Trump threatens Portland with funding cuts and a DOJ investigation after police arrest a MAGA influencer
The Trump administration is looking to deploy federal troops to Oregon’s largest city while withholding federal funds and launching an investigation into its police department because a pro-Trump influencer was arrested after allegedly getting into a fight there late Thursday.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday said President Donald Trump was ordering Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to “to provide all necessary troops to protect war-ravaged Portland,” citing anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests at facilities which she described as being “under siege from attack by Antifa and other left-wing domestic terrorists.”
Leavitt also decried what she called a “extremely troubling incident” in which live-streamer Nick Sortor, a self-styled “independent journalist” who often travels to the sites of protests and disasters to make content attacking Democrats and promoting Trump and other GOP figures, was captured on video being placed under arrest late Thursday evening.
She claimed that the influencer had been “ambushed by Antifa thugs” and criticized the Portland Police Bureau for having “arrested a journalist who was there trying to document the chaos” there.
A review of Sortor’s X profile by The Independent shows had been in Portland filming and posting videos of the protests since earlier in the week.
According to a Portland Police Bureau press release, he allegedly began fighting with two people near the ICE building’s driveway.
All three were arrested, charged with second-degree disorderly conduct and later released.
Sortor, who did not immediately respond to a text message from The Independent requesting comment, has amassed a following of over one million followers on X, posted there after his release, claiming that the Portland police department was “going to absolutely HATE what’s coming.”
Within hours, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon took to her own official X account to say she’d spoken with both Sortor and Attorney General Pam Bondi about the case.
She also said that an investigation into the influencer’s arrest was a “high priority” for the department’s Civil Rights Division, which since Trump’s inauguration has moved away from its longstanding mission of protecting racial and ethnic minorities from discrimination in favor of investigating discrimination against Christians and white Americans.
Leavitt told reporters that the Justice Department would be “launching a full investigation” into Sortor’s arrest and said Trump has directed administration officials to review what federal funds to Portland can be cut as a result.
“We will not fund states that allow anarchy,” she said, adding later that there would be “an additional surge of federal resources to Portland immediately” including more Customs and Border Protection and ICE officers.
Trump, Leavitt said, is “genuinely serious about wanting to restore order in America’s cities” and claimed it had “become apparent that the local and elected officials in Oregon do not feel the same.”
“That’s very unfortunate for the people who live there,” she added.
