DL Open Thread: Tuesday, September 30, 2025

The Real Reason Trump Invaded Portland:

Portland authorities are in a standoff with the Trump administration over an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention facility in the Oregon city, after an investigation found the administration is using the facility for overnight detentions, in violation of its city-issued permits.

The standoff comes amid threats from Donald Trump to dispatch troops to the city, and residents protesting nightly outside the Ice field office in question.  (Update: He has.)

The city office that oversees land use and zoning notified the owner of the building that Ice leases that the federal agency had violated a conditional-use permit approved in 2011. The permit limits the number of detainees Ice can hold at the facility each day to fewer than 15, and the duration for which they can be held to less than 12 hours. The permit also bars the agency from “housing” anyone overnight.

But Ice data the city obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, included in the official notice, shows 25 instances since January in which Ice held a person for more than 12 hours. On 26 January alone, agents held 16 people – listed as citizens of Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and other countries – for more than 27 hours before transferring them, according to public records obtained by Street Roots and the Guardian.

The city’s notice also said the building was illegally altered when exterior windows were boarded up without proper approval. An Ice spokesperson did not respond to a question asking when the wood was installed, but photos and video taken at protests and posted on social media show the boarded-up windows first appeared around 16 June.

The field office in south-west Portland sits two blocks from the Willamette River, across the street from an affordable housing complex and next door to a K-8 school that moved in August, citing the dangers of federal agents’ response to protests with teargas and pepper balls as the reason for the move.

Got it.  The real criminals are the ICE officials who are deliberately violating the law.  Trump’s incursion is to protect the criminal element in Portland.  Glad we straightened that out.

Top Brass vs. Hegseth?  Today’s meeting is almost guaranteed to be weird and news-worthy:

Military leaders have raised serious concerns about the Trump administration’s forthcoming defense strategy, exposing a divide between the Pentagon’s political and uniformed leadership as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summons top brass to a highly unusual summit in Virginia on Tuesday, according to eight current and former officials.

The critiques from multiple top officers, including Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, come as Hegseth reorders U.S. military priorities — centering the Pentagon on perceived threats to the homeland, narrowing U.S. competition with China, and downplaying America’s role in Europe and Africa.

President Donald Trump will attend the abrupt gathering of generals and admirals at Marine Corps Base Quantico, where Hegseth is expected to deliver remarks on military standards and the “warrior ethos,” even as uniformed leaders fear mass firings or a drastic reorganization of the combatant command structure and the military hierarchy.

The debate over the National Defense Strategy — the Pentagon’s primary guide for how it prioritizes resources and positions U.S. forces around the world — is the latest challenge for top military officials navigating the Trump administration’s unorthodox approach to the armed forces.

People familiar with the editing process, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive deliberations, described a growing sense of frustration with a plan they consider myopic and potentially irrelevant, given the president’s highly personal and sometimes contradictory approach to foreign policy.