Posts published in “Oregon column”

The Oregon Legislature, dominated as it is by the two major parties, often has been a burial ground for efforts to change the dynamics of the parties’ clout.

The initiative process is a more open pathway, the more so since there are more non-aligned voters in Oregon than there are either Republicans or Democrats, not to mention the sizable number in minor parties. And those many non-major party voters may jump at the chance to take a meaningful role in an important part of the process of selecting governmental leaders which until now has been closed to them.

Not only that: The political environment is such that Oregon Democrats now might find it makes sense for them to go along with it as well.

The core idea, unveiled this month in its latest form, is simple: Allow everyone to vote in any party’s primary elections, as opposed to people who are registered only for that party.

The proponents are offering two measures, one a proposed constitutional amendment and the other an initiative to change election law.

The amendment sets out the basic plan: “No voter shall be denied the right to vote solely because of the voter’s non-affiliation with a political party in any election funded by the state or its public jurisdictions. In primary elections, all candidates shall be listed on a single ballot, regardless of their party affiliations, allowing all eligible voters to vote for the candidates of their choice for: United States senator, representative in Congress, Governor, secretary of state, state treasurer, attorney general, state senator and state representative and any other public office so designated by law.”

The initiative also lays out some of the specifics. One part of the measure could be controversial in some places: It provides that in the primary election, the top two vote-getters (of whatever party, or none) would advance to the general election.

Primary elections are no small deal. In many parts of Oregon (and some would argue, even in statewide races) the decisions of who will hold elective office is effectively settled in the primary. Most legislative districts in Multnomah County, for example, are unlikely to elect in November anyone who is not a Democratic nominee, and the same is true for Republicans in most places east of the Cascades.

Those with political memory will recall that in last year’s general election Oregon voters rejected a statewide ranked-choice plan, 42.3% to 57.7%. But that was a complex proposal, and it wasn’t clear that ranked choice was specifically the main reason it failed. And Oregon voters have been known to reverse themselves on ballot concepts before when details change, as the subjects of same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization have shown.

The new measures are being backed by prominent names from three distinct sectors — former Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski, former Republican state Rep. Cheri Helt of Bend and Independent Party of Oregon Co-Chair Andrew Kaza.

Kulongoski said, “When this is on the ballot, half of the people in the state will be neither Democrats or Republican registered. And I think that the party should have to make an appeal to those independents as to why they think their candidate is the best one.”

Nonaligned registration is the top choice in 21 of Oregon’s 36 counties — in Clackamas, Clatsop, Columbia, Coos, Curry, Deschutes, Jackson, Jefferson, Josephine, Klamath, Lincoln, Linn, Malheur, Marion, Morrow, Polk, Tillamook, Umatilla, Wasco, Washington and Yamhill.

Five of the six U.S. House districts have non-aligned as the top choice, the sole exception being the overwhelmingly Democratic Portland-based 3rd district.

Beyond that, there are at least a couple of compelling reasons Democrats might be interested in joining this open-primary effort.

One is as pushback against the vote-restrictive policies of the Trump administration and many Republican officeholders in other states: The new proposals speak to openness. Republicans possibly could benefit from this too but because of their policies on voting rights they’re less well positioned for it.

Beyond that, as a matter of political tactics, Democratic support of an open primary plan would tend to align Democrats more with the recently burgeoning non-aligned and independent voting groups. In national popularity polling, the Democratic Party has been scoring terribly in recent years. Support of open primaries could be a move in the direction of people who have been drifting away.

If these ballot issues (which still face an extensive petition challenge) can pick up additional support from Democrats and some non-major party voters tired of sitting out a key part of the election process, this one may have a better chance for passage than last year’s ranked choice.

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After last weekend’s massive No Kings protests, some small-community people have sent messages to this effect: Our community didn’t have a No Kings event last time, but should it for round three?

For many of those people and communities, the best strategic answer is yes.

Nationally, the October No Kings event outran the June edition, with an estimated 7 million or more attendees overall. Oregon attendance has been pegged at 100,000 minimum, but the actual total number may have approached twice that. October outpaced June by an increase of one-third to one-half.

Most of the attention went, as it usually does, to the big urban events. Portland’s turnout, which was of course the largest in the state and estimated at around 40,000 (local law enforcement) to 50,000 (a number of news reports), was indeed spectacular. The Eugene event attracted about 3,500 to 4,000, and about 1,000 at the statehouse in Salem. Other larger Oregon cities, like Hillsboro, Gresham, Bend and Medford, had substantial events as well.

Not to discount any of that, but a big crowd protesting Trump in Portland or Eugene, impressive as it was, doesn’t count as an earth-shattering surprise. What may be of greater interest is this: While Trump won 25 of Oregon’s 36 counties, No Kings events, sometimes drawing large numbers of people relative to the population, were held last weekend in most of them.

In Yamhill County, which voted for Trump in each of his presidential contests, the No Kings event I attended in McMinnville featured a long march and an enthusiastic crowd and pulled an estimated 1,000 people. Another event in smaller Newberg drew about half as many.

Trump won Douglas County with more than 67% of the vote in 2024, yet organizers estimated more than 2,500 people protested at Stewart Parkway in Roseburg.

About 2,000 were estimated at Grants Pass in Josephine County, where Trump won nearly 63% of the vote in 2024.

Still, these are counties with large populations mostly not too far from more liberal urban areas. What about locations further away?

Hundreds protested in Pendleton and Tillamook — Trump won Umatilla County with 67.2% in 2024 and Tillamook County with 49%.

In all, Oregon hosted more than 60 No Kings events. Protests were reported in such small or mid-sized communities as Lakeview, Heppner, Scappoose, Prineville, Silverton, Enterprise, Harrisburg, Baker City, Coos Bay, La Grande, Oakridge, Woodburn, Gold Beach, Bandon, Cloverdale, and even small and remote Burns (in Harney County, which went 77.7% for Trump in 2024). Every one of those was located in a county which supported, often strongly, Trump at the polls.

If planned events all materialized (as all or nearly all seem to have done), Sherman, Gilliam, Grant and Malheur may have been the only Oregon counties not to hold a protest last weekend.

Very high vote percentages often are driven by communities where a prevailing view is that everyone, or almost everyone, locally votes in that direction. If that impression is punctured by a significant number of people who show up at a protest, some significant amount of the air may be let out of the balloon. Those very high percentages may decline.

With that in mind, some people in smaller communities have quietly begun to message other people about holding such an event there next time. If that happens, the number of Oregon communities with such events could expand by a couple of dozen or more. They could also alter (not necessarily flip, but moderate) the character of a number of communities.

That, of course, depends on whether another No Kings national event happens. None seems to be planned at present, but a third edition does seem likely, since both of the first two were widely considered successes, and the second seemed to expand considerably in size over the first.

And if some of the people who attended protests in Bend or Grants Pass event came from nearby communities, they might decide next time to build a local activity of their own — establishing a protest community in a location  that previously hadn’t seen (or perceived) one. In a small community, that more localized activism could affect the social atmosphere.

Hold a few more No Kings rallies, and the impact on Oregon could be real. A street protest can feel ephemeral, but the ripple effects could be large.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

It’s that season again. No, I’m not talking about back-to-school season, holiday season or fall leaves.

We’re now into health insurance choice season, which affects a lot of Americans, but referring here specifically to the Medicare side. It’s the time of year when people can change their coverage.

What’s most important in that area this year is, do you have a choice?

In Oregon — as in many other states — the quality of your health insurance coverage may change from this year to next. As significantly, it may vary depending on where you live. If you live in an urban area, you probably do have some choices. If not, your options are likely fewer.

Rural Oregonians may have a case, in the coming year, for pressing for parity with urban Oregonians in their health care options, and state government might be able to help with that.

While the core idea of Medicare — health insurance coverage for everyone over 65 — is simple, the details become complicated just below the surface.

Medicare insurance is split into four parts — or five or more, depending on how you count. Parts A and B are core or “original” Medicare, which everyone in the program gets. There’s an optional Part D which covers prescription drugs. None of this is seeing much change.

Part C, which is usually called Medicare Advantage, is different: It is optional, but not everyone has the same purchase opportunities. Most Medicare customers do take Advantage, because original Medicare has major gaps and limitations which the Advantage plans can help fill. Those plans sometimes cost nothing, or very little, to the customers, although prices can be higher in some cases.

These plans are offered not by the federal government but by private insurers, and while they have to conform to Medicare standards in their offerings, they aren’t required to offer their plans everywhere. The rules around them can vary by state, and also by county.

These rules also can change from year to year, and some of them are evolving  in a big way next year.

For example, the Advantage insurance plans offered by Moda Health and Summit Health in Oregon will be dropped at the end of 2025. Also, several specific plans which have been provided by Aetna, PacificSource and Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon will not be continued in 2026. Some other providers, like UnitedHealth, are changing the specific benefits (meaning in effect benefit reductions) on a number of their plans, though the plans generally are staying in place.

About 12,000 Oregonians on Medicare, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, are this season having to scramble to secure the coverage they need.

Geography complicates the situation further.

Because private providers can decide where they want to offer their plans, areas with fewer local medical options may be left out of the picture. As of next year, five Oregon counties — Curry, Harney, Lake, Umatilla and Union — all some distance from larger metro areas, will not have Advantage plans available at all.

That’s only part of the geographical complexity, because while other Oregon counties offer some Advantage plans, the number of choices varies a lot.

The website Q1Medicare.com reports that Multnomah County and Washington County residents have their choice of 59 plans, and in Tillamook, Lincoln, Morrow and Baker residents get their pick of just five. Most other counties are in between, with larger counties getting more options and smaller, and more remote, counties fewer.

Medigap, also an optional program and used by many people (and preferred by some) has standardized benefits. It also is offered by private providers but is only available to some people — primarily, people who have been kicked off Medicare Advantage plans. Many people may not find it a useful substitute.

But for people in rural counties, especially considering their disproportionately older population, the Advantage gap represents a real problem. It’s a problem too for anyone trying to promote economic or population development there.

Regulators, including the state, could help with this. Medicare Advantage providers are required to adhere to strict Medicaid standards, and those could be expanded to help provide more options to people in smaller counties.

By the way, this is also an important season in the field of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

And that’s a whole other level of complexity…

This column first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

The city of Portland has emerged at the center of three relationships key to the American system of government: the federal government and the states, the courts and the executive branch, and law enforcement and the military.

That was the opening idea in Federal District Judge Karin Immergut’s Oct. 4 order blocking federal deployment of troops to the streets of Portland. She followed it with this: “Whether we choose to follow what the Constitution mandates with respect to these three relationships goes to the heart of what it means to live under the rule of law in the United States.”

That point was underlined, in dark ink, by what happened just as she signed the order prohibiting the use of Oregon National Guard troops in Portland: An order from the White House ordering troops from California and Texas to the Oregon city.

As word of that emerged, the state of Oregon, which had legally attacked the first deployment, asked for a temporary restraining order in the case of troops from other states. She swiftly signed the followup order as well.

Where all this is heading remains unclear. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is set to hear arguments Thursday, and the Trump administration continues to defend its decision and decry Portland.

But the concerns raised by Immergut, appointed to the bench in 2019 by Donald Trump in his first term, are worth reviewing as we consider the stakes of what is happening. And these are stakes which involve people and places far beyond Oregon.

First, she noted that the only disturbances related to federal activities — immigration, specifically — have been concentrated within just one block and on just one building, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on Macadam Road, south of downtown. Additionally, Immergut pointed out more than 1,500 state and local law enforcement officers, many of them specifically trained in crowd control, have been available if needed.

For a couple of weeks in mid-June, protests were more fierce, resulting in four arrests involving assault and vandalism. But according to reports submitted to the court, protests since have been lightly attended and generally peaceful. Since mid-July the Portland Police Bureau has “carried out routine monitoring of the ICE-Facility protests without serious incident … [and] the risks posed by nightly ICE-Facility protests have not merited anything more than standard, periodic monitoring like any other neighborhood in the City.” The Immergut order carefully reviewed activity outside the ICE building, and found nothing local police should not have easily been able to handle.

The judge said the state and city provided plenty of evidence that “the protests at the Portland ICE facility were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days — or even weeks — leading up to the President’s directive on September 27, 2025.” Portland police logs “also show that the protest activity in September generally did not involve violence against federal property or personnel.”

The law requires that presidential declarations be given considerable deference, but the judge said that is “not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground.”

Immergut outlined broader issues as well. Federal takeover of enforcement at Portland would violate “the state’s Tenth Amendment right to control its National Guard. This encroachment on Oregon’s police power leaves an indelible mark on Oregon’s “sovereignty under the Constitution.”

She also warned specifically about the dangers of injecting military rule into traditionally civilian areas: “this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation.”

The judge framed the argument within a legal discussion, but that question of the broader use of military power in American civilian settings is much more than hypothetical. An Oct. 3 news report from the Minneapolis Star Tribune said that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had been considering sending a top strike force, the Army 82nd Airborne infantry division, a unit with deep experience in combat in Vietnam and Afghanistan and reaching back to World War I, to Portland. The national guard option seems to have been selected instead.

All that takes on extra weight after Trump’s own comments on Sept. 30 when speaking to hundreds of top military officers that the nations’ armed forces should start using cities as “training grounds.”

Portland has never been a place, as he told Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, that “looks like World War II. Your place is burning down.” It wasn’t and it isn’t. At the moment, court orders may be among the few things that keep it that way.

This column and image originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

If you want to find out who all of Oregon’s registered voters are, where they live, the party if any they’re associated with, which recent elections they voted in, and more, you can easily get that information. All you have to do is send a request and pay a fee — the amounts are not extravagant — to the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office.

Usually within a few days they will send that data, generally in the form of emailed spreadsheet. It’s an easy process, long has been available in Oregon (as it is in most states), and has been used by individuals, candidates and organizations for many years. Helping years ago with a local political campaign, I obtained the list for one county, spending as I recall about $40.

If the Trump administration wants the records of who has been registered and voting in Oregon, that information is available. Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read has told the U.S. Department of Justice he’s agreeable to providing it, in return for the usual fee. Or, the Trump administration probably could get one free from the state’s Republican Party. Most political organizations have their own copies.

This public information isn’t, however, what the administration is after in its recent set of demands to the state of Oregon, including a September lawsuit. Therein lies the issue.

Or at least a significant piece of it.

This conflict started with a July 10 email to Read from the U.S. Department of Justice “a potential information-sharing agreement that would provide the U.S. Department of Justice with information on, among other things, individuals who have registered to vote or have voted in your state despite being ineligible to vote, who may have committed other forms of election fraud, who may have provided false information to state authorities on voter registration or other election forms, or who may otherwise have engaged in unlawful conduct relevant to the election process.”

Read replied a few days later that his office had reviewed election security, found no such cases in Oregon and so had no violations to report.

But clearly that wasn’t the point. Justice replied on Aug. 14 that it was demanding all voter registration records which “must include the registrant’s full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her state driver’s license number or the last four digits of the registrant’s social security number.” The name, birth year (not date) and residential address are public, but the rest are not.

Read told the feds that the federal right to some enforcement action under national election law “does not create a corollary right to the personal data of Oregonians. … the statute does not entitle the Attorney General to obtain a state’s entire current voter-registration list, especially one that includes sensitive personal data.”

The Oregon response to this has been like many of those elsewhere. While more than half the states have received demands like those sent to Oregon, most have provided either only public records or no data at all, and that includes Republican secretaries of state in Alaska, Florida, Kansas, New Hampshire and Utah.

All of this is happening in the context of the administration’s attack on mail voting (pioneered at scale in Oregon) and the prospective arrival of federal troops to wander the streets of an until-now generally peaceful Portland.

Read seemed to have some of this in mind when he shot back to DOJ on July 23:

“At best, I do not trust that this current administration is capable of protecting Oregonians’ personal data, given the recent, high-profile leaks of state secrets and reckless gutting of federal agencies. … At worst, I am concerned that this administration will use any data we provide to unlawfully and unjustly violate Oregonians’ rights. I have no interest in collaborating with an administration that is engaged in the illegal detention and deportation of both non-citizens and U.S. citizens alike. I will not provide information that could lead to parents being separated from their children. I have no interest in sharing data with an administration that is willfully violating judicial orders and trampling on constitutional rights and responsibilities. Nor do I wish to share data with an administration that appears to take glee in snatching people off the streets without requiring its agents to properly identify themselves or provide arrest warrants, or with an administration whose agents wait outside of daycare centers, school yards, and courthouses to improperly detain and deport Oregonians.”

Shorter version: I don’t trust you.

This collection of federal actions clearly have nothing to do with election security or public safety. Oregon’s response so far has a larger context too.

This column first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

An Oregon Legislature hung up this season over state finances might in the next regular session, in theory, find some interest in a provocative idea from the Oregon Center for Public Policy:

Require reporting, in open public record, more information about finances among the larger corporations doing business in Oregon, mainly concerning the calculation of taxes paid and benefits received.

Such a concept is going nowhere any time soon on the national level.

In 2021, Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act, which was intended to pierce the sometimes mysterious forms of ownership — involving shell corporations, layers of ownership and foreign involvement — nationally.

It went into effect last year, but on March 2 the Trump administration announced “not only will it not enforce any penalties or fines associated with the beneficial ownership information reporting rule under the existing regulatory deadlines, but it will further not enforce any penalties or fines against U.S. citizens or domestic reporting companies or their beneficial owners after the forthcoming rule changes take effect either.”

The OCPP proposal (proposed legislative text has been released) is set up differently than that law. It’s intended to work through tax reporting requirements imposed on publicly-traded corporations — which for the most part means the larger ones — and others which they substantially control. The aim is to elicit not so much forms of control but a sense of how the tax-related finance picture in Oregon actually works.

The group said its plan would require “corporations to make public certain tax and financial information by filing a disclosure with the Oregon Secretary of State. The Act would apply to C-corporations that are publicly traded, meaning they are listed on a stock exchange like the New York Stock Exchange or an over-the-counter market. These corporations are already required to provide significant tax disclosures to the Security and Exchange Commission, so any cost of compliance would be minimal.”

So far as I’ve been able to tell, nothing like it is underway in other states. Most states do impose a corporate income tax, but not all. Some, including Washington, along with Texas, Wyoming, Nevada, South Dakota and Ohio, have no corporate income tax as such, but generally they do apply other taxes and fees aimed at businesses.

But then, Oregon often has been willing to take a lead.

Here is how the OCPP summarizes its argument:

“Corporations have designed the tax system to their advantage. Shining a light on the corporate tax system would allow Oregonians to see which corporations pay the bare minimum in income taxes, while reporting big profits to shareholders. It will allow Oregonians to see which corporations exploit what tax loopholes and subsidies, and which might be shifting profits overseas to avoid taxes on profits earned in Oregon. In short, corporate tax transparency is essential to make the corporate income tax system work for the benefit of all Oregonians.”

This is not, or at least not necessarily, a call for changing or increasing corporation income tax rates. In comparing the basic rates, Oregon is more or less centrist. Its tax rate, averaging across brackets, is lower than in California but similar to Idaho. Rates, and more important the rules surrounding what is counted as net income and what can be deducted or otherwise vary the amounts to be paid, are widely different across the states.

So what is it we ought to know?

The OCPP makes three basic arguments. Each might lead to conclusions that corporations are underpaying their fair share or, if complaints by some corporate advocates are right, the system really doesn’t benefit them at all but hurts the business climate.

First, the OCPP has argued that a number of the larger corporations have been (legally) avoiding taxes through use of tax havens and other means. The specifics, if made available, could clarify what an appropriate response would look like.

Second, state corporate tax breaks have been blasted as giveaways and supported as investments in the economy. Right now, Oregonians have little way to assess this, but an open book on the breaks and how they’re used might offer insight.

Third, corporations have argued that tax proposals involving increases or more compliance issues could drive them out of state. It’s an argument often fraught with emotion but too little analysis; more information about how taxes actually impact large businesses would be useful for all legislators to have.

Whichever way the information runs, Oregonians would have a better basis for developing business tax policy. Only a sponsor is needed to launch the discussion.

This column first appeared on the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

The opening of candidate filing last week brought on a fresh season of hope, of minorities to become majorities, of majorities to expand their reach, of incumbents to hang on for another term.

Put in the context of other elections in recent times, you shouldn’t expect the 2026 election to fulfill extravagant hopes, from any point of view.

Generations ago, changes of a large number of legislative seats in a single election was common, but that has become a rarity.

What recent elections tell us is that the odds are strongly against Rs taking control of either chamber, especially in what’s likely to be a Democratic year. But Democrats could have a shot, albeit with less than even odds, of taking one or both chambers with a true supermajority — that is, with two-thirds.

Since 2004, Democrats have held 16, 17 or 18 seats in the state Senate; a ceiling and floor have been of long standing. In the House, since Democrats pushed through a tie in 2010, that party has held from 34 to 37 seats.

The last time either party had a true supermajority — a two-to-one margin — in either chamber of the Oregon Legislature was in 1996, when Republicans controlled the Senate with exactly 20 votes, two-thirds. That was enough, if the caucus held together, to override (in that chamber) a veto from Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber. Since then, neither party has cracked the ceiling of 18 members. Going back further, the 1980 and 1982 elections gave Democrats 22 members, and 24 in the 1976 election.

You have to go back exactly a half century to find the last time either party got to 40 in the House. In that 1974 election, when Democrats nationally had one of their best election years ever in the wake of Watergate, that party held 40 of the 60 House seats. That marked a significant fast shift: The 1972 election gave Dems a majority of just 33, so in 1974  they gained seven seats, an unusual level of gain for either party since.

The political map was a lot more fluid then. While (as now) most of the Republicans came from either east of the Cascades (or Washington County, which is now blue), with a few others scattered in other areas, Democrats won in places they’d be considered non-competitive today.

The map is more hardened now.

That’s why the Cyrus Javadi party switch, though on the surface it’s only about a single seat, has a lot of significance, since the real battlement is so sparse. But his district, on the northwest coast, in the Astoria and Tillamook area, happens to be one of the competitive areas.

Javadi recently left the Republican Party and is running for his third as a Democrat. Since his recent breaks with the rest of the Republican caucus would have made a primary election win difficult, he may have a better path to re-election now. Or not; party changes can be tricky, and he has a complex path ahead.

Not only his own seat may be at stake. The Republican holding the Senate district covering that area, Suzanne Weber, is barred from re-election because she joined a Republican walkout in 2023. A Republican replacement candidate with Weber’s support, has announced, as have other candidates. But the nature of the election year, the politics around the Javadi switch and the normal competition of candidates in a politically marginal district makes the seat hard to call this early on.

The exact margins, the precise number of Democratic seats in the legislature, likely will come down to only a few seats and districts.

As many as a half-dozen seats across both chambers — mainly in the Salem, Gorge, Clackamas and outlying Bend areas — could account for some uncertainty as well. It’s not hard to figure: Those were hotspots last year too.

Taken together, Republicans, though in the minority, seem to have as many seats at risk as the Democrats do. That would mean they have only a long-shot chance of capturing either chamber, and they’ll almost have to run the table to hold Democrats below their current 36-seat technical supermajority for finance and some other bills.

Democrats will have to push to gain true supermajority status — two thirds in each chamber — but their chance of pulling it off are realistic. They would have to fare just about as well in the election to reach 40 seats, as the Republicans would to keep them below 36.

The usual precautions apply here. Candidate filing has only just begun; we won’t know the whole field in many cases for months. There’s another regular session to go, not to mention final work (presumably) in the current special which features a contentious tax and budget bill, and those developments along with others could influence some races. And along the way, people may drop out of contention too.

But if you want a best guess as the 2026 cycle opens, you’d be wise not stray too far from the legislative roster of today.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

The Portland Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on Macadam Road south of downtown has become one of the best-known and most distinctive buildings in the city. When you drive by, it even looks, from all the people hanging around it, like a tourist destination.

Of course, what you see out there, most days, are protesters.

But look closer: They are various kinds of protesters. Alongside ICE “clients” (for lack of a better word), there are often a few people with clipboards are trying to assist them. And occasionally, not often, you might see an ICE agent or two.

The people are only part of what makes the place so easy to spot. The building is a blocky nondescript office set in a middling industrial district (though a Tesla car dealership is located next door), located between the south waterfront and Johns Landing, but it has three distinctions.

First, the lower areas that usually might include glass or plastic surfaces are covered instead by plywood, giving the sense of a shuttered structure. Second, most of it is cordoned off by heavy fencing. And the lower half of the building is covered with graffiti — mostly aimed at ICE and the Trump Administration and distinctly R-rated.

There’s no apparent way — no entry, even with security control — a citizen seeking simply to visit this federal agency can do so. The inside is shut off from the world.

A plywood-covered door facing Macadam appears barely used. Most ingress comes in through a gated driveway on a side street, where an unmarked doorway leads into the building.

The surest way to draw an ICE response from outside is to block that driveway, even for a minute, though that’s also where immigrants enter the building — and, some protesters said, seem never to come back out, at least not by the way they went in.

When incidents happen here, as they did earlier this month and likely will again, video reports and clips will suggest that what happens there is happening all over Portland. President Donald Trump has mentioned the idea of sending National Guard troops to the city to “wipe them (protester, presumably) all out.” He said at a news conference, “Portland, it’s unbelievable what’s going on in Portland. The destruction of the city. I’m going to look at it now.”

If he did, he would find no ruin or destruction. Travel around Portland this season and you’ll find a city that looks as prosperous and peaceful as it ever has. The downtown area, a couple of miles north of the ICE building, looks as normal as it ever gets.

In 2020, when Trump last sent a federal force into Portland, neighborhoods were filled with tear gas and people were grabbed from off the streets, well away from a then-violent core.

Current protests appear limited to the ICE building and the streets immediately around it, where traffic has been unimpeded. At least one apartment dweller nearby has complained about noise, and a sign was posted on an office building across the street saying, “Please do not vandalize. We are a nonprofit. We are not associated with the ICE building.” The building appears to be unmarked and undamaged.

Messages critical of ICE are all over the ICE block. A chalk sidewalk message says “Remember the taken.” A display on a Tri-Met rail post behind the building contains sheets showing people who have entered the ICE system, apparently in Portland, and evidently remain in custody, somewhere.

People who approach the ICE building side street entrance, in some cases as a requirement of monthly check-ins, are met outside by a few volunteers offering information. Most other people visible on the block are protesters.

But the protesters come in distinct types, most easily grouped as “day” and “night.”

On Monday mornings since January, an interdenominational religious group organized in part by local Quakers stands on the sidewalk in front of the building and holds up protesting signs. They are quiet — most of the sound comes from the honking of passersby car horns, generally in support of the protesters — and peaceful; most are seniors. About 30 were there this week; the group’s mailing list was said to include 60 people. Around noon, they packed up their signs and later other groups, at least one of them Buddhist, took their place. Most of the protesters come from a variety of religious groups.

People there say the scene is different at night, when a smaller and more hard-edged group — some of the day-timers called them “rowdies” — show up. They make noise, have left graffiti, and have thrown objects. In response, ICE troops, whose appearance usually is limited in the day, were said to sometimes emerge with tear gas. The usual number of people showing up at night, according to the daytime regulars, is small, usually fewer than two dozen.

One of the day protesters, Joe Snyder of Portland, said he doubted “we need a lot of federal troops for 15 or 20 people.”

Day or night, there’s little personal contact between the people inside the building and those outside. It’s become a routine. And none of the groups in or around the building seem entirely comfortable with the others.

Could that change? Snyder told about one day when ICE officers — appearing on the roof of the building — and both types of protesters were present, and conditions grew tense. Then some of the religious protesters started singing and walking around the area. The tension eased. After a time, the “rowdies” relaxed, and so did the ICE officers.

The chasms are large, but they might be breached. If they are, that’s not likely to happen by an overwhelming show of force.

This column first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.