“This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power,” the governor said in a statement.
SACRAMENTO, California — President Donald Trump deployed 300 California National Guard troops to Portland after a federal judge blocked the president’s call-up of Oregon’s National Guard, a workaround that has already drawn a new round of legal challenges.
Late Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom joined Oregon leaders’ pending lawsuit, asking Portland-based U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut to block Trump’s effort to sidestep her initial ruling by deploying California troops.
“This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power,” Newsom said in a statement. “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.” A Trump administration spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Sunday night that Oregon and California officials are joining forces to fight Trump’s latest move.
“This is a very staggering end-run around the court’s order,” Bonta said of Trump’s action.
Immergut, a Trump appointee, blocked Trump on Saturday from deploying 200 National Guard troops from Oregon, ruling that he based the decision on false claims of unrest in Portland and abused his power in ways that threatened to erode the line between civilian and military rule. The judge quickly ordered lawyers to join a Sunday night telephone hearing after California and Oregon officials sought an urgent ruling.
An attorney for California’s Military Department, which oversees the state’s National Guard contingent, said in a sworn statement to the court the order to send 300 troops to Portland came within hours of Immergut’s decision to block the Oregon deployment. About 100 of them were already en route as of Sunday morning, the attorney, Paul Eck, said in the statement.
The Trump-appointed judge’s decision did not hinge on the source of the troops Trump deployed — she called the effort a violation of Oregon’s sovereignty that failed to meet the legal requirements for Trump to federalize Guard troops at all.
Trump slammed the decision and the judge Sunday in an exchange with reporters on the White House’s South Lawn.
“Portland is burning to the ground …. All you have to do is look at the TV and read your newspapers. That judge ought to be ashamed of himself,” the president said, apparently unaware that his appointee, Immergut, is a woman.
Top Trump aide Stephen Miller called the ruling a “legal insurrection,” describing the violence in Portland as an “organized terrorist attack” despite the judge’s finding that the administration lacked any evidence of violence that could not be managed by local authorities.
Bonta, like Immergut, said Trump’s claims about the situation in Portland were disconnected from reality. Oregon officials have said they believe Trump was prompted to zero in on that state’s most populous city after watching five-year-old video of unrest there during the coronavirus pandemic.
“The facts don’t come from Truth Social. They come from reality, in the real world, on the ground,” Bonta told reporters on a videoconference Sunday evening. “And the facts on the ground did not justify the deployment yesterday and I don’t see how it can justify the deployment today.”
It’s unclear whether the administration’s pending appeal in the Oregon case will discourage Immergut from issuing a second temporary restraining order, but Bonta said he thought the new facts created by Trump’s latest action would prompt the judge to act. California does not need the judge’s permission to join Oregon’s suit, but does need a new order from her in order to block the involvement of California troops.
“We think that this new deployment of what will eventually be 300 National Guardspeople from California to Oregon is deserving of an additional temporary restraining order and has its own independent existence that needs to be placed before this judge and have a ruling on it,” the California attorney general said.
Trump’s decision to once again federalize California troops over Newsom’s objection further escalates Trump’s relentless offensive against the Democrat-run state. His administration has in just the last few weeks lobbed mortgage fraud allegations against Sen. Adam Schiff, canceled funding to California and other blue states amid the government shutdown and threatened to move Olympic and World Cup competitions out of Los Angeles, citing crime.
The cross-state deployment added a new twist to the administration’s overtaking of troops in blue states. Trump’s previous plans for deployments in Illinois and Oregon involved personnel local to those states. Mississippi, Louisiana and Ohio have voluntarily sent National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on crime in the city.
On Sunday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said his state’s National Guard was informed that the Texas National Guard is preparing deployments to Illinois. The Illinois Guard was previously deployed.
“This evening, President Trump is ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployments to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within the United States,” Pritzker said in a statement. “No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate.”
“We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion,” Pritzker’s statement continued. “It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.”
Jones reported from Sacramento. Gerstein and Cheney reported from Washington.