Donald Trump is sending 300 California National Guard members to Oregon after a judge blocked his administration from deploying Oregon’s own National Guard to Portland, according to California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The Democratic governor pledged to fight the Republican president’s move in court on Sunday.
There was no official announcement about the move from Washington — which was also the case when Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker announced on Saturday that National Guard troops in his state had been activated for deployment to Chicago.
Newsom said in a statement that California personnel were on their way to the Oregon city on Sunday, blasting the deployment as “a breathtaking abuse of law and power.”
“The commander-in-chief is using the U.S. military as a political weapon against American citizens,” Newsom said in the statement. “We will take this fight to court, but the public cannot stay silent in the face of such reckless and authoritarian conduct by the president of the United States.”
It was a Trump-appointed judge in Oregon who temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plan on Saturday to deploy the Oregon National Guard to Portland.
Trump had planned to use the Guard to protect federal property amid protests that were sparked after the president called the liberal city “war-ravaged.”
Oregon and Portland residents alike said that description was ludicrous.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, issued the order pending further arguments in the suit. She said the relatively small protests the city has seen didn’t justify the use of federalized forces, adding that deploying the Guard could harm Oregon’s state sovereignty.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building in Portland has recently been the site of nightly protests, but Trump fears that the largely peaceful demonstrations will escalate.
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Trump characterized both Portland and Chicago as cities rife with crime and unrest, calling the former a “war zone” and suggesting that apocalyptic force was needed to quell problems in the latter.
Since the start of his second term, he’s sent or talked about sending troops to 10 cities, the first of them being Los Angeles — a move that sparked intense backlash from Newsom, who sued the Trump administration over the deployment.
On Saturday, Trump authorized the deployment of 300 Illinois National Guard members to Chicago to protect federal officers conducting immigration raids and cracking down on crime in the city.