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A federal judge has extended her order blocking President Donald Trump from deploying National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, marking a major setback to the White House’s efforts to send military forces into Democrat-led cities.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut issued the ruling on Sunday (November 2) after a three-day hearing, saying the administration failed to show that protests in Portland had grown beyond the control of local authorities. The order will remain in effect until 5 p.m. on Friday (November 7), according to a copy of the decision obtained by Newsweek.
“Based on the trial testimony, this Court finds no credible evidence that during the approximately two months before the President’s federalization order, protests grew out of control or involved more than isolated and sporadic instances of violent conduct,” Immergut wrote. “The violence that did occur during this time period predominantly involved violence between protesters and counterprotesters, not violence against federal officers or the ICE facility.”
The case in Portland is serving as a test study for whether the president has constitutional authority to deploy federalized National Guard troops domestically without the consent of state governments. The Trump administration has already sent troops to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., citing rising crime, and has sought to do the same in several other Democrat-run cities.
Attorneys for Oregon and California argued that local police were capable of managing demonstrations that have focused largely on the city’s ICE facility. The Justice Department countered that demonstrators had committed significant crimes and that the president need not wait for “a full-fledged rebellion” to act.
Immergut’s decision follows similar legal defeats for the Trump administration, including a federal court ruling that blocked efforts to federalize the Illinois National Guard ahead of a planned deployment to Chicago.
For now, the ruling prevents any National Guard deployment to Portland until at least Friday, when the court could revisit whether the administration has legal grounds to proceed.
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