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Former CNN reporter Amy La Porte declared that Portland, Oregon, was a “pilot program for normalizing domestic militarization” in an opinion piece for The Seattle Times on Friday.
“Now, Portland is no longer simply my home — a city of roses, food carts and rain-slicked bike lanes — it is a pilot program for normalizing domestic militarization. Helicopters drone above leafy neighborhoods, and armored vehicles idle near federal buildings as a small group of protesters gather outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. Portland has begun to resemble a domestic occupation and the front line of a war the president insists is already underway, even if, for now, only figuratively,” La Porte wrote in an opinion piece titled, “I covered dictatorships for CNN. Portland looks eerily familiar.”
President Donald Trump announced in late September that he had directed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to deploy troops to “war-ravaged Portland” to protect against “Antifa and other domestic terrorists” and authorized “full force, if necessary.” A federal judge blocked the president’s efforts to deploy National Guard troops into Portland in a late-night decision on Sunday.
La Porte suggested Trump was following the same “script” as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.
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Federal agents, including members of the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol and police, attempt to keep protesters back outside a downtown U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility on Oct. 5, 2025, in Portland, Oregon. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
“Some will argue America’s institutions are too strong to succumb. But Hungary’s Viktor Orban hollowed out his within a decade, and former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez made light work of abolishing presidential term limits, and reconstituting the Supreme Court until loyalty, not law, governed,” she continued.
La Porte also referenced late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s brief suspension and called it “anything but benign.” She added, “it should terrify us.”
Kimmel was suspended by Disney after remarks he made about Charlie Kirk’s alleged shooter, but his show returned days later.
“As a journalist, and a CNN ‘fake news’ alumnus no less, I do not treat threats as abstractions. I keep my passport within reach and my pen ready, because the history of authoritarianism shows that those who speak and protest seldom receive safe harbor. Democratic backsliding is not a cliff. It is a staircase. Each step feels survivable until the floor disappears,” La Porte continued.
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She added that, “for now,” her life in Portland feels ordinary, but said “the city’s quotidian charm feels fragile under a gathering storm.”
“Today it is Portland. Tomorrow it could be Seattle or Atlanta. Each federal incursion tearing fissures in the bedrock of democracy. What is certain is that authoritarianism crumbles when met with collective defiance. We must assemble, peacefully, but forcefully, online, in courthouses and in the streets, and we must insist that this republic will tolerate no kings,” she wrote.
Portland’s ICE facility has endured more than 100 straight nights of violence, according to Camila Wamsley, director of Portland’s ICE office.
She added that nightly protests have escalated beyond chants and signs, with bottle rockets striking the ICE building, rocks shattering windows, lasers targeting officers’ eyes and barricades blocking vehicles.
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“It’s frustrating for us to watch people be attacked on the street and know that we don’t have the authority to be able to really step in unless there’s some nexus to federal law,” Wamsley said.
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Fox News’ Greg Wehner and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.
