Portland, I love y'all. I'm still buzzing. We passed our joint Protect Portland Initiative resolution. Twelve votes.Doce. And we stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Councilor Kanal to codify Sanctuary City protections — also twelve votes, as an emergency, so they would go into effect immediately. That didn't happen by accident; it happened because we organized, we held the line, and we used the tools of municipal government with discipline and corazón.
It's important that we have these strengthened protections and new tools at the City because we are entering an inflection point. As the Trump administration threatens to send in the National Guard to our city and abuse the president's power to score political points, I've been reflecting on my responsibility as an elected leader, the City Council's role in protecting Portlanders, and how we can best respond to this current crisis. I want to be honest: These past few weeks have not been easy. It has felt overwhelming to respond to everything this administration is throwing at us.
At the same time, we should recognize that we're winning so far. The Trump administration tried to send in the Oregon, California, and Texas National Guard and he got blocked by a federal judge who found his justifications to be "untethered from the facts." The reality on the ground doesn't even come close to what Trump and his cronies are claiming. And apologies for the language, but Americans are seeing through his bullsh*t. Stephen Miller is going on the national news saying that ICE officers are engaged in hand-to-hand combat with "antifa" every night, but the actual videos from protests at the ICE facility show Portlanders in chicken and frog wizard costumes. Portlanders are speaking out and using their First Amendment rights peacefully, with our city's signature sense of humor and creativity.
In this moment of great uncertainty, we choose us. When national politics feels ineffective and incremental, let's focus on what we can do in our own backyard. Before the council meeting I said at the rally that "the answer to federal threats is municipalism," and I meant it. Municipalism isn't a catchphrase. It's a practice: build local power, translate values into enforceable code, and protect our people with policy that's actually binding. Portlanders didn't just chant slogans—we wrote legislation, voted on it, and made it real law the same day. That's municipalism.
And I meant it when I said this is the start of a nationwide movement. The Trump administration has spent this past year waging a legal and political campaign against so-called "sanctuary" jurisdictions: they've issued lawsuits, funding threats, and bombastic media statements. Cities and local leaders across the country all understand that they need to use their local power to take the Trump administration's challenges head-on. That looks like litigation: for example, earlier this year we joined a multi-jurisdiction lawsuit challenging funding retaliation tied to sanctuary policies and successfully got a federal judge to stop the funding freeze while the lawsuit is underway. In Chicago, a federal judge ordered this administration to stop using tear gas, pepper spray and other weapons against journalists and peaceful protesters after local press and advocates filed suit.
We also have legislative and executive powers, as City Council demonstrated in our last council meeting. Our Protect Portland Initiative resolution, inspired by Mayor Brandon Johnson's Protecting Chicago Initiative executive order, standardized a simple premise: safety is not a pretext for profiling, and public services aren't immigration checkpoints. We set procedures, not vibes. We aligned frontline practice with legal authority. And we solidified rapid-response systems.
The ordinance led by Councilor Kanal moved sentiment to statute, codifying Sanctuary City protections and instructing our bureaus how to act when federal pressure shows up at the door. Portland has had a Sanctuary resolution on the books since 2017. A resolution is a statement; law is a shield. That's the difference between "we care" and "we enforce."
There's a lot more future work to be done and these new policies will only be as good as how well we implement them. But together, the ordinance and resolution give us a foundation and playbook to safeguard Portlanders against federal overreach and militarization. And they serve as examples to other jurisdictions about what's possible – not just in Oregon, but in every city in America.
Municipalism says: we don't wait for permission to protect our people. We build durable policy at home — and when the feds overreach, we answer with law, coordination, and community power. That's how we turned the chant of "not in our city" into two unanimous votes. That's how we face the next wave from this fascist administration.
That's how we give the city and our country a way forward. Vamos.