Not far away, Oregon’s politicians presented themselves against the scenes of one of the famous bridges of the city, united against Trump’s troops. Mayor Keith Wilson directly said Trump: “The number of necessary troops in Portland is zero.” Governor Tina Kotek said that she spoke to Trump personally: “We have it under control. We are doing well. We are along.” The use of national troops “violates our right to self -government”.
But the machinery was already running: Hegseth signed an order on the federal government of 200 members of the National Guard on Sunday. The state immediately filed a lawsuit-similar to California against the intervention in LA-on the grounds that the assignment was “obviously illegal” because it was not approved by the governor and violated the posse comitatus-act.
“Instead of promoting public security”, the lawsuit said that the “provocative and arbitrary actions of the President” threatened to undermine them, “by provoking public turmoil”. The lawsuit argues that the protests on the ICE building are “mostly small and often peaceful”. Trump’s dark view was distorted by an FOX news contribution, which showed old film material of the BLM protests in 2020.
Waiting for the national guard
The use of the National Guard will start on Thursday at the earliest – at the time when the lawsuit is first negotiated in court. Kotek hopes to be able to “delay, stop or redirect” the posting.
But in a speech in front of military leaders, Trump doubled his false presentation in Portland as a “war zone” on Tuesday. He described a conversation with Kotek: “I get a call from the liberal governor: ‘Sir, please don’t come, we don’t need it.’ I said: “If these are not the wrong ligaments, it looks like the Second World War.
Trump’s decision to militarize this peaceful city may seem absurd – but the danger is fatally serious. After only eight months of his term, we experience the phase of the armed line -up. And the pace increases.
Thanks to the interview of a colleague with David Byrne, I was back in talking heads fever. As a teenager in the 1980s of the Cold War, “Life During Warming” captivated me. The text conveys all atmospheres, albeit no action, a thriller about resistance in social collapse: “The sound of gunfire off in the distance / i’m Getting used to it now” … “Trouble in transit, got through the roadblock / we blended in with the crowd.”
When I heard the song on my bike tour again on Saturday, his dark vision of a violent American future looked less film than tangible. Of course, the Lyrics were absurd to the idyllic reality of late September in Portland. But on the course that Donald Trump prescribes our country, ideas of “vans loaded with weapons” and even “mass graves on the Highway” no longer seem unimaginable.
In short, America: this is not a party. No disco. No fun.