Copyright The Oregonian
After an opening procession of protesters from Portland’s frog brigade, U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter — wearing frog earrings — took the podium before a crowd of more than 100 people at a North Portland town hall Saturday morning. The first-term Democrat from Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District hosted the town hall less than 24 hours after federal district court Judge Karen Immergut handed down a long-awaited permanent injunction that bars the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard to Portland’s ICE facility as a response to the mostly peaceful protests there. While ICE’s continued operations in and around Portland were a key point of discussion at the town hall in Roosevelt High School’s gymnasium, the audience questions covered a sprawling range of topics. Here’s what Dexter — and her audience — had to say. On the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and Immergut’s order: In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive before the town hall, Dexter hailed the order barring troops from any state being deployed in Portland as a “huge win for the people of Portland.” “There were never threats to the federal government’s ability to enforce laws. Certainly there wasn’t a rebellion,” she said. “I think it’s really important that truth won over the will of our president, who clearly is not interested in preserving the balances of power.” Trump has long characterized the protests that have taken place at the ICE facility since June as violent and has called the city as a whole as “war ravaged” and under siege by “rioters” — some of the latest digs the president has taken at the famously liberal city since it first caught his ire over seven years ago. But the protests have been largely peaceful, and the only time Portland police declared the scene in front of the ICE building a riot this year was almost five months ago, on June 14. Nevertheless, federal agents deployed less-lethal munitions on protesters multiple times this fall, leading to allegations from Portland police that they used “disproportionate” force. During the town hall, Dexter called for her constituents to report sightings of ICE agents to the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition and even provided a number for its tipline. “They know that they are not legally detaining people. These are not the worst of the worst. These are people who have work permits, asylum cases,” she told the attendees Saturday. “They are taking people because they are brown or they speak Spanish or they speak another language. It is un-American. And I’m so proud to stand with you against this.” On sending military aide to Israel: Dexter shared strong words when it came to her stance on the U.S. government’s support of Israel amidst that country’s military incursion into Gaza after the October 2023 attacks that left 1,200 Israelis dead. Over 69,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli military’s response, according to Gaza health officials, who are part of the Hamas-run government. International observers have found the numbers to be generally reliable, but the Israeli government has disputed them without providing an alternative death count. Dexter has previously taken heat from pro-Palestinian activists for accepting tens of thousands of dollars from donors who contributed to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobbying group. The issue became a prominent focus of a town hall she held at Mt. Hood Community College in June after a protester shouted at her during the event. “I will continue to stand with the right for those two nations to exist,” she said of Israel and Gaza in response to a question after the shouting incident in June, adding that she believes Gaza should be a nation. “I voted against AIPAC’s (legislative) recommendations.” In the months since that town hall, Dexter appears to have doubled down on cutting off some forms of military aid to Israel, and on Sept. 23, she signed on as a co-sponsor of the Block the Bombs Act, which would stop the U.S. from selling certain types of weapons to Israel. “I was working with other colleagues, trying to get a broader coalition of folks to sign on, and those talks unfortunately failed,” she said of the bill in her interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive before the town hall. “It’s a genocide that we are complicit with. And we have to stand firm against the ongoing support of the Netanyahu government using its power and our bombs to terrorize and the ethnic cleansing that they are intentionally imparting on the citizens of or the people of Gaza.” An independent U.N. commission found that some of Israel’s operations in Gaza have met the criteria for genocide; Israel has strongly disputed the findings, calling them “distorted and false.” Two other Oregon representatives, Democrats Reps. Val Hoyle and Suzanne Bonamici, are also co-sponsors of the act. On the government shutdown: “I would love to say I know what is happening with all of my colleagues in the House, but we haven’t been together in session since Sept. 19,” Dexter told The Oregonian/OregonLive before the town hall. “Even with the government shutdown, we could still be working on appropriations bills and other policy. And the fact that we have a speaker who just feels empowered to shut down the legislative branch is deeply disturbing.” As of Saturday, the record-breaking shutdown is entering its 38th day, with both parties blaming the other for the legislative gridlock that began Oct. 1. During the town hall, an attendee asked Dexter if she’d “fold” to Republicans’ demands. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer on Saturday floated the possibility of reopening the government with a one-year extension of existing funding in order to end the shutdown. In response, Dexter justified congressional Democrats’ stand as necessary to permanently maintain existing Affordable Care Act benefits for Americans and expressed concerns that colleagues in the Senate could fold. “Everyone should have access to affordable health care. We don’t have that right now. But what we had is better than what we will have,” she said of the Republicans’ proposal to roll back Affordable Care Act tax credits. “I know that the Democratic caucus in the House is really clear and firm. We are worried about the Senate.” Dexter added that she’s been meeting with Democratic senators to urge them not to stand down. The Epstein files, Trump’s health and the administration’s cuts to the federal government: “You’re a doctor,” one town hall attendee said to Dexter, who had a career as a pulmonary and critical care physician before she entered politics. “What in your expert opinion is going on with our president as far as his dementia and his erratic behavior?” Dexter prefaced her response by saying that she doesn’t have access to Trump’s medical files and therefore couldn’t give a response beyond speculation. But she waded into the subject with her own observations. “No. 1, falling asleep in your briefing meetings in the Oval Office is not normal,” she said. “No. 2, getting an MRI for routine health screening and having your second routine health screening in a year is not normal. He’s clearly showing signs that he’s having medical interventions.” “I think that we have had presidents who have health issues, and they still can lead,” she continued. “I think the fundamental problem with this president is that he is shameless. He has a personality disorder that he centers himself over the American people. And we have never prepared ourselves as a nation for dealing with a commander in chief who actually doesn’t care about the people he serves.” Trump hasn’t been publicly diagnosed with a personality disorder, but his mental state is a frequent subject of speculation by commentators and mental health experts. Another town hall attendee asked about the Epstein files, which Trump had promised to release while he was campaigning for president. He has since sparked backlash from Democrats — and some of his own supporters — for refusing to release the files in a remarkable about-face that has led observers to scrutinize the president’s past friendship with the financier and convicted sex offender. House Democrats in July introduced a bill to force the release of the files, and Dexter suggested that the government shutdown was due in part to Republicans’ desire to block the bill from going through. “They are not there. And part of the reason we have to assume is because the Epstein files are on our docket,” she speculated of Republican representatives’ absence from their offices during the shutdown. “They are protecting pedophiles and billionaires. That’s what they’re doing. It is shameful and it doesn’t make sense.” Dexter blasted congressional Republicans at other points in the town hall as well. “The Republicans in Congress are rolling over, just letting him do this,” she said of Trump’s push to implement tariffs without congressional approval. “It is a failure of government, folks. We are not just in a constitutional crisis. We are in a crisis of democracy.” Her most recent comments about her Republican congressional counterparts contrasts somewhat with remarks she made at a town hall in March, where she called some congressional Republicans “good people who want to serve their communities.” Some audience members in that Gresham town hall booed her statement. What town hall attendees said: Dexter’s comments appeared to have played well for her audience Saturday, and the majority of the crowd gave her a standing ovation as she closed out the event. “She’s a straight shooter, and she’s honest with us,” town hall attendee Sue Levine told The Oregonian/OregonLive after the event. Levine added that she found the event’s topics comprehensive, and her mother, Charlotte Heerman, agreed with her daughter’s assessment: “I appreciate her coming. I think she is very straightforward,” she said. “She’s a person we can trust.” Krestina Aziz, another town hall attendee, said she appreciated Dexter’s attentiveness to her audience’s questions, but worried about what she saw as divisive messaging from Dexter. “When there’s so many different divisions within the country, that can make the country weaker. And it kind of breaks my heart that the country is divided,” Aziz said, adding that the current state of U.S. politics reminds her of political divides in Lebanon, a country not too far from Egypt, where she was born and raised until she immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 10. “If we continue to just demonize the other side, we’re never going to reach solutions.” She said she wants more politicians to “talk with” instead of “talk against” the other side “so that we can actually reach results faster and the country can become more unified hopefully in the future.”
