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Hey, good morning. Here's the latest on The AP, Bari Weiss, Sora, Fox News, Michael Calderone, Jake Tapper, Block Club Chicago, VOA, "Famous Last Words," and much more. But first...

Portland is not burning 

Sometimes a simple photo montage can serve as the most powerful fact-check.

When President Trump resumed his insistence that "Portland is on fire" yesterday, I logged onto Getty Images and searched for photos from Oregon. Photographer Spencer Platt had just published dozens of gorgeous day-in-the-life-of-the-city shots. A man sunbathing in a public square; a woman ordering coffee; a couple strolling through a park; this was the reality in the city Trump called a "hellhole."

Whether you think the troop deployments to US cities are necessary or nonsensical, you should know that Trump's "Portland is burning to the ground" rhetoric is totally divorced from reality. One way is by pairing Trump's words with the pictures. Oregon Public Broadcasting did just that over the weekend, producing an Instagram video with timestamped photos that contradicted Trump's hyperbole.

"Our OPB team is reporting the facts on the ground as they unfold with as much context as we can offer," the network's CEO Rachel Smolkin told me. "When the facts diverge from statements about the city, we note the discrepancies. Video and photos are powerful reporting tools in this type of news coverage."

Another tool: Reserve image search. The Guardian's Robert Mackey noticed the Oregon state Republican Party promoting a fake image of unrest purportedly in Portland — "using photos of South America." When Mackey pointed this out, the party's X account said, "We're not reporters, just bad memers."

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

'Conservative media doom loops'

"At some level, facts matter," as Jeffrey Toobin said on "NewsNight" last night. "And the fact is these cities are not in... anything like a rebellion." 

And yet Trump admin officials like Stephen Miller "seem to compete with one another in conjuring new nightmares of urban dystopia based on conservative media doom loops," Stephen Collinson says in this new CNN.com piece. 

Some media outlets keep contrasting Trump's overdramatic words with the calm accounts of local officials, which ultimately turns this into a "he said, she said" — or rather, "Republican said, Democrat said" — battle. But it's not. And news outlets shouldn't make it sound like one. 

As Shimon Prokupecz said on "AC360," the protests and clashes in Portland have been concentrated outside one ICE building. "It's half a block, not even a full block. But this is where everything's been happening," he said, using the live shot to show the boundaries.

This context doesn't disprove the genuine concerns of residents — "PORTLAND BIZ OWNERS SPEAK OUT ON CRIME CRISIS" was the title of a Fox segment this morning — but it debunks the dystopian claims that are making it hard to have civil conversations.

The Fox angle is important here, as the president has repeatedly appeared to be misled by the network's city chaos coverage. Robert Reich wrote about this topic on his popular Substack earlier in the week. He pointed out that the Oregon lawsuit against Trump's deployment connected the dots between Trump's TV habits and his presidential orders.

Quoting from the suit: "On September 5, 2025, Fox News aired a report on Portland ICE protests that included misleading clips from Portland protests in 2020. Shortly thereafter, President Trump appeared to reference events in the same misleading Fox News report when speaking to the press." 

Chicago journalists sue feds

Now let's move from Portland to Chicago. The ACLU of Illinois is representing a group of Chicagoans — including journalists from the state press association, Block Club Chicago and the Chicago Headline Club — in a lawsuit alleging First Amendment violations by the federal government. The attorneys say that "attempts to report the truth have been met with targeted attacks and widespread government violence" outside the ICE facility in Broadview, another flashpoint for protests.

The suit is garnering lots of local news attention in Chicago. "There have been multiple incidents where our teams have been affected by the use of tear gas and pepper spray balls fired into crowds," ABC7 Chicago noted in its coverage on Monday.

 >> Block Club Chicago co-founder Stephanie Lulay, one of the plaintiffs, says, "We intend to continue to report on the protests, but our ability to do so, to the standards that we hold ourselves to, continues to be impacted by our fears of violence and arrests of our employees and contractors."

 >> The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is asking for a meeting with federal officials to discuss the "disturbing detentions, arrests, and physical attacks that we have seen in recent weeks targeting journalists."

Drone ban raises press concerns

The FAA and DHS quietly placed a temporary ban on drones over parts of Chicago last week, citing "security concerns" for law enforcement amid the so-called Midway Blitz immigration sweeps.

The restriction "looks suspiciously like an attempt to ban press coverage," the ACLU says. "We can't let government block drone photography of newsworthy events simply by claiming a need to fly their own aircraft in an area or claiming the existence of vague 'security threats.'"

 >> The National Press Photographers Association says, "This unprecedented flight restriction prevents journalists from using drones to document matters of clear public concern."