Politics
Portland mayor demands ICE leave city after federal agents use tear gas on protesters ‘Sickening decisions’
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The mayor of Portland, Oregon, is calling on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to leave his city after federal agents deployed tear gas at a crowd of demonstrators, including young children, outside an ICE facility over the weekend.
Mayor Keith Wilson characterized the protests on Saturday as peaceful, as federal agents reportedly used tear gas, pepper balls, flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets against the anti-ICE demonstrators.
Wilson urged ICE agents to resign and for the agency to leave Portland, denouncing their “use of violence” and the “trampling of the Constitution.”
“Today, federal forces deployed heavy waves of chemical munitions, impacting a peaceful daytime protest where the vast majority of those present violated no laws, made no threat, and posed no danger to federal forces,” he said in a statement on Saturday.
CHICAGO MAYOR BRANDON JOHNSON PUTS ICE ‘ON NOTICE’ WITH EXECUTIVE ORDER SEEKING PROSECUTION OF AGENTS
Mayor Keith Wilson characterized the protests in his city as peaceful, as he called for ICE to leave. (Ali Gradischer/Getty Images)
“To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave. Through your use of violence and the trampling of the Constitution, you have lost all legitimacy and replaced it with shame. To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children. Ask yourselves why you continue to work for an agency responsible for murders on American streets. No one is forcing you to lie to yourself, even as your bosses continue to lie to the American people,” the mayor continued.
The mayor added that this nation “will never accept a federal presence where agents wield deadly force against the very people they are sworn to serve.”
“I share the impatience with those who demand we use every legal tool at our disposal to push back against this inexcusable, unconscionable, and unacceptable violence against our community,” Wilson said. “I share the need to act. Actions that can withstand the scrutiny of the justice system take time – and we cannot afford to lose this fight.”
CBP/BORDER PATROL AGENTS PLACED ON ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE AFTER DEADLY CONFRONTATION WITH ALEX PRETTI
Federal agents deployed tear gas at a crowd of demonstrators, including young children, outside an ICE facility in Portland. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Portland officials are working to operationalize an ordinance, which went into effect last month, that imposes a fee on detention facilities that use chemical agents, the mayor said.
“As we prepare to put that law into action, we are also documenting today’s events and preserving evidence. The federal government must, and will, be held accountable,” he wrote.
“Portland will continue to stand firmly with our immigrant neighbors, who deserve safety, dignity, and the full protection of the communities they help build,” he continued. “We are also proud of the Portlanders who showed up today in peaceful solidarity, demonstrating the strength and clarity of those shared values in the face of federal overreach.”
This comes amid national unrest and bipartisan scrutiny of immigration enforcement tactics following two killings of U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents last month in Minneapolis.
The Trump administration has faced bipartisan scrutiny over its immigration enforcement tactics following two killings of U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
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Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, and Alex Pretti was fatally shot on Jan. 24 by Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez while he was recording immigration enforcement operations in the same city.
Pretti, an ICU nurse, appeared to be attempting to assist a woman agents had knocked down when he was sprayed with an irritant, pushed to the ground and beaten, according to video and witness accounts. An agent was later seen pulling Pretti’s lawfully owned firearm from his waistband before other agents fired several shots, killing him.
Los Angeles voters will cast ballots in eight City Council district elections next week, including for two open seats where incumbents are leaving because of term limits.
The contests for the seats being vacated by Councilmembers Bob Blumenfield and Curren Price have drawn large fields of candidates, but the biggest spending has been in the Westside’s District 11, where incumbent Traci Park is facing challenger Faizah Malik, a public interest attorney and one of four council candidates backed by the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America.
Park has raised $1.3 million, according to the latest campaign finance reports filed Friday, while challenger Faizah Malik reported about $520,000 in contributions. In addition, more than $3 million has been spent in the race by so-called independent expenditure committees that spend money to elect or defeat candidates but which are barred from coordinating their activities with the campaigns.
The district includes Venice, Mar Vista, Brentwood and Pacific Palisades, which was devastated by wildfire in January 2025.
Malik said Friday she is confident heading into the primary election, saying most of her donations are under $100 each, and that she hasn’t taken money from corporations.
Los Angeles City Council candidate Faizah Malik attends a canvassing event March 15 in Westchester.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
“This is what it means to be a grassroots candidate, and it is just more evidence that the people of CD11 believe in our vision for a Westside that is affordable for everyday people,” Malik said.
A Park campaign aide said Park’s haul is indicative of the councilmember’s record of getting results.
“But no one is taking anything for granted,” the aide said in a statement. “We’re working until the final vote is cast because this election will determine whether the Westside keeps moving forward or gets pulled backward into the same failed ideological politics Angelenos are exhausted by.”
Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park, center, with members of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City on May 12.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Park has emphasized her advocacy for fire recovery efforts, including pushing for permit fee waivers for residents wanting to rebuild. Malik has said Park has been too focused on single-family homeowners and said she would focus more energy on renters.
They have contrasting views on policing: Malik said she opposes expanding the size of the Los Angeles Police Department and instead supports shifting more resources to the city’s unarmed crisis response program. Park said the Police Department should have about 10,000 sworn officers, up from about 8,700 currently. She voted in favor of a 2023 LAPD contract that gave raises to officers and increased salaries to new hires.
They stand in contrast of each other on the Venice Dell housing development project, which would turn a city lot into 120 housing units for low-income and homeless people. Park opposed the completion and instead wants to turn it into a “mobility hub” and move the housing project to an adjacent lot. Malik, who represented the developer that filed a suit against the city claiming Park and others sought to kill the project, said the project was a motivating factor for her campaign.
District 9
Six candidates are vying to replace Councilman Curren Price, who hit the 12-year limit, in District 9. The district includes the Convention Center, USC and communities along the Harbor Freeway.
The candidates vary on key issues, including policing and housing. Estuardo Mazariegos, co-director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Los Angeles, is backed by the Democratic Socialists of America. He has called for reducing the LAPD budget and redirecting funds to other city departments.
Two other candidates — Jorge Hernandez Rosas, an educator, and Jose Ugarte, who previously worked for Price — said they support hiring more police officers. Another hopeful, Elmer Roldan, executive director of Communities in Schools of Los Angeles, said he believes in keeping the LAPD at its current size.
Ugarte, Roldan, Rosas and Martha Sánchez, a therapist, all support enforcing Municipal Code 41.18, which bars homeless encampments near schools and daycare centers. Mazariegos and Jorge Nuño, an entrepreneur, say the code doesn’t solve homelessness and instead just moves people around.
Ugarte has raised the most in contributions of any candidate and has been endorsed by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party in the nonpartisan race.
District 3
Three candidates are competing for an open seat in District 3, where Councilmember Bob Blumenfield has termed out of office. The district encompasses Woodland Hills, Canoga Park, Reseda, Winnetka and Tarzana.
The candidates are Tim Gaspar, who founded an insurance company, Barri Worth Girvan, district director for Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, and Christopher Robert “C.R.” Celona, a tech entrepreneur.
The three candidates are similarly positioned on public safety, backing Mayor Karen Bass’ long-term goal to increase the LAPD ranks to at least 9,500 officers. All three also support enforcing Municipal Code section 41.18.
Gaspar and Worth Girvan have both scored key endorsements. Gaspar is backed by Blumenfield, billionaire developer Rick Caruso and Councilmembers Monica Rodriguez, Tim McOsker and John Lee and billionaire developer Rick Caruso. Worth Girvan has endorsements from a long list of state Democratic lawmakers, the county Democratic Party, the Sierra Club and labor unions.
Gaspar leads in campaign contributions, followed by Worth Girvan. Celona, who has promised to resuscitate the city’s entertainment industry by fast-tracking film permits and cutting red tape, trails far behind.
District 1
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez faces four challengers in District 1, which stretches from Highland Park on the northeast to University Park on the southwest. She is backed by the local Democratic Socialists of America, and her challengers claim the district has suffered under under her leadership, pointing to MacArthur Park as emblematic of the homelessness and drug addiction crisis plaguing the city.
Hernandez counters with a list of accomplishments, including helping secure a $6.3-million state grant to house homeless individuals near the Arroyo Seco riverbed and advocating for a citywide network of unarmed crisis response teams.
She faces challenges from Maria Lou Calanche, a former Los Angeles police commissioner and founder of the nonprofit Legacy LA; Nelson Grande, an executive consultant and former president of Avenida Entertainment Group; Raul Claros, founder of California Rising; and Sylvia Robledo, a small-business owner and former council aide.
Hernandez’s campaign has also faced an onslaught of accusations of “dark money” spending. A group called Neighbors First has sent mail pieces critical of Hernandez and other leftist City Council candidates.
District 5
Incumbent Katy Yaroslavsky faces two challengers for her District 5 seat, both of whom oppose her stance on housing and public safety spending. The district includes some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, including Bel-Air, Westwood, Cheviot Hills and Hancock Park.
Challengers Henry Mantel, a tenants’ rights lawyer, and Morgan Oyler, an accountant, say Yaroslavsky hasn’t done enough to increase the district’s housing supply. Yaroslavsky, who holds a wide lead in fundraising, has said she supports increasing housing density near transit centers but cautioned against building more than the city can sustain.
District 13
Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, who is also backed by the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter, faces three challengers in District 13, which includes Atwater Village, Glassell Park, Elysian Valley, Echo Park, Silver Lake and East Hollywood.
The list of challengers includes Colter Carlisle, vice president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council, Dylan Kendall, who runs Grow Hollywood, and Rich Sarian, vice president of strategic initiatives for downtown’s South Park Social District.
While Soto-Martínez supports expanding the city’s unarmed personnel program, Carlisle and Kendall would like to expand the police force. Sarian has said he supports the unarmed personnel program and wants to examine the LAPD’s current size and resources.
District 15
Incumbent Tim McOsker is facing off against community organizer Jordan River in District 15, which covers Harbor City, Harbor Gateway, San Pedro, Watts and Wilmington. McOsker has decades of experience in the political world, having worked in the mayor’s office, and the city attorney’s office before joining the City Council in 2022. Rivers, who is unemployed, is a member of the Green Party.
District 7
Monica Rodriguez is running unopposed for the District 7 seat in the northeast San Fernando Valley.
Times staff writers David Zahniser, Noah Goldberg and Sandra McDonald contributed to this report.
Randy Villegas’s campaign for Congress in California would feel right at home in a liberal district. A self-described populist who supports Medicare for all, he proudly promotes his endorsements from progressives including Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But Mr. Villegas is not running in a Democratic bastion like San Francisco or Los Angeles. Instead, he’s mounting an ambitious campaign in California’s conservative Central Valley against Representative David Valadao, a battle-tested Republican.
Republicans have eagerly seized on Mr. Villegas’s candidacy, deriding him as a socialist who is out of step with the district while secretively spending money to boost his primary campaign over a more moderate Democrat to ensure that Mr. Valadao winds up with what they appear to consider an easier opponent.
Mr. Villegas is unfazed.
“What we have right now is a populist message that is resonating across the board,” he said in an interview, insisting that his message of refusing corporate dollars and fighting for universal health care transcended party lines and was hitting home in his battleground district. After all, he said, “who you voted for in the 2024 election” was irrelevant to health challenges such as valley fever, diabetes or cancer.
As Democrats fight for control of Congress, prominent left-wing politicians including Mr. Sanders of Vermont and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez of New York are increasingly inserting themselves into primary races to elevate progressives in competitive battleground districts.
That’s a departure from the progressive playbook of years past, which generally focused on backing candidates in deep-blue turf where campaigns tended to focus more on liberal ideology and less on electability in general-election contests.
The effort aims to rebut the conventional wisdom that running moderate Democrats who appeal to centrists and Republicans with middle-of-the-road policies is the best strategy in competitive races. Now, progressives are saying that candidates with policies aimed at helping working families and critiquing the wealthy can win anywhere.
Running candidates who “have the guts to stand up for the working class,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview, should be a “winning formula in almost every part of the country.”
This year, Mr. Sanders has backed a slate of candidates in competitive House and Senate races who promote working-class bona fides and espouse populist policies, even if not all describe themselves as progressive.
The list includes Sam Forstag, a smoke jumper in Montana; Bob Brooks, a retired firefighter in Pennsylvania; Brian Poindexter, an ironworker in Ohio; Rebecca Cooke, a small-business owner in Wisconsin; Abdul El-Sayed, a former county health director in Michigan; and Graham Platner, an oysterman in Maine.
In the competitive districts that also featured fierce Democratic primaries, some Sanders-backed candidates have already prevailed over moderate opponents this spring, including Mr. Poindexter, Mr. Platner and Mr. Brooks.
Of Mr. Sanders’s 16 congressional endorsements so far this election cycle, seven are in races considered at least somewhat competitive — a departure from his four endorsements in competitive congressional races out of 35 total in the 2024 and 2022 election cycles.
Jeremy Slevin, a senior adviser to Mr. Sanders, acknowledged that the senator’s strategy had shifted this year. It was influenced, Mr. Slevin said, by the success of Mr. Sanders’s “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies last year in conservative regions, which emboldened his view that his ideology resonated widely.
Mr. Sanders will rally for Mr. Platner in Maine this weekend. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who declined to comment, will appear with Mr. Forstag next week at a rally in Missoula, Mont.
The strategy is not without its detractors.
Matt Bennett, the executive vice president of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, argued that the track record of successful Democratic campaigns showed that moderate politics were the correct formula in competitive districts.
“This notion that tacking sharply to the left is going to bring out this mythical band of voters who are just waiting to be mobilized by fairly radical ideas is a complete fantasy,” he said.
Mr. Bennett said he feared a scenario where a progressive in a competitive general election race became an easy, “unelectable” target for the right — pointing to 2018 losses by Kara Eastman in Nebraska and Dana Balter in New York, both progressives who fell short against Republicans in crucial swing districts.
Progressives, for their part, still harbor grudges over past instances when Democrats eschewed candidates from the left who might have won with more party support.
Bill Hyers, a progressive Democratic strategist, remembered a battleground 2022 Oregon contest in which establishment PACs responsible for electing Democrats to the House chose not to spend heavily to help Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a progressive who had upset an establishment Democrat in a primary. Ms. McLeod-Skinner ended up losing to her Republican opponent by just two percentage points.
The left flank of the party, Mr. Hyers said, has grown tired of seeing the traditional “generic white guy” candidate fail to excite voters and lose elections.
“It’s not working anymore, so why would we sit aside while you continually screw something up?” he said. “How about we have an agenda, say what we’re going to do, and have people who are real people?”
Mr. Forstag acknowledged that many of the voters he’s courting in western Montana — where Representative Ryan Zinke, a Republican, is retiring — are not supporters of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. But he said her core beliefs on affordable housing, health care and child care would resonate across party lines.
“We do not have to agree on every single issue,” he said in an interview.
Mr. Forstag, a union leader, spent four years as a smoke jumper, a specialized type of firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service who parachutes in to fight wildfires. He said his inspiration for running came last year when thousands of Forest Service employees were fired as part of the Trump administration’s push for government efficiency. He spoke at the “Fighting Oligarchy” rally last year in Missoula, where Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez drew nearly 7,500 people.
Mr. Forstag dismissed the idea that moderate candidates were Democrats’ best options in red or purple districts.
“A lot of the people that Democrats have run across the country have been losing,” he said. “So we need to change something.”
He faces several Democratic primary opponents, including Ryan Busse, a former nominee for governor, and Matt Rains, a rancher and army veteran who is running as a moderate.
Mr. Rains argued that moderate Democrats had the better track record of courting swing voters in Montana, where, this year, the eventual Democratic nominee is likely to face Aaron Flint, a radio host who is leading the Republican primary.
Democrats aligning with progressives such as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Mr. Rains said, offered Republicans fodder to paint Democrats as far-left radicals.
“We don’t need to give them more ammunition to do that,” he said. “It feels like we’re going to shoot ourselves in the foot by leaning way too far to the left and not being able to identify with the average Montanan.”
In California, Mr. Valadao’s Central Valley district includes Bakersfield and some liberal areas that Democrats added during redistricting to make it more competitive. But it is still a contest with a razor-thin margin, and Dr. Jasmeet Bains, a state assemblywoman running against Mr. Villegas in the Democratic primary, argues that she is the better fit for the region.
Ms. Bains is known as a Valleycrat — a term for a more moderate Democrat in the Central Valley — and has slammed Mr. Villegas as “Radical Randy,” saying he has “endorsed socialist-run health care.”
Ms. Bains declined an interview request. Her campaign provided a statement highlighting her local roots and declaring that “the Valley doesn’t care about party labels, and they deserve better than politicians who only offer empty promises.”
Mr. Villegas called Ms. Bains “Republican-lite,” noting that both she and Mr. Valadao had accepted money from corporate donors. “It’s not even this fight about left versus right — it’s bottom versus top,” he said.
The Democratic establishment put its thumb on the scale in some of these races earlier this month, when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee endorsed candidates in contested primaries. It aligned with Mr. Sanders in some places, endorsing Mr. Brooks in Pennsylvania. But it also backed Ms. Bains.
Mr. Sanders dismissed the group’s involvement.
“The establishment Democrats live in their world — they collect a lot of money from wealthy people,” he said. “We live in a different world.”
Taylor Robinson and Leo Dominguez contributed reporting.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is taking heat from southern conservatives after she delivered a fiery speech in Montgomery, Alabama, last week, demanding that northern progressives “pull up to the South.”
Speaking at the “All Roads Lead to The South” rally May 16, the prominent “Squad” member claimed the U.S. was not a true democracy until the 1960s when the Voting Rights Act was passed, and took direct aim at the Supreme Court, accusing the high court under Chief Justice John Roberts of being “part of that long history of regression and repression in America.”
Ocasio-Cortez then issued a highly controversial call to action, demanding that “the North” travel to red states like Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee and Mississippi to fight what she described as political injustice.
She doubled down on social media following the event, writing, “If you’re not from these states, it’s time to pull up.”
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks during a news conference on April 29, 2026 outside the U.S. Capitol. (Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
Her rhetoric was quickly slammed by conservatives on social media, with many pointing out the irony of the congresswoman urging people to “pull up” while she stood heavily protected during her speech behind bulletproof glass.
Conservative podcaster Todd Spears went viral with a TikTok reaction video that racked up 1 million views, mocking Ocasio-Cortez’s security setup.
“[Pull up] and do what? Help us get the boat off the trailer, like cut the grass, track a deer in the woods?” Spears said. “Roll up and do what exactly? Because you’re standing behind, like, pope glass in your own hometown. You come down here starting that s—, you better bring a tank. That’s not a good idea. You stay where you’re at.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to reporters during an election night rally in Brooklyn, New York, on Nov. 4, 2025, as initial projections declare Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani the winner for New York City mayor. (Reuters/Jeenah Moon)
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Spears also criticized the divisive nature of her remarks, writing in the video caption that “AOC talking about the North ‘rolling up’ on the South and Alabama, like this is still the 1860s, is wild.”
“Maybe politicians should spend less time trying to divide Americans and more time fixing the mess we already have,” he added.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to reporters after Mahmoud Khalil arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport on June 21, 2025. (Michael Karas/NorthJersey.com)
Another TikTok creator, Kei Bennett, whose video garnered more than 800,000 views, warned Ocasio-Cortez’s supporters not to take the bait.
“I want to issue a stern warning so you do not take her advice and pull up on Alabama,” Bennett said, jokingly citing local dangers ranging from wild hogs and bayou gators to locals who “will not hesitate to unite and get you the f— up out of here.”
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Bennett, who has more than half a million followers on the platform, warned the congresswoman’s followers that “down here in the South we don’t call cops, we call coroners,” adding, “Stay your a– up there, leave us alone. We ain’t bothering nobody.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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