A judge appointed by President Donald Trump blocked his latest blue-city takeover for the second time in as many days after a contentious emergency hearing.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut said during an at-times contentious Sunday night telephone hearing that the administration appeared to have deliberately violated her ruling temporarily halting the deployment of Oregon National Guard troops to Portland.
After the first ruling, Trump pivoted and ordered hundreds of members of the Texas and California National Guard to deploy to Oregon, forcing Immergut to issue a second injunction blocking deployment of any “federalized members of the National Guard” to the state.
The judge, who was appointed by Trump in 2019, seemed incredulous that the government would send troops from other states just hours after her ruling, considering the constitutional principles are the same regardless of which state they come from, the Associated Press reported.
“How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention to the temporary restraining order I issued yesterday?” she questioned the federal government’s attorney, cutting him off.
“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she demanded later. “Why is this appropriate?”
When the lawyer tried to argue that the original ruling only applied to Oregon National Guard members, she shot back, “You are missing the point.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
In her original order, Immergut found that the administration had used false claims of violence against immigration officials to “justify” the deployment.
Trump announced on Truth Social in late September, “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.”
Immergut, however, wrote that “nothing in the record suggests anything of this sort was occurring ‘every night’ outside the Portland ICE building.”
“This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” the judge wrote.
Until last weekend, about 20 peaceful protesters had been gathering each night, with few arrests made, AP reported. After Trump gave the National Guard order over the weekend, the crowd swelled to about 400 people, and federal agents shot tear-gas canisters into the crowd.
Trump, however, revealed during a Sept. 28 interview with NBC that his team has been telling him that protesters were “literally attacking and there are fires all over the place.”
A special that aired on Fox News in early September also passed off violent footage of Portland from 2020 as if it were happening now, Press Watch reported.
The president has since said the city is “war ravaged,” and a “war zone” that is “burning down” and like “living in hell,” according to the AP.
He reacted to Immergut’s original order by complaining that he hadn’t been “served well” by his appointee—and by repeatedly calling the female judge a “he.”
“I appointed the judge, and he goes like that. No, I wasn’t served well. Obviously, I don’t know the judge, but he made that kind of a decision,” he said.
After Sunday’s follow-up ruling, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller tried to claim in a social media rant that the peaceful protesters outside the ICE facility were “domestic terrorists” committing “violent assault.”
“It is a violent armed resistance designed to incapacitate the essential operations of the duly-elected federal government, by force,” he ranted. “Today’s judicial ruling is one of the most egregious and thunderous violations of constitutional order we have ever seen — and is yet the latest example of unceasing efforts to nullify the 2024 election by fiat.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom—who had opposed the deployment of California National Guard troops to Oregon—mocked Miller’s post by responding with a meme.
In a statement, he called the ruling “a victory for American democracy itself.”
“Donald Trump tried to turn our soldiers into instruments of his political will,” he said. “While our fight continues, tonight the rule of law said ‘hell no.’”
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