Ignoring Court Ruling, Trump Sends Troops to Portland to Break Imagined Antifa “Siege”

Last month, a federal judge found that President Donald Trump’s deployment of members of California’s National Guard against the wishes of California’s governor was illegal. That didn’t stop Trump from doing the same in Oregon this weekend.

“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,” he wrote on Truth Social. A defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity called Trump’s claims “nonsense.” A similar deployment of troops to Los Angeles earlier this year was found to be illegal by a federal judge.

Hegseth issued a memorandum, on Sunday, calling into federal service 200 members of the Oregon National Guard, against the wishes of Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek. Trump said that he was “authorizing Full Force, if necessary” in Portland. The Department of War would not say how they interpret that order.

Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson did not respond to a request for further information on why Hegseth called Guard members into federal service in Oregon when the Los Angeles deployment was found to be unlawful.

Trump has deployed roughly 35,000 federal troops within the United States this year, according to exclusive figures provided to The Intercept by official military sources. These occupation forces, drawn from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and National Guard, have been operating under Title 10 authority, or federal control, in at least five states — Arizona, California, Florida, New Mexico, and Texas — in service of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda. Oregon will now join them. (Troops currently en route to Memphis are doing so under Title 32 status, meaning they are under state control.)

Trump’s Portland order drew pushback from Oregon’s Democratic lawmakers as well as experts, who said there was no need for federal troops to be deployed to the city. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Reps. Suzanne Bonamici, Andrea Salinas, Val Hoyle, Maxine Dexter, and Janelle Bynum all demanded the Trump administration keep troops out of Portland. Local government officials have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Sunday to stop the deployment.

“[F]or over a century and a half, Congress has expressly forbidden federal military interference in civilian law enforcement,” reads the complaint against Trump, Hegseth, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “Defendants have trampled on these principles by federalizing members of the Oregon National Guard for deployment in Portland, Oregon, to participate in civilian law enforcement.”

Recent protests in Portland have been muted and focused on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building located outside the city’s downtown area. In court this month, a Portland police official said federal officers were “instigating” confrontations with protesters outside the ICE facility. Several demonstrators have been charged with assault. Others have been charged with crimes like arson and resisting arrest.

Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center’s liberty and national security program, said there was no cause for Trump’s order. “Under law and tradition, the military should be used to quell civil unrest only in the most extreme circumstances where state and local authorities are overwhelmed and have asked for help. The situation in Portland comes nowhere close to the level of disorder that has historically prompted states to request assistance from the federal military, which is why local authorities haven’t made such a request,” she told The Intercept. “Throwing out the term ‘domestic terrorism’ doesn’t change matters. Domestic terrorism is a crime that is prosecuted by civilian authorities. Some protesters in Portland have been charged with misdemeanors, but none have been charged with terrorism.”

Trump’s Portland announcement appeared to surprise Pentagon officials, who offered no information even a day after Trump issued his order on Truth Social. “We stand ready to mobilize U.S. military personnel in support of DHS operations in Portland at the President’s direction,” chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told The Intercept. “The Department will provide information and updates as they become available.” The Intercept never received any updates.

The National Guard also appeared to have been kept in the dark. “At this time, we do not have any additional information,” a spokesperson told The Intercept on Sunday. On Monday, Northern Command — which will oversee the Portland deployment — still had no details to offer. “We don’t have any [sic] to provide in addition to the OSW statement,” a spokesperson told The Intercept.

Trump has long expressed animus toward Portland, stretching back to his first term, when he called it a “beehive of terrorists.” In 2020, federal agents wearing camouflage were deployed in the city, in the wake of protests over the police killing of George Floyd. Then-Gov. Kate Brown described it as a “blatant abuse of power” and said it was designed to distract citizens from Trump’s bungled handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trump’s new Portland order follows a series of authoritarian actions that have pushed the nation ever closer to a genuine police state. Earlier this month, Trump signed an executive order claiming to designate antifa — a loose-knit anti-fascist movement — as a “domestic terror organization.” On Thursday, he issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which directs the Justice Department and elements of the Intelligence Community and national security establishment to target “anti-fascism … movements” and “domestic terrorist organizations.” Such enemies, according to Trump, not only espouse “anti-Americanism” and “support for the overthrow of the United States Government,” but also are typified by advocacy of opinions protected by the First Amendment including “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity,” and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

“It fabricates a nonexistent plot as a pretext to suppress speech and ideas across the U.S. political spectrum.”

“President Trump’s order mobilizing federal law enforcement to investigate perceived opponents of his administration turns reality on its head,” said Federico Borello, acting executive director of Human Rights Watch. “It fabricates a nonexistent plot as a pretext to suppress speech and ideas across the U.S. political spectrum.”

NSPM-7 also refers to “riots” in Los Angeles and, notably, Portland. Kotek pushed back on this characterization of recent protests. “There is no national security threat in Portland,” she announced on social media. “Our communities are safe and calm.” Independent reporting corroborates her assessment.

Kotek, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, and Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield filed a lawsuit on Sunday in U.S. District Court to stop the troop deployment. In the complaint they note that protests at the ICE facility in Portland “have been small in recent weeks—typically involving less than thirty people—and the protesters’ activities have not necessitated any arrests since mid-June.” They call the justification for the occupation “patently pretextual and baseless.”

The Trump administration has sought to justify its Los Angeles deployment as a response to “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” There was, in fact, no uprising, with Vice President JD Vance choosing to vacation at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, about 25 miles from a city supposedly in or on the verge of rebellion.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled earlier this month that Trump’s deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles was illegal and harkened back to Britain’s use of soldiers as law enforcement officers in colonial America. He warned that Trump intends to transform the National Guard into a presidential police force. The administration has appealed that ruling.

Earlier this month, the District of Columbia also filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s deployment on multiple grounds. D.C. alleged that, among other harms, the “encroachment of National Guard troops in the District has also already caused harm to public safety in the District.”

The Oregon lawsuit follows the same path. “Citing nothing more than baseless, wildly hyperbolic pretext — the President says Portland is a ‘War ravaged’ city ‘under siege’ from ‘domestic terrorists’ — Defendants have thus infringed on Oregon’s sovereign power to manage its own law enforcement activity and National Guard resource. Far from promoting public safety, Defendants’ provocative and arbitrary actions threaten to undermine public safety by inciting a public outcry,” reads the complaint. “Defendants’ heavy-handed deployment of troops threatens to escalate tensions and stokes new unrest, meaning more of the Plaintiffs’ law enforcement resources will be spent responding to the predictable consequences of Defendants’ action.”

National Guard forces deployed to Washington, D.C., as part of Trump’s federal takeover of the district last month are operating under Title 32 status. But with no governor to report to, the D.C. National Guard’s chain of command runs from its commanding general to the secretary of the Army, to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and finally to the president.

This month, Trump has repeatedly announced the deployment of troops to Memphis, Tennessee. “WE’RE COMING, and when we do that, as we did in now VERY SAFE WASHINGTON, D.C., the no crime ‘miracle’ begins. ONLY I CAN SAVE THEM!!!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social about the deployment.

Earlier this month, a spokesperson for the Tennessee National Guard told The Intercept a military occupation was in the works. “Planning is underway for a strategic mission to address crime in Memphis, and we will continue to coordinate with our state and federal partners to determine the most effective path forward,” she told The Intercept by email earlier this month. Troops have been slow to arrive but may be deployed this week. Unlike the governors of California and Oregon, Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee is a Republican and has been receptive to the deployment.

A long-threatened military occupation of Chicago has failed to materialize although an ICE operation targeting immigrants in the city, dubbed “Midway Blitz,” launched earlier this month. Trump has also threatened to deploy National Guard troops to Baltimore, New York City, New Orleans, Oakland, and Saint Louis.

“We will peacefully oppose this military takeover of Oregon,” said Portland City Councilor Loretta Smith on Sunday. “Deploying federal troops into our city is a gross overreach and a misuse of power. It threatens our ability to govern ourselves, to live peacefully, and to move through our communities without fear.”

Goitein pointed out that Trump’s domestic use of the military was unprecedented in its frequency and a clear threat to Americans’ fundamental rights. “Presidents have deployed troops domestically to quell civil unrest or enforce the law only 30 times in our nation’s 250-year history, yet Trump has done it three times in just over eight months, and troops are poised to deploy in a fourth city this week,” she said. “What we are seeing is a pattern of misuse of the military to intimidate Americans who disagree with the president’s policies.”