A gentrification protest in Oregon's largest city that has blockaded several city blocks in Portland entered its third day Thursday as demonstrators dressed in black and wearing ski masks shored up their makeshift barriers aimed at keeping police out.
The fencing, lumber and other roadblocking material first went up on Tuesday after officers arrested about a dozen people in a clash over the eviction of a Black and Indigenous family from a house.
The street behind the blockade in the neighborhood of homes, coffee shops and restaurants was laced with booby traps aimed at keeping officers out — including homemade spike strips, piles of rocks and thick bands of plastic wrap stretched at neck-height across the roadway.
Protesters reinforce their barricades at an encampment outside a home in Portland, Ore., on Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020. Makeshift barricades erected by protesters are still up in Oregon's largest city a day after Portland police arrested about a dozen people in a clash over gentrification and the eviction of a family from a home. (AP PhotoGillian Flaccus)
It recalled more than four months of confrontations between police and protesters decrying racial injustice and police brutality that only abated weeks ago.
Mayor Ted Wheeler said the city would not tolerate an “autonomous zone,” a reference to a weeks-long protest in Seattle where protesters essentially took over a several-block area near downtown during racial injustice protests.
Supporters of the Kinney family, the Black and Indigenous family that faced foreclosure, have said the home was unjustly taken through predatory lending practices that target people of color.
Masked protesters by an occupied home speak with a neighborhood resident opposed to their encampment and demonstration in Portland, Ore., on Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020. Makeshift barricades erected by protesters are still up in Oregon's largest city a day after Portland police arrested about a dozen people in a clash over gentrification and the eviction of a family from a home. (AP PhotoGillian Flaccus)
The property sold at auction for $260,000 in 2018, the family said, while private land next door is valued at more than $10 million.
On Thursday, the family's supporters said in a statement that Wheeler's office had reached out to the Kinney family late Wednesday and promised to “keep it Kinney" in an initial conversation.
The statement implored the mayor to ”call off" the police and sheriff's deputies who secured the home and made arrests on Tuesday.
Signs and barricades remain outside a house on North Mississippi Ave. in Portland, Ore., on Wednesday, December 9, 2020. Makeshift barricades erected by protesters are still up in Oregon's largest city a day after Portland police arrested about a dozen people in a clash over gentrification and the eviction of a family from a home. (Beth NakamuraThe Oregonian via AP)
“We look forward to continuing that conversation as we move more towards our goal of securing the Red House for the Kinney family and their generations to come,” the family's statement said.
Wheeler's office said in a statement that the city was “actively working across bureaus and with partners” to resolve the standoff, but did not confirm having had contact with the family.
The house that the family was evicted from lies in a historically Black part of Portland that for decades was one of the few areas Black residents could own homes because of racist real estate and zoning laws.
And the 124-year-old home was one of the few remaining Black-owned residences in an area that has rapidly gentrified in the past 20 years.
A bank foreclosed on the property in 2018, but the Kinneys refused to leave. The developer who bought the house at auction filed a lawsuit and the Kinneys counter-sued, alleging they had been the victims of predatory loan practices.
They most recently requested an emergency court order to allow them to stay in the home, citing an eviction moratorium put in place in Oregon during the pandemic.
But the moratorium only applies to homeowners suffering pandemic-related financial woes and a judge rejected the request in September.
Protesters then started camping out on the property, but the occupation gained steam and national attention this week when officers responding to the new owner’s complaints conducted their dawn sweep and made about a dozen arrests, mostly on trespassing charges.
Between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30, there have been 81 calls to the property for fights, gunshots, burglary, vandalism and noise complaints, among other things, police have said.
Neighbors have complained that the sidewalks were blocked and they could not get to their homes, police said.
Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus
NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.
Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.
Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.
“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.
About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.
Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.
The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.
Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.
In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.
“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.
Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.
The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.
Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.
"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.
There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.
The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.
Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.
Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
