Politics
JUST IN: Trump Scores Massive Court Victory On National Guard Deployments
A federal appeals court on Monday ruled that President Donald Trump may Oregon National Guard personnel in order to defend federal agents and property who have been under siege for months in Oregon’s most populous city of Portland. The move comes just over two weeks after a federal judge blocked the commander in chief from federalizing the blue state’s National Guard resources, something that was already done in California.
In a 2-1 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, the three-judge panel lifted a lower court ruling that blocked the deployment of National Guard personnel while the administration’s appeal is resolved. Following the ruling against the federalization of the Oregon National Guard, Trump attempted to sidestep the order by sending members of the Texas National Guard instead.
The panel pointed months of incidents at a Portland ICE facility, including violent riots, assaults on federal officers, a three-week closure (June 13–July 7), and continued security measures such as boarded windows to protect personnel and property.
Another order from the lower court blocking Trump’s takeover of Oregon’s National Guard, which the appeals court previously lifted temporarily, will remain as such. “Rather than reviewing the President’s determination with great deference, the district court substituted its own determination of the relevant facts and circumstances,” the unsigned order read, according to a report from The Hill.
Last month, President Trump ordered War Secretary Pete Hegseth to unleash “all necessary troops” to Portland and use “full force” to protect immigration authorities from Antifa-linked groups and other far-left militants. The commander in chief recently signed an executive order designating Antifa — the far-left, black bloc organization that has been implicated in numerous attacks and violent protests both in the U.S. and abroad over the past decade — as a terrorist organization.
In the days leading up to the initial ruling, hundreds of protesters marched to the South Macadam Avenue detention center and clashed with federal agents, who fired tear gas, mace, and pepper spray, scattering the crowd, according to a report from the New York Post.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, previously issued a temporary restraining order blocking the deployment of 200 Oregon National Guard troops to Portland. The lawsuit, filed by the state of Oregon and the city of Portland, argued that Trump’s order —issued under 10 U.S.C. § 12406 to protect federal immigration facilities amid protests — claimed that the administration exaggerated threats and unlawfully seized control of the state’s National Guard without meeting the required legal threshold.
In her order, Immergut claimed that the protests outside the Portland federal facilities — which have been besieged by rioters for more than 100 consecutive days — have remained “mostly peaceful” and uneventful. “Overall, the protests were small and uneventful,” she wrote in her ruling. “The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”
