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California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said on Sunday he would go to court to fight the move by Donald Trump to send national guard members from his state to Oregon, where protesters have gathered near a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) building in Portland.
Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said 101 California national guard members arrived in her state on Saturday night by plane and more were on the way. Kotek said there has been no formal communication with the federal government about the deployment. A day earlier, a judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying 200 members of Oregon’s guard to Portland.
“There is no need for military intervention in Oregon,” Kotek said on Sunday.
The Pentagon said on Sunday that 200 guard members were sent from California to Oregon. Kotek’s office said it could not verify the current location of guard members who arrived in Oregon on Saturday.
Trump voiced his frustration on Sunday morning about Saturday’s ruling by US district judge Karin Immergut, who he appointed during his first term, that is preventing him as of now from deploying troops to relatively small protests near an Ice facility in Portland.
“I wasn’t served well by the people that picked judges,” Trump said, adding that the judge “ought to be ashamed of herself” because “Portland is burning to the ground.”
Trump authorized the deployment of 300 Illinois national guard troops to protect federal officers and assets in Chicago on Saturday, marking the latest escalation of his use of federal intervention in cities.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed that the president authorized using the Illinois national guard members, citing what she called “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” that local leaders have not quelled.
Trump has characterized both Portland and Chicago as cities rife with crime and unrest, calling the former a “war zone” and suggesting apocalyptic force was needed to quell problems in the latter. Since the start of his second term, he has sent or talked about sending troops to 10 cities, including Baltimore, Maryland; Memphis, Tennessee; the District of Columbia; New Orleans, Louisiana; and the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
But the governors of Illinois and Oregon see the deployments differently.
“This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will,” Illinois governor JB Pritzker said in a statement on Saturday. “It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.”
Pritzker on Sunday shot back at Kristi Noem, Trump’s homeland security secretary, who reiterated the “war zone” rhetoric. Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper, the Illinois governor, accused the administration of fueling the crisis rather than resolving it. “They are the ones who are making it a war zone,” he said.
“They need to get out of Chicago. If they’re not going to focus on the worst of the worst, which is what the president said they are going to do, they need to get the heck out.”
Kotek talked to Trump in late September and said the deployment was unnecessary. She refused to call up any Oregon national guard troops, so Trump did so himself in an order to defense secretary Pete Hegseth. That prompted the lawsuit from city and state officials.
Late on Sunday, Kotek held a news conference with the Oregon attorney general, Dan Rayfield, who said they have filed another lawsuit for a second temporary restraining order and have included California as a plaintiff.
“We all believe the presence of federal troops in Portland will only inflame the situation,” Rayfield said.
US attorney general Pam Bondi has issued a memo that also directs component agencies within the justice department, including the FBI, to help protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, including in Chicago and Portland.
