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Busy weekend for Portland

Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2025 2:12 pm
by Rideback
Jay Kuo:
"It was hard to keep up with the legal mayhem this weekend over Trump’s National Guard deployment orders and smackdowns from a federal court.
Three blue state governors and one very pissed-off federal judge basically had to play whack-a-militia with the White House. And, so far at least, the White House has come out of the experience with big lumps on its head.
To understand what happened and why it was such a dangerous moment for our entire democratic project, we need to rewind and review the lead-up to the orders to deploy the National Guard to Portland. This will help explain why, as the judge on the matter brutally observed, Trump’s version of the situation on the ground was “simply untethered to the facts.”
That’s judge-speak for “plain off his rocker.”
From there, we need to understand the rapid-fire events of this weekend that nearly led to clashes in one state with other states’ national guards—a completely unprecedented and five alarm fire situation for our federal system.
Before we jump in, take a moment and a breath. Trump, through his henchmen Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth, once again pushed us to the brink. But the guardrails held, the White House slunk back once again, and another unlikely hero of the Republic—a Trump-appointed judge named Karin Immergut—emerged.
**The Reverse Potemkin in Portland
Grigory Potemkin was a Russian governor who, so the story goes, created fake settlements to impress Empress Catherine the Great while she toured the newly-annexed region of Crimea in the late 1700s.
In the mid 2020s, thanks to the Fox Network, we have a kind of “reverse Potemkin.” Right-wing media is creating fake conflicts and airing old footage of fires in our cities to rile up would-be Emperor Donald the Orange.
And it’s working. As Robert Reich reminds us in his piece, “The Mad King’s Television,” it was one month ago on September 5 when Trump was watching Fox and it aired misleading clips from Portland protests in *2020* during the Black Lives Matter protests. Trump had these images in his head when he spoke to reporters.
As Oregon’s lawsuit to enjoin federalization and deployment of troops alleges,
'A reporter asked which city President Trump planned to send troops to next, and he said he was considering targeting Portland because of news coverage the night before. President Trump alleged that ‘paid terrorists’ and ‘paid agitators’ were making the city unlivable, further stating … ‘if we go to Portland, we’re gonna wipe them out. They’re going to be gone and they’re going to be gone fast.’” '
Reich writes,
'Trump evidently does not have a process for getting current, verified information before he makes big decisions.
For over a century, every other president has been at the center of a system of information, flowing from people who have expertise in assessing the relevance and truth of that information — people who provide him with recommendations as to how to respond to a crisis, along with alternatives and assessments of the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative.
Trump, by contrast, is making potentially lethal decisions on the basis of whatever happens to be shown on the television he’s watching.'
**Kamala may be unburdened, but Donald is untethered
By September 27, Trump was insistent that Portland was “war ravaged” and that the ICE facilities there were “under siege” from “antifa.” He posted this dire warning to social media:
"At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists. I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"
This was both laughable and dangerous at once. Portland residents responded by posting beautiful peaceful images of their city and joking about how a single small city block around the ICE detention center meant their entire city was ablaze.
But Gov. Tina Kotek didn’t wait around. The state prepared and, after Trump gave the federalization order, filed a federal lawsuit, citing precedent from Trump’s similar overreach in California.
After the Justice Department moved to recuse the first federal judge assigned to the case, because he is married to Oregon Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, the matter was assigned to Judge Immergut. This must have pleased Stephen Miller immensely. After all, Immergut was a Trump appointee! Perhaps she would pull an Aileen Cannon and work hard on Trump’s behalf!
That hope dissipated quickly. Indeed, during the hearing, Judge Immergut appeared highly skeptical of the “war ravaged” Portland described by the White House.
As Chris Geidner laid out, the judge’s first order is well-reasoned and eloquent. She observed that
'America’s “historical tradition” makes clear that “this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power—to the detriment of this nation.'
Under existing Ninth Circuit precedent, coming straight out of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s challenge to the police action of the federalized National Guard in his state of California, Judge Immergut noted that “a great level of deference to the President’s determination that a predicate condition [for deploying troops] exists.”
But a court still has to review the President’s determination “to ensure that it reflects a colorable assessment of the facts and law within a ‘range of honest judgment.’” It must also be “conceived in good faith, in the face of the emergency and directly relating to the quelling of the disorder or the prevention of its continuance.”
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Here, Trump claimed he was unable to “with the regular forces execute the laws of the United States.” But Judge Immergut broke things down and destroyed the government’s case on the facts, taking what the Justice Department itself had alleged.
The government had actually only described *four instances* of protesters clashing with federal officers in the month of September leading up to the order: 1) protesters setting up a makeshift guillotine, 2) four people shining flashlights into the eyes of drivers, 3) someone posting a photo of an unmarked ICE vehicle, and 4) additional drivers having flashlights shone in their eyes.
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While criticizing these acts by protesters, the judge said “they are nowhere near the type of incidents that cannot be handled by regular law enforcement forces.”
Whatever reverse Potemkin village Trump was watching on TV, it was not what was actually happening in Portland, even around its ICE facility.
Judge Immergut concluded that “‘a great level of deference’ is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground. … The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”
She issued a temporary restraining order against federalization and deployment of the Oregon National Guard, to last 14 days, which was potentially renewable for another 14 days as the parties prepared their briefs on whether a preliminary injunction should issue.
**Stephen Miller takes the loss maturely and with grace
I’m kidding, of course. Miller, who is reportedly orchestrating all this behind the scenes, blasted the judge for committing “legal insurrection”—a purposefully charged phrase, given how his boss had pardoned all the *actual* insurrectionists of January 6.
[See comments for screenshot]
He then reposted a tweet claiming that “The State of Oregon, its Governor, the Mayor of Portland, even Judge Immergut - all openly rebelling against the lawful and legitimate authority of the United Stated [sic] Federal Government.”
As Prof. Steve Vladeck notes, however, it has been the case since the founding of our Republic that judges have had oversight of presidential orders to deploy the military around domestic matters. That’s why our very first president, George Washington, before he even sent troops to put down the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 in Western Pennsylvania, first obtained a judicial determination from Supreme Court Justice James Wilson that the facts on the ground warranted it.
This isn’t “legal insurrection.” It’s judges doing their constitutionally assigned jobs.
**Don’t relent, circumvent!
The ink was barely dry on Immergut’s order when the White House sought to circumvent it. On Sunday, Trump ordered 300 *California* National Guard troops, already federalized under a prior order, into Portland.
Pete Hegseth then announced that 400 *Texas* National Guard troops would deploy to Portland and Chicago.
Blue state governors struck back. California filed an immediate lawsuit, calling Trump’s move a “breathtaking abuse of the law and power.” Oregon moved for another temporary restraining order.
[See comments for image]
Trump’s move didn’t sit well with Judge Immergut. She held a rare Sunday evening hearing, and she was understandably pissed off.
Anna Bower of Lawfare Media covered the hearing. Here are some choice moments.
Judge Immergut made it plain out the gate that she believed her order, based on actual conditions in Portland, precluded this action by Trump.
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She tore the Justice Department lawyer a new one over how her first order was treated.
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After hearing from the states, she pointed out that nothing had changed in the Defendants’ arguments that would alter her original decision.
[See comments for screenshot of post]
The judge quickly issued a second TRO, forbidding ANY national guard deployments in Portland until a further hearing.
**It wasn’t Miller time around the White House
Following that second, broader restraining order, the White House is, in a word, pissed. Stephen Miller went nearly postal online, claiming that a “district court has no conceivable authority, whatsoever, to restrict the President and the Commander-in-Chief from dispatching members of the US military to defend federal lives and property” (wrong). He railed that this ruling was “one of the most egregious and thunderous violations of constitutional order we have ever seen” (wrong again—it was actually Trump’s overreach that upended our constitutional order, which was restored by the judge).

Per usual, and despite what many people commonly believe happens, the White House has *not* defied Judge Immergut’s direct order. Rather, it has appealed her ruling (though temporary restraining orders are not normally appealable) hoping to get this quickly before the Supreme Court.
When it does finally wind its way there, the fate of his federalization and deployment orders remains uncertain. On the one hand, there is a feckless SCOTUS extremist majority, and no one should put faith in them to do the right thing.
On the other hand, allowing Trump to simply make up or be lulled into a dangerous false reality, and then to use that false reality to create a very real crisis, would make a mockery of judicial review. If fake stories can serve as grounds for deployments, there would be no functional check upon the executive branch’s use of the U.S. military for purely domestic matters.
In the end, let’s hope at least five justices agree that there has to be at least *some* review and judicial standards here—just as they rather begrudgingly yet unanimously held with respect to due process for migrants.
After all, if there are no limits to fake narrative."