Rudy Giuliani used Newsmax’s Saturday Report to issue a blistering warning: Portland, long a poster child for left-wing permissiveness, has been effectively taken over by violent Antifa activists and has “seceded” from the rule of law that binds the rest of the country. Giuliani’s language is blunt because the reality on the ground in Portland is blunt — neighborhoods that once buzzed with small businesses and honest workers are now battlegrounds where law-abiding citizens are treated like intruders.
This isn’t idle theatrics; the federal government has already been forced to respond to escalating attacks on federal facilities and ICE personnel, with the president directing deployments to protect those installations and restore order. When the feds move, it’s because local Democrat leaders have repeatedly refused to do the one thing voters expect: protect lives and property instead of protecting a political narrative.
Independent reporters and watchdogs who follow Portland closely — people like Andy Ngo — have detailed how certain city officials and activist networks coordinate to shelter and enable violent actors, leaving neighborhoods exposed and taxpayers footing the bill. That’s not “protest,” it’s a soft coup against civil society, and conservatives who still care about law and order see it for what it is: a failure of governance that rewards chaos.
Meanwhile, Portland’s political class has responded to federal pressure by playing the victim and suing to block necessary security measures, proving once again that woke politicians would rather posture in the spotlight than secure the safety of their constituents. Hardworking families who pay taxes to fund their schools, streets, and police deserve better than elected officials who swap competence for virtue signaling while their cities burn.
Of course the left-leaning media and establishment fact-checkers will howl that “Antifa” is an amorphous label and that claims about organized involvement are overblown; they often point to limited evidence to dismiss a very real pattern of organized, sustained violence. But dismissing these warnings as mere rhetoric only hands the radicals more freedom to escalate; Americans know the difference between peaceful dissent and nightly assaults on public life.
Rudy Giuliani’s bluntness is what this moment requires — a wake-up call for patriots who believe America is worth defending. If we let lawlessness become a political virtue, we will lose more than a city; we will lose the confidence of citizens that their government will protect them. It’s time for decisive federal backup, harsh prosecutions for violent offenders, and for voters to hold the soft-on-crime, virtue-signaling politicians accountable in the ballot box.
