Dancing protesters in frog costumes. A band in banana suits playing the Ghostbusters theme. Clowns forming ranks like military officers.
These are the images of Portland protesting in 2025.
This absurd approach is a stark contrast to the way the city protested in 2020, when Portland experienced 170 continuing days of unrest, including 13 nights of riots. It also stands as a contrast to the way President Donald Trump has described the city: on fire, war-ravaged, full of boarded-up storefronts, and generally like “living in hell.”
Elected leaders say that peaceful — and, at times, wacky — protests bolster the city’s legal case against Trump’s order to send National Guard troops into Portland. They argue that without widespread violence, the administration has no justification for deployment — an assessment the White House disputes, citing continued arrests and sporadic unrest around federal buildings.
City Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney said Trump’s description of Portland is “ridiculous.”
“Portlanders are meeting that ridiculousness … through this over-the-top idea of what voicing their concerns with the administration could look like: frog costumes and people out in their PJs with donuts.”
Pirtle-Guiney, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and other local officials point to U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut’s conclusion that “the President’s determination [about Portland] was simply untethered to the facts” in her decision to issue a temporary restraining order against deployment of the National Guard.
Her decision was overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, which said Trump could have grounds for deploying the National Guard even if his description of the city is exaggerated.
“The acts of violence catalogued in the record … do not reflect the day-to-day reality of the protests,” dissenting Judge Susan Graber, a Clinton appointee on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote in her response. “On most days, the most notable aspect of the demonstrations here was the presence of people dressed in chicken, frog, or birthday suits.”
The White House and ICE dispute that portrayal, saying Portland’s protests are far from peaceful and citing a rise in arrests and unrest near federal buildings— including the appearance of a guillotine at one recent late-night demonstration.
“This isn’t a peaceful protest that’s under control, like many on the left have claimed — it’s radical violence,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told POLITICO. “Rioters in Portland have been charged for crimes including arson and assaulting police officers.”
Rayfield told POLITICO via email Monday night that the nature of Portland’s protests “remains central to our argument.” His office is now waiting on a review of that decision from the full Ninth Circuit, called by Graber to reconsider the decision.
“We don’t change course because of an opinion that ignores the facts. Portland isn’t a war zone,” Rayfield said. “Our job now is to keep doing what we’ve been doing: make our case, stick to the facts, and trust the process.”
Portland officials and many community organizers say they’ve launched a concerted effort to keep the city from producing images of destruction, like the 2020 visuals Trump repeatedly references. In the aftermath of the 2020 protests, the pandemic, the fentanyl epidemic and increased crime and homelessness in the city, Portland threw out its entire government structure and, last November, elected a completely new city council and mayor.
The city council now includes former activists, organizers, political advisers, and even a member of the Oregon National Guard — and they are working those connections to respond to this crisis.
“Someone else might speak really well to soccer moms, I might speak better to younger people who might be at the [ICE] facility,” said City Councilor Angelita Morillo, a former advocate with strong ties in the organizing community. “We’re all going to message in our own ways.”
The Portland ICE office is located in an out of the way sliver of the city south of downtown, between the river and a major freeway. Larger protests often start in public spaces downtown and then march by the office, or avoid it altogether. But the protests raising concern are those on the sidewalk, driveway and in the street outside the ICE office.
For the majority of the summer, these protests usually measured in the dozens of people, but have grown since the president ordered the National Guard into the city. There’s also been an uptick in activity that warrants the involvement of the Portland Police Bureau: between June and Oct. 3, Portland police made 36 arrests. But since Oct. 3, 17 more arrests have been made, according to PPB news releases.
As tension increases, “don’t take the bait” has become a common refrain across the city. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) originated the statement at an emergency press conference in late September, telling colleagues before the event that “Trump is aiming at creating street violence, and we can’t let that happen.”
One local resident, Charlie Burr, went so far as to write the phrase across the side of his home. He says Portlanders received the message from officials that they can’t hand the president images to support the view he’s painting of the city.
But Merkley’s popular phrase initially riled some organizers, especially groups calling for the ICE office’s closure. Morillo has deep ties to the advocacy community and explained the phrase can come across as a call to comply in advance. Instead, she’s working with activists to find strategic ways to have an impact.
“There is very little to win in attacking a federal building and getting gassed and beaten every night,” she told POLITICO over the phone in early October, and said she’s proposed a neighborhood ICE watch that can be more effective and help more of the immigrant community.
“This is also a propaganda war,” Morillo added. “We have to show that our city is not what they’re painting it to be.”
The lighthearted scenes — from costumed protesters to impromptu chess matches and Victorian-style tea parties — have become part of Portland’s effort to counter Trump’s portrayal of the city. Far-flung news outlets like France’s Le Monde are writing stories about Portland’s frogs, and other American cities are adopting the same approach.
“It’s effective because it highlights how ridiculous the claims are that there is a need to send in troops to quell these violent protests,” says Chris Shortell, a professor of political science at Portland State University with a particular focus on the interactions between law and society. The dancing frog, he says, “highlights the distance between the description that is coming out of the White House … and the reality on the ground.”
But while the world focuses on the frog, pressure is building at the ICE office.
“We [are] seeing an attempt to instigate, to provoke, to create moments that can be filmed and used as propaganda by the federal government,” City Councilor Sameer Kanal said in an interview, “and used to paint a false picture of Portland to fit the president’s political goals.”
City officials say that federal officers have escalated their approach to protesters in recent weeks. They point, as an example, to an elderly couple who say they were toppled and injured by officers outside the ICE office in early October.
Holly Brown, 31, says she saw changing tactics in action when she was arrested by federal officers for allegedly trespassing on October 4. She said officers changed their approach to protesters blocking the driveway — arresting them rather than pushing them back. “There’s no merit to it,” she told POLITICO a few days after her arrest. “It was just people peacefully protesting outside of the facility.”
Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) told POLITICO that when protesters are subject to excessive force while protesting peacefully, that can lead to escalation. She encourages Portlanders to get out and protest in large numbers — but also wants them to be savvy about where they show up. “Staying away from those [federal officers] right now is absolutely critical, I think, to us maintaining not only our own safety, but minimizing the risk that they tell a story about us that isn’t real.”
A spokesperson for Immigration & Customs Enforcement told POLITICO there is no record or recording of an elderly couple being injured by federal officers outside the ICE office, and accused protesters themselves of increasing attacks on the office. In response to Brown’s account, an ICE spokesperson said protesters “are given multiple warnings, and yet they continue to ignore lawful orders and trespass on federal property and obstruct law enforcement activity.”
When asked about these recent arrests, Jackson, the White House spokesperson, told POLITICO that “President Trump is taking lawful action to protect federal law enforcement officers and address the out-of-control violence that local residents have complained about and Democrat leaders have failed to stop.”
Republican Rep. Cliff Bentz’s district is hours from Portland, but as the only Republican in the state’s eight-person congressional delegation, he’s become a point of contact for both the administration and local officials. Bentz says assistant secretaries in the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security told him they’ve asked the Portland Police Bureau repeatedly for assistance at the ICE office, and did not get the help they wanted.
“If the local people are doing their job, then there would be no need for the National Guard,” Bentz said, adding that officials at both agencies told him: “‘We have reached out, and we’ve not been satisfied with response we’re getting.’”
For now, Portland is waiting. A hearing on lifting Immergut’s temporary restraining order preventing the National Guard from deploying in the city is scheduled for Friday. Graber urged her colleagues on the Ninth Circuit to reverse the panel’s decision quickly, and Immergut appears to be holding out for the full court’s decision before ruling on whether to lift her second, still-active block on the National Guard deployment to Portland. Meanwhile, a looming Supreme Court decision on Illinois’ separate but related National Guard lawsuit could have implications for Oregon’s case.
Should the National Guard be allowed into the city and if ICE ramps up its actions in Portland, Shortell — the PSU professor — says the silly approach may not last.
“If ICE were to come into Portland in the same way that they’ve come into Chicago,” Shortell said, “I don’t think you’re gonna only continue to see dancing frogs.”
