Skip to main content
Put together an elite athlete who’s well paid to speak against transgender participation in women’s sports, a wealthy conservative think tank, and the college arm of the MAGA movement. Dip them into progressive Portland’s city university. Turn the lights down low. And what do you get?
No surprises, that’s what.
The Portland Police Bureau arrested five people for misdemeanors, including criminal mischief and harassment, after they attempted to disrupt a May 5 speech by swimmer Riley Gaines at a rented venue on the Portland State University campus. Some of the people arrested had banged on the doors of Smith Memorial Student Union; others had pestered attendees as they left the venue, or attempted to block doors where Gaines and others might exit.
Gaines, 25, is a former NCAA All-American swimmer from the University of Kentucky. In March 2022, in her final elite race, she tied in freestyle for fifth place against trans athlete Lia Thomas, from Penn. Thomas became the face of transgender women in elite collegiate sport, and Gaines became a prominent opponent of transgender women there. She aligned with the conservative ecosystem of “defending women’s sports.” She joined a think tank in Virginia, the Leadership Institute; hired a speakers’ agency; and allied with Turning Point USA, a nonprofit that seeks to promote the agenda of President Donald Trump on college campuses.
Portland State’s chapter of Turning Point USA arranged to have Gaines speak at Smith Memorial Student Union on May 5, and the space was rented by the Leadership Institute’s national office several months ago. Portland State is the second-to-last stop on Gaines’ “The Fight Is Far From Over” speaking tour of 10 colleges, as described on her Leadership Institute Facebook page.
Her appearance came at a delicate moment for PSU, which is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education along with 60 other universities for alleged Title VI violations and is one of a handful of universities under scrutiny by the feds for its handling of Gaza protests last spring.
A PSU official told WW that the university upheld its First Amendment obligation to be “viewpoint neutral” when leasing space.
But the progressive community, both PSU’s affiliated groups and allies from the city at large, prepared protests. And the Portland Police Bureau, including the recently reconstituted Rapid Response Team, or RRT, had approximately 40 officers on the ground at the student union.
A rally of about 75 people began on the west side of the student union, with speeches supporting transgender rights and sport. This rapidly morphed into a slightly more dynamic confrontation, with a few activists kicking at the student union’s front doors (they didn’t break) and generating noise. Groups of protesters sought exits they thought either the speaker or the audience might use, and police soon guarded those doors as well, making arrests.
By about 9:30 pm, the protesters had largely dispersed, as had a majority of the police. The timing and location of Riley Gaines’ exit from the facility were uncertain.
So what message did Gaines deliver with her free-speech platform? Hard to say. While some media, including two television stations and The Post Millennial, were allowed by Turning Point USA and the Leadership Institute to record the speech, WW was not permitted to attend.