“Portland is burning to the ground,” President Donald Trump warns, and he has helpfully explained that it is a “war-ravaged” hellscape where even the mayor and governor are “petrified for their lives.” Trump purports to be trying to rescue us Oregonians by dispatching National Guard troops to use “full force if necessary” against the “enemy from within.” We asked an intrepid photographer, Rian Dundon, to brave the flames and firefights to capture the mood in this war zone, or what Trump called a “burning hellhole.”

So what explains the gulf between Trump’s rhetoric and the reality? Why did a Trump-appointed U.S. District Court judge, Karin Immergut, pause the deployment of troops to Portland and conclude, “The president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts”?

Oregon official

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