Follow us on social

Pdx2shutterstock_1785711818-scaled

What one late GOP senator from Oregon would have thought about Trump sending federal troops to Portland

Only one Republican senator has criticized Trump for sending federal agents to American cities.

Analysis | Washington Politics

The deployment of armed federal security forces to Portland, Oregon, against the wishes of the city and state elected officials, ostensibly to protect the federal courthouse in the downtown area has been criticized as unnecessary and probably illegal by many Democrats but publicly by only one Republican, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.). 

However, another Republican, who if he were still alive, would no doubt join Senator Paul and the Democrats in condemning the deployment and the conduct of the federal forces. That would be the late Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield, for whom the courthouse is named. Based upon my interactions with him and my analysis of his career, I have no doubt he is turning over in his grave as a result of the Trump administration using a building named after him to justify this disastrous policy. Moreover, he would be appalled that the Republican Party, which supposedly is opposed to federal interference in state and local areas, would not have more members publicly condemning the Portland invasion.

Senator Hatfield, who died in 2011, served in the U.S. Senate for 30 years, from 1966 until 1996. Prior to that, he served two terms as governor of Oregon, Secretary of State, and a member of the upper and lower houses of the state legislature. Moreover, as a freshman in college when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor he immediately joined the Navy Reserves and after being commissioned he fought in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He visited Hiroshima a month after the atomic bomb attack and also went to Haiphong, Vietnam to aid the French forces fighting the Vietnamese.

As governor, while he opposed cuts in services to the poor and elderly, he also spoke out for individual responsibility and against undue interference by the national government in state and local matters. He publicly criticized the anti-communist crusade of Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy and President Nixon’s Southern strategy which he viewed as racist. Moreover, during the annual conference of governors in 1965 and again in 1966, he voted against a motion in support of the war in Vietnam. In 1965 he was one of just two who voted against it. (The other was Michigan governor, George Romney, Mitt’s father.)  A year later he cast the lone negative vote.

During his time in the Senate, he became an early and outspoken critic of the war in Vietnam and consistently opposed massive increases in defense spending, nuclear weapons programs, U.S. military involvement abroad, arms sales to non-democratic countries, and underground nuclear testing. While he approved President Reagan’s nuclear treaties with the Soviet Union, he opposed his Strategic Defense Initiative (the missile defense system known as “Star Wars”) — correctly concluding it could not work. In 1991 he was one of two Republicans who voted against the Gulf War and in 1995 was the only Republican to vote against the balanced budget amendment, which fell one vote short for passage.

Being responsible for 70 percent of the defense budget during my time in Reagan’s Pentagon, I personally dealt with Senator Hatfield, then the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, on several occasions. I always found him well-informed and insightful. One issue we disagreed on was whether to continue draft registration. In the 1980 campaign, he convinced candidate Reagan to promise to end draft registration, which President Carter had reinstituted after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. I helped convince the president not to end it because I thought ending it would send the wrong signal to the Soviets while we were embarking on a defense buildup. My reward for getting the president to change his mind was to have to explain the decision to Senator Hatfield.  When I went to his office I was overwhelmed by his gentility and could see why he was called the gentleman of the Senate.

I have no doubt that if Senator Hatfield were alive today, he would stand up to President Trump on this issue. Unfortunately, there are no longer many Hatfield’s in the Republican-controlled Senate to prevent Trump from doing this again, even if he withdraws from Portland. 


Portland, Oregon, USA, 20 July 2020, Protest stickers on post downtown. (Photo: PikaPower / Shutterstock.com)
Analysis | Washington Politics
Mark Levin
Top photo credit: Erick Stakelbeck on TBN/Screengrab

The great fade out: Neocon influencers rage as they diminish

Media

Mark Levin appears to be having a meltdown.

The veteran neoconservative talk host is repulsed by reports that President Donald Trump might be inching closer to an Iranian nuclear deal, reducing the likelihood of war. In addition to his rants on how this would hurt Israel, Levin has been howling to anyone who will listen that any deal with Iran needs approval from Congress (funny he doesn’t have the same attitude for waging war, only for making peace).

keep readingShow less
american military missiles
Top photo credit: Fogcatcher/Shutterstock

5 ways the military industrial complex is a killer

Latest

Congress is on track to finish work on the fiscal year 2025 Pentagon budget this week, and odds are that it will add $150 billion to its funding for the next few years beyond what the department even asked for. Meanwhile, President Trump has announced a goal of over $1 trillion for the Pentagon for fiscal year 2026.

With these immense sums flying out the door, it’s a good time to take a critical look at the Pentagon budget, from the rationales given to justify near record levels of spending to the impact of that spending in the real world. Here are five things you should know about the Pentagon budget and the military-industrial complex that keeps the churn going.

keep readingShow less
Sudan
Top image credit: A Sudanese army soldier stands next to a destroyed combat vehicle as Sudan's army retakes ground and some displaced residents return to ravaged capital in the state of Khartoum Sudan March 26, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig

Will Sudan attack the UAE?

Africa

Recent weeks events have dramatically cast the Sudanese civil war back into the international spotlight, drawing renewed scrutiny to the role of external actors, particularly the United Arab Emirates.

This shift has been driven by Sudan's accusations at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the UAE concerning violations of the Genocide Convention, alongside drone strikes on Port Sudan that Khartoum vociferously attributes to direct Emirati participation. Concurrently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly reaffirmed the UAE's deep entanglement in the conflict at a Senate hearing last week.

From Washington, another significant and sudden development also surfaced last week: the imposition of U.S. sanctions on the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for alleged chemical weapons use. This dramatic accusation was met by an immediate denial from Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which vehemently dismissed the claims as "unfounded" and criticized the U.S. for bypassing the proper international mechanisms, specifically the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, despite Sudan's active membership on its Executive Council.

Despite the gravity of such an accusation, corroboration for the use of chemical agents in Sudan’s war remains conspicuously absent from public debate or reporting, save for a January 2025 New York Times article citing unnamed U.S. officials. That report itself contained a curious disclaimer: "Officials briefed on the intelligence said the information did not come from the United Arab Emirates, an American ally that is also a staunch supporter of the R.S.F."

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.