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Thwarted by a court from deploying the Oregon National Guard to Portland, and facing a legal challenge to his gambit of flying in the California National Guard, President Donald Trump turned to Texas.
The president is sending members of the Texas National Guard to Oregon, Gov. Tina Kotek said in a statement late Sunday night.
But within an hour, U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut barred Trump’s deployment of the California National Guard to Oregon. The ruling came after Oregon and California challenged the deployment of 200 Californians who touched down in Portland on Sunday.
Immergut, a Trump appointee, said in the Sunday night hearing that her Saturday order—which barred Trump’s deployment of the Oregon National Guard to Portland—applied to troops from any state. That includes Texas.
She called the California deployment a “direct contravention of my order.”
Kotek celebrated the speedy ruling as a response to a constitutional threat. “This is not just about Oregon or a handful of states anymore—it’s about the integrity of our democracy,” the governor said in a statement. “President Trump’s actions are an effort to occupy and incite cities and states that don’t share his politics, and I believe that we should expect him to continue to push the limits of his authority. The President can expect Oregon to stand up to him at every turn.”
About an hour earlier, Kotek said the Oregon National Guard was alerted today that 400 of their counterparts in Texas would soon be deployed to Oregon, Illinois, “and other locations throughout the United States.”
The deployment represents yet another escalation of Trump’s determination to place at least part of Portland under military control, and comes less than 24 hours after 200 members of the California National Guard touched down in Portland to crack down on what Trump has falsely said is a “war-ravaged” city, a characterization Immergut wrote Saturday was “untethered to facts.”
The president continues to assert, counter to all available evidence, that the city is a lawless hellscape whose leaders are too politically intimidated to admit they’re being held hostage by leftist agitators. In reality, a few dozen protesters gather nightly at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building 2 miles south of downtown, where they taunt and block the egress of immigration agents. The number of protesters has swelled since Trump announced his crackdown.
Kotek in a statement offered few details about the deployment, and it’s unclear when the guard members from Texas are expected to come to Portland.
“I have received no direct explanation from President Trump or [War] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth about the specific need for this action. It is unclear how many will go to what location and what mission they will carry out,” Kotek said. “This is a continuation and escalation of the president’s dangerous, un-American misuse of states’ National Guard members and hard-earned taxpayer dollars.”
Judge Immergut issued an order Saturday afternoon halting Trump’s deployment of the Oregon National Guard after the state sued, leading Trump to circumvent the ruling by sending up the California guard members.
Oregon officials filed a new court motion Sunday evening seeking to block the California National Guard from remaining in Portland. California signed on to the amended lawsuit—and Immergut sided with the states.
“It is readily apparent that these members of the California National Guard have been redeployed to carry out the same mission that, just yesterday, the Court held was not a satisfactory basis for sending in federalized troops,” the motion reads. “In other words, having been enjoined from federalizing and deploying 200 Oregon National Guard members to Portland, Defendants have prepared to deploy at least 200 California National Guard members to conduct the same unlawful mission in Portland under the same inadequate authority.”
