Greetings from the Far Left Coast.
There are no words for last week’s shooting in Minneapolis. The city’s young mayor, Jacob Frey, a husband, father of two young children, put it as well as could be done in a poignant interview with William Brangham at the PBS News Hour.
It's an unspeakable tragedy, but how many times have you heard politicians say that something is an unspeakable tragedy?…We're strong. We're resilient. We're going to get this—through this together. But, yes, obviously, this is horrific. And it's got to be a whole lot more than words and prayers. These children were literally praying. We need action now. (We owe this)
JD Vance rushed in to demagogue: “When I see far left politicians say, how dare you offer thoughts and prayers, you need action, I don't care about your prayers, I care about what you're going to do to prevent this from happening, why does it have to be one or the other?” What Vance might have in mind for “the other” in addition to thoughts and prayers was left unsaid. In response, Frey drew on
the principle of “Tikkun Olam,” in his Jewish faith, which speaks about repairing the world.
“The meaning there is, prayers are good, but they are not enough,” Frey said on CNN. “It’s only adequate if you can attach an action to the work. And in this case, we know what the solutions are. They’ve been the same solutions three years ago, five years ago, 15 years ago.”
He said if Vance would support legislation to curb gun violence, “maybe we’re not really having an argument.” (Smith, Stanley, Inevitable)
The legislation Frey has in mind would include state and federal bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Boston Globe columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr, filling in for Jonathan Capeheart on Friday’s PBS News Hour, explained what we are up against:
This is about a society that believes that the right to carry guns is something like a religion unto itself. And that's from messaging that comes from Republicans about the Second Amendment and how any measure that is commonsense that is meant to prevent guns from getting in the hands of people that shouldn't have them is somehow not just unconstitutional, but sacrosanct in itself.
Until we can change that, until we can loosen the grip of the gun industry, the lobby here in Washington and across states, this will not change and children will continue to die. (Nawaz, Brooks and Atkins Stohr)
William Brangham, ‘We owe this to our children’: Minneapolis mayor calls for action after school attack, PBS News Hour, August 27, 2025
Fred de Sam Lazaro, Minneapolis mourns 2 children killed in Catholic school shooting, PBS News Hour, August 28, 2025
Amna Nawaz, Brooks and Atkins Stohr on the political response to the Minnesota school shooting, PBS News Hour, August 29, 2025
Peter Smith, Tiffany Stanley, Inevitable ‘thoughts and prayers’ fight follows Minneapolis shooting, AP, August 30, 2025
Central Library incident. A 44-year-old man was set upon by three assailants outside the Multnomah County Central Library in downtown Portland on Monday afternoon, stabbed multiple times by one, pounded with skateboards by the others, after he witnessed a disturbance and tried to intervene. This comes on the heels of a fatal shooting outside the library on July 1 that prompted stepped-up security at and around the facility. The culprits, two 18 years old, one 21, were soon apprehended at the Holladay Park/Lloyd Center MAX stop after they fled the scene on a train. The authorities deserve credit for the prompt response and apprehension. The victim was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
These incidents hit close to home. I make weekly excursions downtown for visits to the library and art museum. I do not recall ever feeling unsafe in or around the library, but routinely feel a degree of wariness is in order. A reassuring increase in security has been evident since the July 1 incident, and there are fewer shady characters hanging around on the sidewalk in front of the library. These are welcome developments.
A few weeks ago I enjoyed a lovely, early evening dinner at the Midtown Beer Garden food cart pod with a friend in town from Eugene for an overnight stay before catching an early flight the next morning. She commented on the change in downtown Portland since she and her husband left their Pearl District neighborhood ten years ago. Fewer people are out and about on foot. More storefronts are vacant. Tent encampments come and go. My subjective sense downtown and along my Saturday morning running route is that recent weeks have seen an uptick in those.
A new violent crimes report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association shows a steep drop in overall violent crime in Portland compared to the same period, January to July, in 2024, and the largest homicide decrease of any of the sixty-eight cities participating in the report (Portland Sees Decline). Violent incidents such as those at the library garner headlines. More common are petty crimes, vandalism, drug activity, and unpleasant, unprovoked encounters with aggressively unpleasant individuals that fuel anxiety and public perception downtown is unsafe. These problems and the perception of them are often associated with homelessness. A downtown resident testified to the city council that he and others “are most concerned with feeling unsafe as a result of rampant drug use and homeless crime.” He did not object to proposals to make more shelters available and beyond that to make housing more affordable, but argued that this alone is not the solution:
“They’ve got to reckon with what happens during the daytime when people come out of the shelter, they have drugs, they have guns, there are weapons,” he said. “What happens then to the residents of that neighborhood? Where is the concern for the residents of the neighborhood that the shelters are in?” (Vacca, Portland City Council ‘missing the point’)
Our new twelve-member city council appears to be dominated by a six-member progressive caucus, four of them members of the Democratic Socialists of America, given to utopian schemes to “redesign our entire economy” with subsidized housing, free garbage pickup, fareless public transit, government-run grocery stores with price controls, and so on, to be funded by taxing the heck out of the moderately well off (Peel, One Thing Has Changed). They do not inspire confidence.
Conditions in downtown Portland and elsewhere are cause for concern. They are by no means dire. Throughout the summer crowds flocked to festivals along the waterfront, events at Pioneer Courthouse Square, Portland Japanese Garden, the Rose Garden in Washington Park, and, I am happy to note, massive, peaceful demonstrations against the Trump regime. Major renovation at the Portland Art Museum is coming along. Some galleries remained open throughout the transformation that includes new or upgraded public gallery space and the new Mark Rothko Pavilion. The grand opening for the fully renovated museum is scheduled for November 20. Powell’s Books seems to be thriving. The nearby NW 23rd/Nob Hill and Slabtown neighborhoods are vibrant. Parks and neighborhoods throughout the city flourish. For all the problems, which are many and can seem daunting, there is much to celebrate.
By the bye, my saag aloo and my friend’s chicken biryani from the Best Taste of India food cart were really, really good.
OPB staff, Man stabbed, hit with skateboards outside Portland’s Central Library, Oregon Public Broadcasting, August 27, 2025
Zaeem Shaikh, Stabbing outside Portland library ignites dual controversies over security, police response, OregonLive/The Oregonian, August 27, 2025
Geoff Norcross, Security around Multnomah County’s Central Library is once again being called into question, Oregon Public Broadcasting, August 28, 2025
Sophie Peel, One Thing Has Changed at Portland City Hall: The Socialists Are Setting the Agenda, Willamette Week, July 16, 2025
Portland Sees Decline in Violent Crime; Homicides Down 51% in First Half of 2025, Portland.gov, August 8, 2025
Joey Vacca, Portland City Council ‘missing the point’ on homeless, crime, KOIN 6, July 22, 2025
In an unrelated development, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer urged Trump to “come to Portland, Oregon, and crack down.” Chavez-DeRemer is a former mayor of Happy Valley and one-term Republican congresswoman who lost her bid for reelection last November. Trump rewarded her with a cabinet post.
It was not immediately clear what kind of crackdown Chavez-DeRemer envisioned. Federal immigration authorities are already operating in the city of Portland, as they have for years. Chavez-DeRemer did not immediately return OPB’s request for comment or clarify her remarks. (Dole, Wilson, Lori Chavez-DeRemer)
Chavez-DeRemer’s request came during a cabinet meeting that played out like a Saturday Night Live sketch or maybe a Gavin Newsom parody. William Kristol’s thoughts turned to Nietzsche: “I remember reading Nietzsche in college: ‘When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks back into you.’”
Yesterday also featured a spectacle that perhaps transcended good and evil, but that was certainly striking: A three-and-a-quarter-hour televised cabinet Politburo meeting, in which the highest-ranking government officials of the world’s oldest and once greatest democracy abased themselves ridiculously before their presidential idol.
Every Trump apparatchik took a turn in the Cabinet Room adulating their leader. They even sought to outdo each other. Steve Witkoff’s fawning may have taken the prize: “There’s only one thing I wish for: That that Nobel Committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since that Nobel award was ever talked about.” But there was some stiff competition in this contest, about which retired Gen. Ben Hodges noted, “in the Army we called this Butt-snorkeling.” (Kristol, Nietzsche, Take the Wheel)
Bryce Dole, Conrad Wilson, Lori Chavez-DeRemer hopes for Trump administration ‘crackdown’ in Portland, OPB, August 26, 2025
William Kristol, Andrew Egger, Jim Swift, All the President’s ‘Butt Snorkelers’, The Bulwark, August 27, 2025
Meanwhile, Stephen Miller in an appearance on Fox News called the Democratic Party “a domestic extremist organization.” The Democrats have their share of blockheads, but as they say in professional wrestling entertainment, give me a break.
A DC grand jury declined to return an indictment on the felony charge of “assault with a breadly weapon” that former Fox News dingbat and current U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro leveled against the man who flung a Subway sandwich at one of the federal agents occupying DC. Video of the incident, which took place in front of a Subway shop, was aired on Wednesday’s PBS News Hour (at 1:15 into the news wrap). The sub guy, casually attired in shorts and what appears to be a polo shirt, hits the agent smack in the chest with the sandwich, turns, and starts running, whereupon the agent and his pals set off in hot pursuit in what looks like a scene from the Three Stooges.
There are a few things to bear in mind about grand juries. They hear evidence only from the prosecution, not from the defense, and the standard for bringing an indictment is only probable cause, not preponderance of the evidence or proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s why it’s often said that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to ‘indict a ham sandwich’—but not, it seems, Sandwich Man.
Nor was this a lone example. Just a few days earlier, the Justice Department was obliged to reduce the charges against Sydney Lori Reid, who had been involved in a protest against federal agents attempting to transfer two people the government characterized as “gang members” into custody. Reid filmed them and placed her body between the officers and the men, resulting in some pushing and shoving in which an FBI officer’s hand scraped against a brick wall resulting in injury. The government charged Reid with forcibly “assaulting, impeding, or interfering with federal agents,” a felony that could carry an eight-year sentence upon conviction. They presented the case to a grand jury, but the jury declined to indict. They then empaneled another grand jury with the same result. And then a third. The citizens on all three juries said no. (Mona Charen, The Sub Heard Round the World, The Bulwark, August 28, 2025
They just keep running. Sigh.
There are 50 members of Congress ages 75 and older who are up for reelection next year. Of those, nearly 70% say they have plans to run again, according to interviews, public comments and official statements. Just over 70% of the lawmakers in this group are Democrats. (Em Luetkemeyer, Forget Retirement: Older Lawmakers Want to Stay in Congress, NOTUS, August 27, 2025)
On both sides of the aisle older incumbents cite enjoyment of what they are doing as a reason for seeking reelection. Some Democrats are motivated by wishful thinking that their party will be in the majority after the 2026 election, Republicans by further implementation of Trump’s despotic agenda.
Do Something Department.
David Brooks: And my view is, if you think this is going to be over in three years, when Donald Trump leaves office, you're naive, that these historical tides, once they get going, they just keep going until they're stopped. And so what strikes me is, why are we not stopping it?
And so the people I'd salute this week are Lisa Cook and Susan Monarez and, frankly, the gentleman from the transportation board we just saw in the last segment.
And I had a Democratic politician call me up today and said, where's the head of the universities? Where are the law firms? Where are the corporate CEOs? These three people have guts. And they're not just leaving the office. They're just going to stay there and resist.
And we should—I have said this on this program multiple times. We should be having a mass coalition of people who are willing to resist together, because it's really hard to resist alone. And so at least we're seeing some pushback this week. (Brooks and Atkins Stohr)
Chop Wood, Carry Water, Jess Cravan
Vote Forward Letter Writing at Migration Brewery-Glisan: Protect the PA Supreme Court, September 6, 2025. 2828 Northeast Glisan Street, Portland. 2:00–4:00 pm.
Indivisible Saturday: Volunteer Orientation, September 13, 2025. Waverly Heights United Church of Christ, 3300 Southeast Woodward Street, Portland. 2:00–4:00 pm.
Keep the faith. Hold the line. Stand with Ukraine. yr obdt svt