‘Breathtaking Abuse of Power’: Newsom Says Trump Is Sending California National Guard Troops to Portland
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said Sunday his state will sue after President Donald Trump sent 300 California National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, according to Newsom.
Trump’s apparent move to use California Guard troops against Oregon came hours after a federal judge blocked his attempt to federalize hundreds of Oregon National Guard members for deployment in Portland.
There was no official announcement from Trump or the White House that California National Guard troops were being sent to Oregon.
Trump sending the troops to Oregon would mark the first time he’s deployed one state’s Guard personnel against a nonconsenting state, raising severe state sovereignty issues.
Newsom in a statement called Trump’s attempt to redeploy California Guard personnel to Portland “a breathtaking abuse of the law and power.”
“The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words — ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents,” Newsom said.
“This isn’t about public safety, it’s about power. The commander-in-chief is using the U.S. military as a political weapon against American citizens,” Newsom added. “We will take this fight to court, but the public cannot stay silent in the face of such reckless and authoritarian conduct by the President of the United States.”
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, who was appointed by Trump in his first term, ruled Saturday that Trump lacked legal authority last week when he attempted to federalize 200 members of the Oregon National Guard.
In ruling in favor of Oregon and Portland, the judge granted a temporary injunction blocking Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s memo claiming to federalize 200 members of the Oregon Guard for at least 60 days.
The judge found that Trump’s actions were based on false claims that small isolated protests outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in southwest Portland amounted to a “rebellion” against the U.S. government.
“The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” Immergut said.
In response to Immergut’s order, Stephen Miller, Trump’s homeland security advisor, claimed on social media she was staging “legal insurrection” against Trump.
“The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge,” Miller said.
Trump federalized thousands of California Guard soldiers earlier this year over ICE-related protests and unrest in Los Angeles. Though the Pentagon ended the deployment of many of the troops, hundreds of National Guard members have remained under federal control for months.
A federal judge rejected Trump’s federalization of California Guard troops, though that ruling was later stayed by a three-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The panel determined Trump was within his authority to federalize Guard troops because conditions in LA were sufficient for the use of 10 U.S.C. 12406, an archaic statute that allows the president to mobilize the Guard when the country faces foreign invasion or rebellion, or when the president is unable to execute laws with regular resources.
In her order, Immergut strongly rejected the Department of Justice’s argument that the statute allowed the president to cite events that occurred months ago in an unrelated city in another state to deploy troops in Portland.
“Violence elsewhere cannot support troop deployments here, and concern about hypothetical future conduct does not demonstrate a present inability to execute the laws using nonmilitary federal law enforcement,” the judge wrote.
The White House Saturday announced that Trump also authorized hundreds of National Guard troops for deployment to Chicago over the objections of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D). The announcement marked the fifth time Trump federalized and deployed state Guard troops against a Democratic-led city.