Can President Trump Deploy The National Guard To Portland Or Chicago?

The first nine months of the second Trump administration have seen extraordinary litigation efforts by opponents of the government seeking to block its initiatives of every sort.  This page at Lawfare Media tracks some 190 active cases challenging Trump administration actions; and I don’t think that that list of 190 is comprehensive.  The cases cover subject matter areas ranging from spending reductions to employee terminations to migrant deportations to regulatory actions, among many others.

Those following these litigations, or some of them, have undoubtedly noticed a pattern whereby a District Court judge, usually in a blue state, enjoins the administration’s action, only to have that injunction stayed by a Court of Appeals or by the Supreme Court within a few days or weeks.  This pattern has been repeated multiple times in areas including spending reductions and migrant deportations.  Although none of the cases has yet reached full merits review at the Supreme Court, nevertheless there is a growing sense of District Court judges going beyond their job of enforcing the law, and instead seeking to supplant legitimate executive authority with their own policy preferences.

The latest series of cases involves the efforts of President Trump to deploy units of the National Guard to Portland and Chicago to support the efforts of ICE in those cities to enforce the federal immigration laws.  About two weeks ago, Trump called up units of the Oregon National Guard to be deployed to Portland, citing ongoing demonstrations at an ICE facility there, said to be interfering with the law enforcement actions.  According to a report at NPR here, on Saturday (October 4) a federal judge in Oregon, Karen Immergut, issued a TRO blocking the deployment of the National Guard in Portland.  Here, from the NPR piece, is an excerpt from Judge Immergut’s ruling:

“This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” Immergut wrote. She later continued, “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”