A federal judge in Portland, Oregon, on Friday rejected the Trump administration’s request to immediately lift her order blocking the deployment of federalized national guard troops to the city, saying that she would decide the matter by Monday.
The hearing in Portland and one in Washington DC are the latest in a head-spinning array of lawsuits and overlapping rulings prompted by Trump’s push to send the military into Democratic-run cities despite fierce resistance from mayors and governors. Troop deployment remains blocked in the Chicago area, where all sides are waiting to see whether the US supreme court intervenes to allow it.
The Portland district court judge, Karin Immergut, had previously issued two temporary restraining orders blocking the deployment of national guards troops there, in response to a persistent but small protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office.
Her first order, blocking the deployment of 200 troops from the Oregon national guard, said that Donald Trump had exceeded his authority by taking federal control of the troops based on his claim that the city was in a state of war-like rebellion. Trump’s assessment, Immergut ruled, was “simply untethered to the facts”.