In Portland, protests have raged after the shooting of two suspects being pursued by ICE officers. Media accounts immediately portrayed the shooting as excessive force on a Hispanic couple in their car. Later, Portland Police Chief Bob Day admitted that they withheld the suspected gang associations of the couple despite the early misleading accounts. Wiping away tears, Day said that he did not want to contribute to the “injustice.”
DHS officials say Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras are Venezuelan criminal illegal aliens and are believed to be members of the violent gang Tren de Aragua.
Moncada allegedly entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and was arrested. However, the Biden Administration released him despite his record. At the time of the incident, he had a final order of removal.
Zambrano-Contreras was the passenger in the car and allegedly entered the U.S. illegally in 2023. She was also released during the Biden Administration. She allegedly “played an active role in a Tren de Aragua prostitution ring” and was previously accused of involvement in a shooting in Portland.
The ICE officers said that they wounded the two after they tried to run over officers. They were later found by the Portland Police Bureau and taken to a hospital.
DHS called the description of the two injured as a married couple “REVOLTING LIES,” declaring that “the two criminal illegal aliens who attacked Border Patrol in Portland are a gang member and his prostitute, NOT an innocent ‘married couple.’”
The shooting immediately triggered protests given the prior shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis. Press and politicians pounced on the story as an example of excessive force.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek held a press conference to express outrage over ICE being in the city. It did not seem to matter that the suspected Tren de Aragua gang associates were accused of trying to kill officers. Wilson declared that you simply cannot believe what ICE says in such incidents.
Kotek denounced the shooting as “instigated by the reckless agenda of the Trump administration.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., rushed out a comment on X, stating that “I’m monitoring the first awful reports of two people shot in Portland by federal law enforcement. I’ll keep you updated, but Trump’s deployment of federal agents in my hometown is clearly inflaming violence–and must end.”
In his press conference, Chief Day admitted that the Portland Police Department hesitated to disclose the suspected gang connection because it did not want to be accused of “historic injustice of victim blaming” by law enforcement.
Day then began to cry as he attempted to speak to the Hispanic community, declaring that “it saddens me that we even have to qualify these remarks because I understand or at least have attempted to understand your voices, your concern, your fear, your anger.”
Day’s admission seemed to be brushed aside by the media. There was little concern that a police chief admitted to withholding information that would have supported ICE and contradicted misleading accounts fueling the protests.
The fear of contributing to, or being accused of, the “historic injustice of victim blaming” should not be the basis for withholding clearly material information from the public as protests erupted around the city. Whatever the investigation will show on this shooting, the public should have been informed about what was known about the status and relevant record of the two individuals.
The advantage of fueling rage politics is that the facts can become immaterial. It did not appear to matter that these suspects were criminal aliens who may have been trying to kill ICE officers. Even admitting those facts seems too much for the Chief of Police in having to apologize to the community. To quote Chief Day, “It saddens me.”
Yes, leaving out key details like the fact these two were members or associated with the gang Tren de Aragua and that they had criminal records is deceitful to the general public. The leftist narrative this was just some innocent married couple and leaving out not only those facts but the fact these two people tried to use their vehicle to kill ICE agents is also wrong.
The 5 W’s have taken a backseat to objective reporting, Jonathan had correctly pointed out the Fork-in-the-Road of Journalism and it has taken the Advocacy Route, in the Age of Rage.
Asking: Who, What, When, Where, and Why (The 5W’s), has obviously not been programmed into A.I. and modern day Reporters are not asking ‘Themselves’ these 5 simple question before publishing.
The results is what you see today: Initial reports that are wrong and irrelevant. And what has become of: The Retraction? Publishers have dismissed the responsibility to the Audience, they don’t care if they are wrong, that’s part of their calculus of Advocacy. To some extent the Degree-of-Liability is also part of the calculation, as if printing a Retraction is an admission of guilty wrong and subject to liability.
None the less, ‘Never Having To Admit That Your Wrong’ has become part-n-parcel of today’s Media Reporting, and it’s epidemic.
“as if printing a Retraction is an admission of guilty wrong and subject to liability. ”
Counter-productive. IANAL, but I am pretty sure that admission of an error before being sued for would be considered somewhat of a mitigating factor, at least when it came to the magnitude of damages awarded.
The Portland mayor, the OR governor and Wyden – and especially those who voted for them – are so afflicted with TDS that I, at age 82, recognize Tren de Aragua as the name of a Venezuelan gang that is present throughout the USA. Whether in print or when spoken, I now know it so well that I was able to readily spell it in this post.
tennants1970: Indeed. I don’t understand “TDS”. Americans should feel a bit more secure now that we have a President who doesn’t hesitate to clear violent illegals off the streets and deport them.
I am a proud TVS (Trump Vindication Syndrome) adherent.
The police chief says he has tried to understand the fear and anger of Hispanics. Maybe they are fearful and angry because their police chief cries.
He has to do something to satisfy the far-left Portland and Oregon leaderhip and publicly crying over this may have struck him as a good way to do that. Otherwise, they might replace him with a full-blown DEI police chief of the sort that around the country is increasingly becoming so familiar.
Governor Kotek’s characterization of President Trump’s efforts to return the nation to the principles of the rule of law — principles jettisoned wholesale by the regime of Robinette the Marionette — as a “reckless agenda” is a typical label of TDS-afflicted Democrats. It is also a slander that should “sadden” all true Americans.
Kotek’s comment is yet additional confirmation that leftist Democrats should never again be allowed to hold governmental power or office. Never.
So much for Free-speech right dems
___________________________
: Reporter Asks Ayanna Pressley About Fraud, Has His Phone Slapped To Ground By Her Ex-Con Husband.
This is a pattern with the left.
So it begins.
__________________________
J6 Cop Michael Fanone Now Wants Americans to Shoot ICE Agents
“J6 Cop Michael Fanone Now Wants Americans to Shoot ICE Agents”
If I ever found myself on a jury trying the killer of Michael Fanone, I’d be more than happy to go down the anulment by jury road…
Over the last century, you can see a recurring pattern: policies launched with good intentions produce real harm, that harm becomes undeniable, and yet the programs persist. Why? Because by the time the damage is clear, power, money, and institutional advantage have attached themselves to the failure.
Fixing the original problem would require admitting error and surrendering control. Instead, the system keeps bolting on new “solutions” to conceal the first mistake. What we’re left with is a Rube Goldberg machine of governance that no longer serves the public, but exists to protect itself.
Jeez OLLY, for a while I thought you were describing how the fraud scandal in Minnesota developed…
History does repeat itself in many ways.
“policies launched with good intentions produce real harm, that harm becomes undeniable, and yet the programs persist. Why? Because by the time the damage is clear, power, money, and institutional advantage have attached themselves to the failure. ”
In some (many? most?) cases, that may have been the the original plan (root motivation) for those policies. The cynicism of the self-entitled leftists seems to be unbounded.
History repeats because societies fail to form people capable of self-government. When citizens lose moral grounding, historical memory, and the habit of self-restraint, power does not disappear. It concentrates. Narratives replace truth, dependency replaces responsibility, and law becomes an instrument rather than a limit.
Each generation is told its crisis is unique and its controls are necessary, but the pattern is always the same: unformed citizens invite management, and unchecked power obliges.
This is yet another example (not that we needed any more) of how left-wing ideology is wrecking America. Yes, it should sadden us all that so many seemingly normal Americans are so consumed with indignation, TDS, and self-righteous rage that they fight harder for the “rights” of Somalian fraudsters, MS-13, Tren de Aragua, Maduro, Antifa, Hamas, communism, and even the killing of law enforcement officers, than for what is right to defend America. Instead, they would rather plunge the West into darkness by bringing down the greatest country on Earth, the only beacon of freedom for millions around the world. Very sad indeed.
Sumi:
Well said. You hit on the Left’s basic motivation — nihilism Their desire is to destroy all Western values — including Western art, our Western legal system, journalism, education, the history of the West, civil discourse, individual rights . . .
Comment on X: Worse, can you imagine being home with your family in the middle of the night when these monsters are prowling the streets, and you have to rely on this weeping pu$$y as your only defense?
You shouldn’t depend on anyone but yourself. Tote
“You shouldn’t depend on anyone but yourself. Tote”
Valid enough, but there remain far too many jurisdictions throwing all possible roadblocks to prevent their citizens from doing so, and not everyone is in a position to move to a freer (more 2A-friendly) location.
All of this begs the question: How is it that people come to prefer having known felons (including murderers, rapists, and pedophiles) roaming their streets instead of having them turned over to ICE and deported? In so-called sanctuary cities, these criminals have more rights and protections than law-abiding citizens. One bereaved mother has asked where her son’s sanctuary was. It would be interesting to hear a coherent answer.
The irony of sanctuary cities / states is that their very policies cause what they say they don’t want: if illegal alien felons were turned over to ICE agents, they would not need to go into communities searching for the felons who could have and should have been handed over peacefully at the time of release from prison.
Begs? As I see it, there’s no difference of with remarks by rabid conservatives on this blog.
So, what’s the difference with liberal crazies and conservative crazies?
I thought SUZE had a thoughtful question: Why do people prefer having felons walking around in sanctuary cities? I agree that the rabid crazies are on both sides, but in this case, the rabid crazies are clearly far left….
Your premise is corrupted by your obvious TDS There is not one “rabbis response in these comments. My only question is when does this insurrection go kinetic. The sooner we can send the illegals home AND Aget rid of the gloBAAList among us the better it will be. There, now you have your rabbid conservative response, if they print it for your perusal.
MAGAA1st awaits the arrests
AND
we stand with local state and federal LEO. . Full stop
11b
So far I have not seen any conservative crazies commenting. As far as rabid conservative comments how do you describe letting in 15-20 million illegals including criminals and now they want to protect even criminal gang members from being deported. Send them all back and get in line to be admitted legally like my parents did.
So, what’s the difference with liberal crazies and conservative crazies?
Gaslighting, failed moral equivalencies, and feeble projections all rolled into one.
The difference is your inability to point out the existence of any similar rage mobs rioting and assaulting police over the last year. Or the year before that.
Tour move Tovarisch… or run and hide.
Suze,
Seems they see all illegals as just some poor down trodden souls just trying to make a better life for themselves. So they ignore the criminal aspect of it entirely, like the fact these two were gang members or associated with the gang Tren de Aragua, have criminal records and they tried to run over ICE agents. Mention Laken Riley and they go silent, change the subject or just pretend that did not ever happen. They also seem to be under some delusion, and enhanced by MSM, that they are fighting against . . . something.
“How is it that people come to prefer having known felons (including murderers, rapists, and pedophiles) roaming their streets instead of having them turned over to ICE and deported?”
I don’t believe that is the preference of people in general for a moment, even in left-voting areas like Portland and Minneapolis. IMO, that is nothing but an illusion that those who wish to advance the downfall of the US and their comrades in the MSM are trying to foist upon us.
Bessent Signals Crackdown On Dark-Money NGO Protests
“The left’s ability to rapidly stage highly organized ‘pop-up’ protests in response to just about any political incident is uncanny (remember Robert Creamer? “Wherever Trump and Pence are going to be, we have events, we have a whole team across the country that does that.”). Often, organic protests that average Americans have every right to engage in (even if we disagree) are co-opted and amplified by ‘organizers,’ and blessed by the media, which runs damage control when needed (‘mostly peaceful!’). Other times they orchestrate entirely scripted ‘astroturf’ campaigns to manufacture outrage.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/yes-yes-and-yes-bessen
Seriously? Day states he has “attempted to understand your voices, your concern, your fear, your anger.” I think hiding behind what he thinks an entire cultural group things is a bit of emotional fluff and cowardice. I really doubt the Hispanic mothers and fathers are overjoyed at having TDA gang members recruiting their children. This use of demographics to divide communities is only supporting more lawlessness and misunderstandings between cultural groups. Believe it or not, not all those with Hispanic last names think alike!
This is a perfect illustration of the three-legged stool I describe in my book. A free society rests on formation, self-reliance, and engagement. Remove one leg and the stool becomes unstable. Remove two and collapse is inevitable.
We have stripped away formation by keeping people ignorant, and we have stripped away self-reliance by making them dependent. What remains is engagement and action. But engagement without formation and self-reliance is not civic virtue. It is volatility.
The dangerous part is that the officials doing this know exactly what they are creating. They know this kind of engagement leads to chaos, not self-government. Yet they proceed anyway, because chaos can be managed, redirected, and exploited.
Engagement divorced from formation and self-reliance does not produce citizens. It produces mobs. And when government deliberately engineers that imbalance, it is not incompetence. It is negligence at best and malice at worst.
It’s like discovering a spider in the house and responding with a flamethrower. The spider may be gone, but so is the house. That is not problem-solving. It is reckless destruction dressed up as necessity.
The logical question would be, “Who benefits from the chaos?” Such benefits are usually measured in terms of money and / or power.
As Suze points out, the logical question is not whether chaos is dangerous, but who benefits from it. The beneficiaries are rarely the public. Chaos is profitable. It consolidates power, expands authority, and justifies control, all while disguising itself as compassion or necessity.
This is an excellent comment. Please try to come up with a more recognizable sign-in, so that more people may read your comments than skip past all anonymous posters.
Sorry lin. I neglected to enter my email when I posted that.
Good to know, Ollie! We can count on you for reasoned debate.
“Please try to come up with a more recognizable sign-in”
If your concern is real, you should advocate for Turley and/or Darren Smith to reverse the change in the “leave a reply” form that were made last year that took away the opportunity for many of us who will not (or cannot) sign up for an account to log into (for any of several reasons) to easily enter consistent identification (I am included in that group). I suppose I could try to manually include some consistent byline in the body of my posts, but that would stilled be unnoticed by many readers, and frankly I am not inclined to do extra work to preserve that which blog management clearly does not consider to be important. I also realize that I am wasting my time by typing this, since I have done so many, many times over the past year, and as yet have not seen one single acknowledgement of my post or the underlying issue by any regulars here. It would therefore very much appear that the frequent complaints made about anonymous posters here are highly insincere (assuming that many of the posts here are not LLM generated, a possibility which has occurred to me).
Darren, Could you please address the commenter name issue identified above. Thanks.
Anonymous, you don’t need an account anywhere. All you have to do is click on the third icon below, the one with the envelope on it. Fill in the information and select the bottom slider, “Save my name…”. Then click on reply. The next time you comment, just click on the envelope and your information will all be there so you don’t have to enter it again. That is only cleared when you reboot your computer.
Mamdani-tied socialists, CCP-tied groups lead war against Trump on ICE shooting and Maduro arrest
https://justthenews.com/government/security/mamdanis-dsa-and-ccp-tied-leftist-groups-lead-two-front-war-against-trump-ice
And/or sex. What needs to be happening in this country is a deep dive by law enforcement into the roots of some of these situations. Cut the head off the snake.
Channeling Jeanine Pirro, who seeks to charge those who fund riots with RICO violations: hello, George Soros. He is not the only funder, but he is a major funder. To the degree possible, such funders should be held financially liable for the costs incurred by the riots they fund, including damage to persons and property.
This absolutely needs to be done, and Trump commands the resources to do it, but this requires a vast and thorough investigation. This will take time. Lots and lots of time, thousands of investigators, and the resources of FBI, Treasury, IRS, other federal law enforcement, and many intelligence agencies. It is much more complicated than the J6 investigations. Since some of this support is transnational and could involve the CCP, warrants will not be needed to spy on foreign actors, but will be needed for domestic ones, which complicates the investigation. Building an airtight RICO / support for terrorism / conspiracy case that will hold up in court isn’t easy or quick. I doubt it can be completed before the Midterm Elections, but perhaps there can be enough done by then to charge a few big actors. And if foreign actors (like Singham or Wyss) are charged, they have to be brought into court somehow, which means captures on foreign soil a la Maduro.
Yup
Follow the money
Many of our EU frens and [CCP] oligarchs fund the kinetic proxy war on American society and our LEO. WHEN THESE FUNDS ARE SEIZED IT WILL STOP. without paid actors there is not a mob.
But can a legal case be made that foreigners are destabilizing the USA with current laws.
Snake head? Seems by all accounts that foreign leftist billionaires are financing the chaos, and many US based nonprofits.
Again … foreigners under the guise of liberal nonprofits. And Americans destroying America.
Its something that only congress and then the JD can regulate.
Just a few well placed smart bombs would do the same at standoff distances. No balls to do it tho. So the. Unannounced invasion and war on America continues
“Seems by all accounts that foreign leftist billionaires are financing the chaos, and many US based nonprofits.”
Ford Foundation is a huge player. See linked article in the reply to Suze’s post above.
Yes, it’s all about votes and staying in power!
“Yet they proceed anyway, because chaos can be managed, redirected, and exploited.”
I agree that this is, in large part, their motivation, but I also believe it to be completely deluded. The result could as easily go directly away from their intended objectives as toward them. True chaos, once unleashed, is not subject to anyone’s control, by definition. I tend to see it more as an alternative against those forces, to be adamantly stalled against until all hope of a conclusion that embraces individual liberty has utterly failed. At that point, stop struggling against it, let it loose and run for cover. Under those extreme circumstances, hopefully more rational than irrational humans would survive. I hope it never comes to that, but I’m far from convinced of a better outcome.
I would give you the French Revolution as an example. It was begun as an attempt to curb the abuses of a corrupt monarchy, but before long, it had gathered its own momentum, and the heads of its original fomenters were tumbling into baskets with regularity.
In a sense, Locke describes the ideal and Hobbes describes the default. Liberty, limited government, and self-rule demand constant formation, restraint, and responsibility from the people, which is hard work and always fragile.
When that work falters, societies do not drift into freedom; they revert to Hobbes, trading liberty for order under centralized control.
History repeats not because Locke was wrong, but because the discipline required to sustain him is harder than the incentives that pull us back toward Hobbes.
Why is Trump less reluctant to help the Iranians than the Ukrainians?
Your question has what to do with the article?? BOZO ANON!!
The net result of solving society’s ills has been unaffected.
Consequences, is the answer. Trump has to deal with Israel on the one side, the other with the incompetent EU. Good question.
Trump has to deal with Israel on the one side, the other with the incompetent EU. Good question.
Poor answer to a poor deflection. Except for those who believe Iran’s Mad Mullahs howling “Death To America” and killing thousands of Americans is not as great a threat to Americans as Israel.
A belief those who think that way share with Obama and Biden and how they empowered Iran and enriched their terrorism simultaneously aimed at Americans and Israel both.
Your question does not compute. Trump has sent billions worth of weapons to the Ukrainians. He has not sent any weapons to the Iranians.
More proof that the dem-o-rat party supports crooks, thieves, murders and terrorist!
Normal folks need not apply.
Take a break today. Please.
Truth just drives the libs like yourself crazy.
Do you need a kleenex CHIEF?? BOO HOO WUSS!
Democrats use lies, propaganda, distortion and fabrication to push their narrative, and the Demedia are all-too-happy to go along. Biden and Harris opened the border and flooded the country with 20 million illegals, and they knew that it would be difficult if not impossible for any future administration to remove them. That was the plan all along. Import cheap labor, and solidify the Democrat voting base for future elections, while simultaneously pushing to upend Congressional maps. Shameful.
Socialism has infected countless politicians, the media, judges, prosecutors, teachers and major corporations . . . It should come as no surprise that also it’s crept into law enforcement.
“Socialism has infected countless …” First, politicians are basically immoral. The others, simply afraid for their livelihoods if they don’t follow.
Unfortunately the fringe gets all the attention and the MSM (right and left) uses it to their advantage.
First what is going on beginning with the top elected Democrates at all levels of government down is not a”fringe”, despite the attempt to minimize the number. This massive widespread hatred and criminality is accepted and defended as Democrat party policy.
The closest thing to a Democrat condemning this and telling Americans this must be stopped is Fettetman. The rest justify and approve, or hide from the media.
Second, there is no similar rage and rioting on the right, never mind the claim there is a right MSM using it.
Your move, Tovarisch…
We have already failed to form citizens capable of self-government. That alone is damning. But now the government, working hand in glove with its media partners, treats that failure as justification for control. Ill-formed citizens are handled like children. They are not trusted with facts, only narratives.
This is not governance. It is conditioning. The result is a population trained to depend on authority, weakened by design, insulated from truth, and incapable of self-rule. That should enrage anyone who still believes in a free republic.
The failure to form citizens capable of self-government is no accident: it has been the goal of a growing number of so-called educators (aka indoctrinators) for several decades. The operative issues appear to be power and control by a few “enlightened” folks over the masses of increasingly uneducated people.
Sounds like a democracy under a republican form of government. Form.
This is the mechanism of control: incomplete information paired with moral framing. A free people cannot govern themselves without facts. When the media or government withhold material information or shape it to fit a preferred narrative, they are not encouraging independent judgment. They are manufacturing consent by telling people which emotions and opinions are acceptable.