Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.
BREAKING: Judge issues 2nd order blocking National Guard deployment to aid ICE in Portland, OR, after Trump sends CA Guard in & moves to send TX Guard, too. Judge Karin Immergut cites actions 'in direct contravention' of earlier ruling. w/@kyledcheney https://t.co/2wLz6IkcEV
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) October 6, 2025
Mark Berman and Derek Hawkins at WP:
A federal judge on Saturday blocked the Trump administration from deploying troops in Portland, at least temporarily thwarting President Donald Trump’s push to send the military into Oregon’s biggest city.
Oregon demonstrated that such an action would violate the state’s 10th Amendment right to control its National Guard, U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut, a Trump appointee, wrote in her decision granting a temporary restraining order.
“This country has a long-standing and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” Immergut wrote, later adding, “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law.”
Immergut said her restraining order will expire Oct. 18, though she suggested it could be extended. She scheduled a hearing for Oct. 17 to address that question.
In her order, Immergut wrote that a president is entitled to deference, but that is “not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground.” She said Trump’s determination that the situation in Portland required a federal military response “was simply untethered to the facts.”
The judge's order confirms that Trump's language undercuts his actions:
]The] President’s own statements regarding the deployment of federalized National Guardsmen further support that his determination was not “conceived in good faith” or “in the face of the emergency and directly related to the quelling of the disorder or the prevention of its continuance.” Newsom II, 141 F.4th at 1051 (emphasis in original) (quoting Sterling, 287 U.S. at 399–400). Despite the “minimal activity” outside the Portland ICE facility in the days preceding September 27, 2025, Hughes Decl., Ex. 22, ECF 46-22 to Ex. 26, ECF 46-26, President Trump directed Secretary 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.” Marshall Decl., Ex. 12, ECF 9-12. Two days before that directive, the President claimed that Portland has “professional agitators” who are “paid a lot of money by rich people,” “anarchists,” and “crazy people” who try to “burn down buildings, including federal buildings.” See Marshall Decl., ECF 9 ¶ 26. Whatever the factual basis the President may have for these allegations, nothing in the record suggests that anything of this sort was occurring “every night” outside the Portland ICE building or in the City of Portland in the days or weeks leading up to his September 27 directive. Id.
