PORTLAND, Ore. — Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves will miss the Lakers’ game in Portland on Monday as the team ruled both out with injuries.
One night after recording a 29-point, 11-rebound, 10-assist triple-double, Doncic is out to manage a lower leg contusion. Reaves, who scored 26 points and 11 assists in the Lakers’ 130-120 win over the Miami Heat, is out with right groin soreness.
This will be the fourth game Doncic has missed this season as he was also sidelined with a minor finger injury and a left leg contusion.
Playing in their second back-to-back of the season, the Lakers will again be short-handed. They had seven standard contract players when they hosted the Trail Blazers on the second night of a back-to-back last week. Portland won 122-108 as Reaves attempted to carry the team with 41 points.
The Lakers could also be without Deandre Ayton, who is questionable with back spasms. He missed Sunday’s game after experiencing pain last Friday in Memphis.
Forward Maxi Kleber was upgraded to questionable with an abdominal strain that has kept him sidelined all season.
Billups and Miami Heat player Terry Rozier were among those arrested Thursday for what federal law enforcement officials described as their involvement in illicit gambling activities. Billups was charged with participating in a conspiracy to fix high-stakes card games.
The NBA placed Billups and Rozier on leave following their arrests. Assistant coach Tiago Splitter is serving as Portland’s interim head coach.
Down 60-55 at the half, the Clippers outscored Portland 32-22 in the third quarter to take an 87-82 lead. Leonard, James Harden and Ivica Zubac each had nine points in the period.
Zubac finished with 21 points and eight rebounds. Harden had 20 points and 13 assists — along with seven turnovers. John Collins scored 16 points.
The Clippers improved to 2-1, following an opening loss at Utah and home victory over Phoenix. The Clippers are 19-2 against Portland since the start of the 2019-20 season.
Deni Avdija led the Trail Blazers with 23 points. Jrue Holiday had 21, Shaedon Sharpe 19 and Jerami Grant 17.
Portland played its first road game of the season. It opened with a loss to Minnesota under Billups, then beat Golden State.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is set to rule for the first time on whether the president has the power to deploy troops in American cities over the objections of local and state officials.
A decision could come at any time.
And even a one-line order siding with President Trump would send the message that he is free to use the military to carry out his orders — and in particular, in Democratic-controlled cities and states.
Trump administration lawyers filed an emergency appeal last week asking the court to reverse judges in Chicago who blocked the deployment of the National Guard there.
The Chicago-based judges said Trump exaggerated the threat faced by federal immigration agents and had equated “protests with riots.”
Trump administration lawyers, however, said these judges had no authority to second-guess the president. The power to deploy the National Guard “is committed to his exclusive discretion by law,” they asserted in their appeal in Trump vs. Illinois.
That broad claim of executive power might win favor with the court’s conservatives.
Administration lawyers told the court that the National Guard would “defend federal personnel, property, and functions in the face of ongoing violence” in response to aggressive immigration enforcement, but it would not carry out ordinary policing.
Yet Trump has repeatedly threatened to send U.S. troops to San Francisco and other Democratic-led cities to carry out ordinary law enforcement.
When he sent 4,000 Guard members and 700 Marines to Los Angeles in June, their mission was to protect federal buildings from protesters. But state officials said troops went beyond that and were used to carry out a show in force in MacArthur Park in July.
Newsom, Bonta warn of dangers
That’s why legal experts and Democratic officials are sounding an alarm.
“Trump v. Illinois is a make-or-break moment for this court,” said Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck, a frequent critic of the court’s pro-Trump emergency orders. “For the Supreme Court to issue a ruling that allows the president to send troops into our cities based upon contrived (or even government-provoked) facts … would be a terrible precedent for the court to set not just for what it would allow President Trump to do now but for even more grossly tyrannical conduct.”
“On June 7, for the first time in our nation’s history, the President invoked [the Militia Act of 1903] to federalize a State’s National Guard over the objections of the State’s Governor. Since that time, it has become clear that the federal government’s actions in Southern California earlier this summer were just the opening salvo in an effort to transform the role of the military in American society,” their brief said.
“At no prior point in our history has the President used the military this way: as his own personal police force, to be deployed for whatever law enforcement missions he deems appropriate. … What the federal government seeks is a standing army, drawn from state militias, deployed at the direction of the President on a nationwide basis, for civilian law enforcement purposes, for an indefinite period of time.”
Conservatives cite civil rights examples
Conservatives counter that Trump is seeking to enforce federal law in the face of strong resistance and non-cooperation at times from local officials.
“Portland and Chicago have seen violent protests outside of federal buildings, attacks on ICE and DHS agents, and organized efforts to block the enforcement of immigration law,” said UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo. “Although local officials have raised cries of a federal ‘occupation’ and ‘dictatorship,’ the Constitution places on the president the duty to ‘take care that the laws are faithfully executed.’”
He noted that presidents in the past “used these same authorities to desegregate southern schools in the 1950s after Brown v. Board of Education and to protect civil rights protesters in the 1960s. Those who cheer those interventions cannot now deny the same constitutional authority when it is exercised by a president they oppose,” he said.
The legal battle so far has sidestepped Trump’s broadest claims of unchecked power, but focused instead on whether he is acting in line with the laws adopted by Congress.
The Constitution gives Congress the power “to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel Invasions.”
Beginning in 1903, Congress said that “the President may call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary” if he faces “danger of invasion by a foreign nation … danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States or the president is unable to execute the laws of the United States.”
While Trump administration lawyers claim he faces a “rebellion,” the legal dispute has focused on whether he is “unable to execute the laws.”
Lower courts have blocked deployments
Federal district judges in Portland and Chicago blocked Trump’s deployments after ruling that protesters had not prevented U.S. immigration agents from doing their jobs.
Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, described the administration’s description of “war-ravaged” Portland as “untethered to the facts.”
In Chicago, Judge April Perry, a Biden appointee, said that “political opposition is not rebellion.”
But the two appeals courts — the 9th Circuit in San Francisco and the 7th Circuit in Chicago — handed down opposite decisions.
A panel of the 9th Circuit said judges must defer to the president’s assessment of the danger faced by immigration agents. Applying that standard, the appeals court by a 2-1 vote said the National Guard deployment in Portland may proceed.
But a panel of the 7th Circuit in Chicago agreed with Perry.
“The facts do not justify the President’s actions in Illinois, even giving substantial deference to his assertions,” they said in a 3-0 ruling last week. “Federal facilities, including the processing facility in Broadview, have remained open despite regular demonstrations against the administration’s immigration policies. And though federal officers have encountered sporadic disruptions, they have been quickly contained by local, state, and federal authorities.”
Attorneys for Illinois and Chicago agreed and urged the court to turn down Trump’s appeal.
“There is no basis for claiming the President is ‘unable’ to ‘execute’ federal law in Illinois,” they said. “Federal facilities in Illinois remain open, the individuals who have violated the law by attacking federal authorities have been arrested, and enforcement of immigration law in Illinois has only increased in recent weeks.”
U.S. Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer, shown at his confirmation hearing in February, said the federal judges in Chicago had no legal or factual basis to block the Trump administration’s deployment of troops.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Trump’s Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer presented a dramatically different account in his appeal.
“On October 4, the President determined that the situation in Chicago had become unsustainably dangerous for federal agents, who now risk their lives to carry out basic law enforcement functions,” he wrote. “The President deployed the federalized Guardsmen to Illinois to protect federal officers and federal property.”
He disputed the idea that agents faced just peaceful protests.
“On multiple occasions, federal officers have also been hit and punched by protestors at the Broadview facility. The physical altercations became more significant and the clashes more violent as the size of the crowds swelled throughout September,” Sauer wrote. “Rioters have targeted federal officers with fireworks and have thrown bottles, rocks, and tear gas at them. More than 30 [DHS] officers have been injured during the assaults on federal law enforcement at the Broadview facility alone, resulting in multiple hospitalizations.”
He said the judges in Chicago had no legal or factual basis to block the deployment, and he urged the court to cast aside their rulings.
A National Basketball Association player and coach are among dozens of people charged in two investigations centred on illegal sports betting and mafia-linked poker games, the FBI has announced.
Miami Heat player Terry Rozier was among six people arrested over alleged betting irregularities, including other players who may have faked injuries.
Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups is one of 31 people charged in a separate illegal poker game case involving former players and organised crime figures.
Rozier’s lawyer denied the allegations to CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner, saying: “Terry is not a gambler, but he is not afraid of a fight, and he looks forward to winning this fight.”
In a statement, the NBA said that Rozier and Billups are being placed on immediate leave, as the association is reviewing the federal indictments.
“We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority,” the statement read.
US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Joseph Nocella Jr, said all defendants are innocent until proven guilty, but warned: “Your winning streak has ended. Your luck has run out.”
FBI Director Kash Patel called the arrests “extraordinary” and said there was a “coordinated takedown across 11 states”.
Prosecutors said the first case involved players and associates who allegedly used insider information to manipulate bets on major platforms.
Nocella called it “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalised”.
Seven NBA games between February 2023 and March 2024 have been identified as part of the case. Rozier is said to have been involved in one between the Charlotte Hornets and New Orleans Pelicans, when he was playing for the Hornets.
New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that on 23 March 2023, Rozier allegedly let others close to him know that he planned to leave a game early with a supposed injury.
Using that information, conspirators allegedly placed bets that paid out tens of thousands of dollars in profits, she said.
During the game, Rozier played roughly nine minutes and scored just five points because of a sore right foot, according to the official NBA match report.
Before that game, he averaged 35 minutes of playing time and about 21 points per game.
“As the NBA season tips off, his career is already benched, not for injury but for integrity,” Tisch said.
Rozier’s lawyer James Trusty said in a statement that prosecutors “appear to be taking the word of spectacularly in-credible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing. Terry was cleared by the NBA and these prosecutors revived that non-case.”
Trusty said he had been representing Rozier for more than a year and said prosecutors characterised Rozier as a subject, not a target, until they informed him FBI agents were arresting the player on Thursday morning.
Former NBA player Damon Jones was also arrested.
Jones is said to have been involved in two of the identified games – when the Los Angeles Lakers met the Milwaukee Bucks in February 2023, and a January 2024 game between the Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder.
The second case involves 31 defendants alleged to have participated in a scheme to rig illegal poker games and steal millions of dollars, backed by crime families.
The case involved 13 members and associates of the Bonanno, Genovese and Gambino crime families.
Nocella said the targeted victims were lured to play in games with former professional athletes, including Billups and Jones, in Las Vegas, Miami, Manhattan and the Hamptons.
Victims were “fleeced” out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game, he said.
He said defendants used “very sophisticated technology” like altered off-the-shelf shuffling machines that could read the cards. Some of the defendants used special contact lenses and eye glasses to read pre-marked cards, and an X-ray table that could read cards when they were face-down, he added.
Tisch said when people refused to pay, the organised crime families used threats and intimidation to get people to hand over the money.
The charges include robbery, extortion, wire fraud, bank fraud and illegal gambling.
The conspiracy cheated victims out of $7m (£5.2m), with one losing $1.8 million, officials said.
“This is only the tip of the iceberg,” Christopher Raia, the FBI assistant director of the New York field office, said, adding the FBI is working day and night to ensure members of mafia families “cannot continue to wreak havoc in our communities”.
Dissenting justice says decision ‘erodes core constitutional principles’ and risks violating freedom of expression.
Published On 20 Oct 202520 Oct 2025
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A United States court of appeals has ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump can move forward with plans to deploy soldiers to Portland, Oregon, despite the absence of any serious emergency and the objections of state and local officials.
The Monday ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court will allow the Trump administration to send 200 National Guard members to the Democrat-run city.
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“After considering the record at this preliminary stage, we conclude that it is likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority” when he federalised the state’s National Guard, the three-judge panel stated.
The Trump administration has deployed armed forces to Democrat-run cities across the country, along with aggressive immigration raids in which heavily-armed federal agents wearing masks have pulled people off the streets, demanding that they prove their legal status.
Many US citizens have also been swept up in those raids, during which civil liberty groups have accused immigration agents of operating based on racial profiling, and detaining people without cause.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) expressed disappointment in the court’s decision.
“As the founders emphasised, domestic deployment of troops should be reserved for rare, extreme emergencies as a last resort, but that is far from what the Trump administration is doing in Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, and DC,” Hina Shamsi, the director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement.
“The presence of troops in otherwise beautiful vibrant American cities erodes a sense of safety and undermines the core freedoms to assemble and voice dissent.”
The Trump administration has claimed that Portland is “war-ravaged” by protesters, who it says are blocking immigration enforcement measures, despite the absence of any serious crisis conditions in the city. Trump and his allies have often employed vague allegations of emergency conditions as a pretext for wielding extraordinary powers both at home and abroad.
Demonstrators have worn costumes while protesting outside of immigration facilities, sometimes donning dinosaur and frog outfits and blasting music. Federal agents have faced criticism of using excessive force against peaceful demonstrators.
“Given Portland protesters’ well-known penchant for wearing chicken suits, inflatable frog costumes, or nothing at all when expressing their disagreement with the methods employed by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], observers may be tempted to view the majority’s ruling, which accepts the government’s characterization of Portland as a war zone, as merely absurd,” Circuit Judge Susan Graber wrote after casting the dissenting vote on the panel’s ruling.
“But today’s decision is not merely absurd. It erodes core constitutional principles, including sovereign States’ control over their States’ militias and the people’s First Amendment rights to assemble and to object to the government’s policies and actions.”
Members of the National Guard hold long guns while patrolling outside the World War II Memorial along the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on August 27. On Monday, a federal appeals court reversed a temporary restraining order, allowing President Donald Trump to federalize and deploy the National Guard to Portland. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
Oct. 20 (UPI) — A federal appeals court Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to federalize and deploy the Oregon National Guard into what he is calling “war-ravaged” Portland.
Monday’s 2-1 ruling by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reverses a temporary restraining order that blocked the troops, as the administration challenges a lawsuit filed by Oregon and Portland officials. The case is still scheduled for trial on Oct. 29.
Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the deployment of 200 Oregon National Guard troops after the president called Portland a “war-ravaged” city and said the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices there were “under siege.”
Last week, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut extended two temporary restraining orders, saying the president could not federalize Oregon’s National Guard as, “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.” The Trump administration promptly appealed Immergut’s first restraining order to the Ninth Circuit.
“Even if the president may exaggerate the extent of the problem on social media, this does not change that other facts provide a colorable basis to support the statutory requirements,” Monday’s order read.
“Rather than reviewing the president’s determination with great deference, the district court substituted its own determination of the relevant facts and circumstances.”
At a hearing on Oct. 9, the 9th Circuit judges heard 20-minute arguments from Oregon attorneys and from the U.S. Department of Justice. Justice Department attorneys argued that the troops are needed to protect Portland’s ICE facility following protester clashes with federal agents. Oregon officials claimed the administration was exaggerating.
Portland is one of several cities where the Trump administration has deployed the National Guard. The administration has also deployed troops to Memphis, Tenn., and is working to deploy the National Guard to Chicago to curb crime and protect federal buildings, as ICE agents crack down on illegal immigration.
Trump said earlier this month he would be open to invoking the Insurrection Act, “if necessary” to deploy the National Guard.
Olivia Moultrie scored both goals in the Portland Thorns’ 2-0 victory over Angel City in Los Angeles.
With the win, the Thorns (10-8-7) clinched a league-record ninth consecutive playoff appearance.
Angel City (7-12-6) was already eliminated from playoff contention prior to kickoff at BMO Stadium. ACFC’s last postseason appearance came in 2023.
Moultrie got the Thorns off to the perfect start in the 23rd minute. The 20-year-old switched the ball between her feet to buy a yard of space and then unleashed a shot into the top corner from 21 yards out to make it 1-0.
After Sara Doorsoun fouled Reilyn Turner in the box, Moultrie stepped up from the penalty spot and coolly converted to make it 2-0 in the 60th. It was her eighth goal of the season.
Christen Press came off the bench for Angel City in the 60th, with Ali Riley entering in the 82nd. Both veteran players received a standing ovation from the home fans on their final appearance at home in Los Angeles. The veteran duo are set to retire at the end of season.
It’s almost a year into Trump 2.0 and MAGA has gone full “snowflake.”
You know the word, the one that for the past decade the right has wielded against liberals as the ultimate epithet — you know, because libs are supposedly feelings-obsessed, physically weak, morally delicate and whiny as all get out.
Because if you think, among other things, that Portland is “War ravaged” like Trump claims it is and the U.S. of A. has to send in the military, you truly are a snowflake.
It sure wasn’t the left that called for the firing of people who criticized one of their heroes in the wake of their tragic death. Or that revoked visas over it. Or cheered when a late-night talk show host was temporarily suspended after the FCC chairman threatened to punish his network, as Brendan Carr did to ABC when he told a podcaster Disney could mete out punishment to Jimmy Kimmel “the easy way or hard way.”
Which president complains any time someone doesn’t think they’re the greatest leader in human history? Threatens retribution against foes real and imagined every waking second? Whines like he’s a bottle of Chardonnay?
Trump even complained this week about a Time magazine cover photo that he proclaimed “may be the Worst of All Time.”
“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird!” the king of MAGA-dom wrote on Truth Social.
Here’s guessing he’d have complained a little less if the “something” floating on the top of his head looked like a really, super-big crown.
President Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One prior to departure from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Sunday.
(Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)
Watch out, Time magazine, Trump might send the Texas National Guard to your newsroom!
This is an administration that is forcing airports to run videos blaming the government shutdown on their opponents? What branch of the government just asked journalists to only publish preapproved information?
And always with the reacting to Democrat-led cities like Portland, Chicago and L.A. as if they’re Stalingrad during the siege.
Kristi Noem, Homeland Security secretary in August: “L.A. wouldn’t be standing today if President Trump hadn’t taken action then. That city would have burned down if left to the devices of the mayor and the governor of that state.”
Trump about Washington, D.C., over the summer as he issued an executive order to take over its police department in the wake of what he characterized as out-of-control crime: “It is a point of national disgrace that Washington, D.C., has a violent crime rate that is higher than some of the most dangerous places in the world.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to military brass he called in from across the world last month to declare the following: “No more beardos. The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.”
Welcome to our Snowflake Government. The way these people’s tough talk turns into waterworks at the slightest provocation, you’d think they were the ski slopes of Mt. Baldy come summertime.
Trump and his lackeys possess scary power and don’t hesitate to use it in the name of punishing enemies. But what betrays their inherent snowflake-ness is how much they cry about what they still don’t dominate and their continued use of brute force to try and subdue the slightest, well, slight.
The veritable pity party gnashes its teeth more and more as the months pass. Trump was so angry at the sight of people causing chaos over a relatively small area of downtown L.A. after mass raids swept Southern California in June — chaos that barely registered to what happens after a Dodgers World Series win — that he sent in the Marines.
His spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, keeps describing any nasty look or bad word thrown at migra agents as proof of them suffering a supposedly unprecedented level of assault despite never offering any concrete proof.
The Southland’s acting U.S. attorney, Bill Essayli, accused an LAPD spokesperson last week of leaking information to The Times after one of my colleagues asked him about … wait for it … an upcoming press conference.
No part of the government melts faster, however, than the agency with the apropos acronym of ICE.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and their fellow travelers across Homeland Security are Trump’s own Praetorian Guard, tasked with carrying out his deportation deluge. They’ve relished their months in the national spotlight cast by the federal government simultaneously as an unstoppable force and an immovable object. La migra continues to crash into neighborhoods and communities like a masked avalanche of tear gas and handcuffs, justice be damned.
Illinois State Police clash with demonstrators by the ICE facility in Broadview, Ill., as tensions rise over prolonged protests targeting federal ICE operations in Chicago on Oct. 10.
(Jacek Boczarski / Anadolu via Getty Images)
They’re firing pepper balls at the heads of Presbyterian priests outside detention facilities and tackling middle-aged reporters.
Border Patrol sector chief Gregory Bovino, who thinks he’s Napoleon with a crew cut and an Appalachian drawl, has accused protester Cole Sheridan of causing an unspecified groin injury even though the government couldn’t provide any video evidence during a preliminary court hearing earlier this month.
Agents have set off tear gas canisters without giving a heads-up to Chicago police. They’re detaining people without giving them a chance to prove their citizenship until hours later.
All this because — wah, wah! — Windy City residents haven’t welcomed la migra as liberators.
Bovino and his ICE buddies keep whimpering to Trump that they need the National Guard to back them up because they supposedly can’t do their job despite being the ones armed and masked up and backed by billions of dollars in new funds.
That’s why the government is now pushing tech giants to crack down on how activists are organizing. In the past two weeks, Apple has taken down apps that tracked actions by ICE agents and a Chicago Facebook group that was a clearinghouse for migra sightings at the request of the Department of Justice.
On X, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi bragged that she “will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement” despite offering no evidence whatsoever — because who needs facts in the face of Trump’s blizzard of lies?
Since the start of all this madness, I’ve seen the left offer a rejoinder to the snowflake charge: the slogan “ICE Melts,” usually accompanied by a drawing of the action at hand. It’s meant to inspire activists by reminding them that la migra is not nearly as mighty as the right makes them out to be.
That’s clever. But the danger of all these conservative snowflakes turning into a sopping mess the way they do over their perceived victimhood is that the resulting flood threatens to drown out a little thing we’d come to love over many, many, many years.
Illinois urged a judge Thursday to order the National Guard to stand down in the Chicago area, calling the deployment a constitutional crisis and suggesting the Trump administration gave no heed to the pending legal challenge when it sent troops overnight to an immigration enforcement building.
The government “plowed ahead anyway,” attorney Christopher Wells of the state attorney general office said. “Now, troops are here.”
Wells’ arguments opened an extraordinary hearing in federal court in Chicago. The city and the state, run by Democratic elected leaders, say President Trump has vastly exceeded his authority and ignored their pleas to keep the Guard off the streets.
Heavy public turnout at the downtown courthouse caused officials to open an overflow room with a video feed of the hearing. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson got a seat in a corner of the courtroom.
Feds say Guard won’t solve all crime
U.S. Justice Department lawyer Eric Hamilton said the Chicago area was rife with “tragic lawlessness.” He pointed to an incident last weekend in which a Border Patrol vehicle was boxed in and an agent shot a woman in response.
“Chicago is seeing a brazen new form of hostility from rioters targeting federal law enforcement,” Hamilton said. “They’re not protesters. There is enough that there is a danger of a rebellion here, which there is.”
He said some people were wearing gas masks, a suggestion they were poised for a fight, but U.S. District Judge April Perry countered it might be justified to avoid tear gas at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Broadview, outside Chicago.
“I, too, would wear a gas mask,” the judge said, “not because I’m trying to be violent but because I’m trying to protect myself.”
Hamilton also tried to narrow the issues. He said the Guard’s mission would be to protect federal properties and government law enforcers in the field — not “solving all of crime in Chicago.”
Guard on the ground at ICE site
Guard members from Texas and Illinois arrived this week at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, southwest of Chicago. All 500 are under the U.S. Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days.
Some Guard troops could be seen behind portable fences at the Broadview ICE building. It has been the site of occasional clashes between protesters and federal agents, but the scene was peaceful, with few people present.
Wells, the lawyer for Illinois, described the impact of Trump’s immigration crackdown in Chicago, noting that U.S. citizens have been temporarily detained. He acknowledged the “president does have the power, and he’s using that power.”
“But that power is not unlimited,” Wells added, referring to the Guard deployment. “And this court can check that power.”
Perry told the parties to return to court late Thursday afternoon.
Guard on court docket elsewhere
Also Thursday, a federal appeals court heard arguments over whether Trump had the authority to take control of 200 Oregon National Guard troops. The president had planned to deploy them in Portland, where there have been mostly small nightly protests outside an ICE building.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut on Sunday granted a temporary restraining order blocking the move. Trump had mobilized California troops for Portland just hours after the judge first blocked him from using Oregon’s Guard.
Two dozen other states with a Democratic attorney general or governor signed a court filing in support of the legal challenge by California and Oregon. Twenty others, led by Iowa, backed the Trump administration.
The nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act limits the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws. However, Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.
Troops used in other states
Trump previously sent troops to Los Angeles and Washington. In Memphis, Tenn., Mayor Paul Young said troops would begin patrolling Friday. Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee supports the role.
Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said she hoped the Guard would be used to direct traffic and have a presence in retail corridors, but not used for checkpoints or similar activities.
Davis said she doesn’t want Memphis to “feel like there is this over-militarization in our communities.”
The Trump administration’s aggressive use of the Guard was challenged this summer in California, which won and lost a series of court decisions while opposing the policy of putting troops in Los Angeles, where they protected federal buildings and immigration agents.
A judge in September said the deployment was illegal. By that point, just 300 of the thousands of troops sent there remained on the ground. The judge did not order them to leave. The government later took steps to send them to Oregon.
Fernando and Thanawala write for the Associated Press. AP writers Ed White in Detroit, Geoff Mulvihill in Philadelphia and Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tenn., contributed to this report.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals appears poised to recognize President Trump’s authority to send soldiers to Portland, Ore., with members of the court signaling receptiveness to an expansive new read of the president’s power to put boots on the ground in American cities.
A three-judge panel from the appellate court — including two members appointed by Trump during his first term — heard oral arguments Thursday after Oregon challenged the legality of the president’s order to deploy hundreds of soldiers to Portland. The administration claims the city has become lawless; Oregon officials argue Trump is manufacturing a crisis to justify calling in the National Guard.
While the court has not issued a decision, a ruling in Trump’s favor would mark a sharp rightward turn for the once-liberal circuit — and probably set up a Supreme Court showdown over why and how the U.S. military can be used domestically.
“I’m sort of trying to figure out how a district court of any nature is supposed to get in and question whether the president’s assessment of ‘executing the laws’ is right or wrong,” said Judge Ryan D. Nelson of Idaho Falls, Idaho, one of the two Trump appointees hearing the arguments.
“That’s an internal decision making, and whether there’s a ton of protests or low protests, they can still have an impact on his ability to execute the laws,” he said.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut of Portland, another Trump appointee, previously called the president’s justification for federalizing Oregon troops “simply untethered to the facts” in her temporary restraining on Oct. 4.
The facts about the situation on the ground in Portland were not in dispute at the hearing on Thursday. The city has remained mostly calm in recent months, with protesters occasionally engaging in brief skirmishes with authorities stationed outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building.
Instead, Nelson and Judge Bridget S. Bade of Phoenix, whom Trump once floated as a possible Supreme Court nominee, questioned how much the facts mattered.
“The president gets to direct his resources as he deems fit, and it seems a little counterintuitive to me that the city of Portland can come and say, ‘No you need to do it differently,’” Nelson said.
He also appeared to endorse the Department of Justice’s claim that “penalizing” the president for waiting until protests had calmed to deploy soldiers to quell them created a perverse incentive to act first and ask questions later.
“It just seems like such a tortured reading of the statute,” the judge said. He then referenced the first battle of the U.S. Civil War in 1861, saying, “I’m not sure even President Lincoln would be able to bring in forces when he did, because if he didn’t do it immediately after Fort Sumter, [Oregon’s] argument would be, ‘Oh, things are OK now.’”
Trump’s efforts to use troops to quell protests and support federal immigration operations have led to a growing tangle of legal challenges. The Portland deployment was halted by Immergut, who blocked Trump from federalizing Oregon troops. (A ruling from the same case issued the next day prevents already federalized troops from being deployed.)
In June, a different 9th Circuit panel also made up of two Trump appointees ruled that the president had broad — though not “unreviewable” — discretion to determine whether facts on the ground met the threshold for military response in Los Angeles. Thousands of federalized National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines were deployed over the summer amid widespread protests over immigration enforcement.
The June decision set precedent for how any future deployment in the circuit’s vast territory can be reviewed. It also sparked outrage, both among those who oppose armed soldiers patrolling American streets and those who support them.
Opponents argue repeated domestic deployments shred America’s social fabric and trample protest rights protected by the 1st Amendment. With soldiers called into action so far in Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago, many charge the administration is using the military for political purposes.
“The military should not be acting as a domestic police force in this country except in the most extreme circumstances,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “That set of circumstances is not present right now anywhere in the country, so this is an abuse of power — and a very dangerous one because of the precedent it sets.”
Supporters say the president has sole authority to determine the facts on the ground and if they warrant military intervention. They argue any check by the judicial branch is an illegal power grab, aimed at thwarting response to a legitimate and growing “invasion from within.”
“What they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles — they’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one,” Trump said in an address to military top brass last week. “That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”
The 9th Circuit agreed to rehear the Los Angeles case with an 11-member “en banc” panel in Pasadena on Oct. 22, signaling a schism among Trump’s own judges over the boundaries of the president’s power.
Still, Trump’s authority to call soldiers into American cities is only the first piece in a larger legal puzzle spread before the 9th Circuit, experts said.
What federalized troops are allowed to do once deployed is the subject of another court decision now under review. That case could determine whether soldiers are barred from assisting immigration raids, controlling crowds of protesters or any other form of civilian law enforcement.
Trump officials have maintained the president can wield the military as he sees fit — and that cities such as Portland and L.A. would be in danger if soldiers can’t come to the rescue.
“These are violent people, and if at any point we let down our guard, there is a serious risk of ongoing violence,” Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Eric McArthur said. “The president is entitled to say enough is enough and bring in the National Guard.”
WASHINGTON — Chicago is emerging as the latest testing ground for President Trump’s domestic deployment of military force as hundreds of National Guard troops were expected to descend on the city.
The president said Wednesday that Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson should be jailed for failing to support federal agents, and continued to paint a dark and violent picture of both Chicago and Portland, Ore., where Trump is trying to send federal troops but has so far been stonewalled by the courts.
“It’s so bad,” Trump said at the White House on Wednesday. “It’s so crazy. It’s like the movies … where you have these bombed-out cities and these bombed-out people. It’s worse than that. I don’t think they can make a movie as bad.”
Pritzker this week characterized Trump’s depiction of Chicago as “deranged” and untrue. Federal agents are making the community “less safe,” the governor said, noting that residents do not want “Donald Trump to occupy their communities” and that people of color are fearful of being profiled during immigration crackdowns.
Trump has taken issue with Democrats in Illinois and Oregon who are fighting his efforts, and has twice said this week that he is willing to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 if local leaders and the courts try to stop him. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller also contended this week that a court ruling blocking Trump’s deployments to Portland amounted to a “legal insurrection” as well as “an insurrection against the laws and Constitution of the United States.”
In a televised interview Monday, Miller was asked about his remarks and asked whether the administration would abide by court rulings that stop the deployment of troops to Illinois and Portland. Miller responded by saying the president has “plenary authority” before going silent midsentence — a moment that the host said may have been a technical issue.
“Plenary authority” is a legal term that indicates someone has limitless power.
The legality of deployments to Portland and Chicago will face scrutiny in two federal courts Thursday.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear an appeal by the Trump administration in the Portland matter. A Trump-appointed judge, Karin Immergut, found the White House had not only violated the law in activating the Oregon National Guard, but it also had further defied the law by attempting to circumvent her order, sending the California National Guard in its place.
That three-judge appellate panel consists of two Trump appointees and one Clinton appointee.
Meanwhile, in Illinois, U.S. District Judge April Perry declined Monday to block the deployment of National Guard members on an emergency basis, allowing a buildup of forces to proceed. She will hear arguments Thursday on the legality of the operation.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, one of Trump’s top political foes, has joined the fight against the president’s deployment efforts.
The Trump administration sent 14 members of California’s National Guard to Illinois to train troops from other states, according to court records filed Tuesday. Federal officials have also told California they intend to extend Trump’s federalization of 300 members of the state’s Guard through next year.
“Trump is going on a cross-country crusade to sow chaos and division,” Newsom said Wednesday. “His actions — and those of his Cabinet — are against our deeply held American values. He needs to stop this illegal charade now.”
In anticipation of the deployment, Pritzker warned that if the president’s efforts went unchecked, it would put the United States on a “the path to full-blown authoritarianism.”
The Democratic governor also said the president’s calls to jail him were “unhinged” and said Trump was a “wannabe dictator.”
“There is one thing I really want to say to Donald Trump: If you come for my people, you come through me. So come and get me,” Pritzker said in an interview with MSNBC.
As tensions grew in Chicago, Trump hosted an event at the White House to address how he intends to crack down on antifa, a nebulous left-wing anti-facist movement that he recently designated as a domestic terrorist organization.
At the event, the president said many of the people involved in the movement are active in Chicago and Portland — and he once again attacked the local and state leaders in both cities and states.
“You can say of Portland and you can say certainly of Chicago, it is not lawful what they are doing,” Trump said about the left-wing protests. “They are going to have to be very careful.”
Johnson, the mayor of Chicago, slammed Trump for saying he should be jailed for his actions.
“This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested,” Johnson posted on social media. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Pritzker continued to attack Trump’s efforts into the evening, accusing the president of “breaching the Constitution and breaking the law.”
“We need to stand up together and speak up,” the governor said on social media.
Times staff writer Melody Gutierrez in Sacramento contributed to this report.
No, a federal judge ruled, Trump cannot command the California National Guard to invade Portland, Ore. At the request of California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and others, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut broadened a temporary restraining order that had blocked Oregon’s National Guard from being used by the federal government. It now includes not just California’s troops but troops from any state. At least for the next two weeks.
It’s the kind of legal loss Trump should be used to it by now, especially when it comes to the Golden State. Since Trump 2.0 hit the White House this year with Project 2025 folded up in his back pocket, the state of California has sued the administration 42 times, literally about once a week.
While many of those cases are still pending, California is racking up a series of wins that restored more than $160 billion in funding and at least slowed down (and in some cases stopped) the steamrolling of civil rights on issues including birthright citizenship and immigration policy.
“We have won in 80% of the cases,” Bonta told me. “Whether it be a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order, and more and more now permanent final injunctions after the whole trial court case is done.”
I’ll take it. We all need some positive news. I don’t often write just about the good, but in these strange days, it’s helpful to have a reminder that the fight is always worth having when it comes to protecting our rights. And, despite the partisan Supreme Court, the reason that we are still holding on to democracy is because the system still works, albeit like a ’78 Chevy with the doors rusting off.
While Gov. Gavin Newsom has made himself the face of California’s fights against Trump, taking on a pugnacious and audacious attitude especially on social media, the day-in, day-out slugging in those battles is often done by Bonta and his team in courtrooms across the country.
It’s hard to recall, but months ago, Newsom called a special session of the Legislature to give Bonta a $25-million allowance to defend not just California but democracy. And in a moment when many of us fear that checks and balances promised in the Constitution have turned out to be little more than happy delusions, Bonta has a message: The courts are (mostly) holding and California’s lawyers aren’t just fighting, they’re winning.
“We can do things that governors can’t do,” Bonta said. “No role and no moment has been more important than this one.”
Bonta told me that he often hears that Trump is disregarding the courts, so “what’s the point of litigation at all? What’s the point of a court order at all? He’s just going to ignore them.”
But, he said, the administration has been following judges’ rulings — so far. While there have been instances, especially around deportations, that knock on the door of lawlessness, at least for California, Trump is “following all of our court orders,” Bonta said.
“We’re making a difference,” he said.
A few days ago, the U.S. Department of Education was forced to send out a final chunk of funds it had attempted to withhold from schools. Bonta, in a multistate lawsuit, successfully protected that money, which schools need this year to help migrant children and English learners, train teachers, buy new technology and pay for before- and after-school programs, among other uses.
That’s a permanent, final ruling — no appeals.
Another recent win saw California land a permanent injunction against the feds when it comes to stopping their payments for costs associated with state energy projects. That a win both for the climate and consumers, who benefit when we make energy more efficiently.
Last week, Bonta won another permanent injunction, blocking the Trump administration’s effort to tie grants related to homeland security to compliance with his immigration policies. Safety shouldn’t be tied to deportations, especially in California, where our immigrants are overwhelmingly law-abiding community members.
Those are just a few of Bonta’s victories. Of course, Trump and his minions aren’t happy about them. Stephen Miller, the shame of Santa Monica, seems to have especially lost his marbles over the National Guard ruling. On social media, Miller seems to be attacking the justice system, and attorneys general such as Bonta.
“There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country,” Miller wrote. “It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”
Never mind that the Oregon judge who issued the National Guard ruling is a Trump appointee.
“Their goal, I think, is to chill and pause and worry judges; to chill and pause and worry the press; to chill and pause and worry attorneys general who stand up for the rule of law and for democracy, who go to court and fight for what’s right and fight for the law,” Bonta said.
Bonta expects the administration, far from learning any lessons or harboring self-reflection during this mad dash toward autocracy, to continue full speed ahead.
“We’re going to see more, and we’re going to see it fast, and we’re going to see it escalate,” he said. “None of that is good, including putting military in American cities or, you know, Trump treating them like his royal guard instead of the National Guard.”
Even when the Trump administration loses, “they always have this like second move and maybe a third, where they are always trying to advance their agenda, even when they’ve been blocked by a court, even when they’ve been told that they’re acting unlawfully or unconstitutionally,” he said.
On Monday, Trump threatened to use the Insurrection Act to circumvent the court’s ruling on the National Guard, a massive escalation of his effort to militarize American cities.
But California remains on a winning streak, much to Trump’s dismay.
It’s my bet that as long as our judges continue to honor the rule of law, that streak will hold.
President Trump has often locked horns with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, with the once left-leaning court putting a persistent drag on his first-term agenda.
And now, even after remaking the bench with his own appointees, the president is still tangling with the West Coast’s federal appellate court — a situation poised to boil over as the circuit juggles multiple challenges to his use of the National Guard to police American streets.
“I appointed the judge and he goes like that — I wasn’t served well,” Trump told reporters Sunday, lashing out at U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut of Portland after she temporarily blocked the deployment federalized troops.
“To have a judge like that, that judge ought to be ashamed of himself,” Trump said, referring to Immergut, who is a woman.
The president has long railed against judges who rule against him, calling them “monsters,” “deranged,” and “radical” at various points in the past.
Trump has also occasionally sniped at conservative jurists, including U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, whom he called “disgraceful” after the court rejected his bid to overturn the 2020 election.
But this weekend’s spat marked a shift in his willingness to go after his own appointees — a turn experts say could become much sharper as his picks to the appellate bench test his ambition to put boots on the ground in major cities across the U.S.
“The fact that a pretty conservative judge ruled the way she did is an indication that some conservative judges would rule similarly,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University and a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute.
The 9th Circuit handed the administration an early victory in the troop fight this spring, finding that courts must give “a great level of deference” to the president to decide whether facts on the ground warrant military intervention.
That ruling is set to be reviewed by a larger appellate panel, and could ultimately be reversed. The circuit is also now set to review a September decision barring federalized troops in California from aiding in civilian law enforcement, as well as Immergut’s temporary restraining order blocking the deployment over the weekend.
In the meantime, the 9th Circuit’s June decision has served as a guidepost for states seeking to limit what Oregon called a “nationwide campaign to assimilate the military into civilian law enforcement.”
“That decision is binding, and it does require a substantial degree of deference on the factual issues,” Somin said. “[But] when what the president does is totally divorced from reality, that limit is breached.”
Immergut appeared to agree, saying in her ruling that circumstances in Portland this fall were significantly different than those in L.A. in the spring. While some earlier protests did turn violent, she wrote, recent pickets outside Portland’s ICE headquarters have featured lawn chairs and low energy.
“Violence elsewhere cannot support troop deployments here, and concern about hypothetical future conduct does not demonstrate a present inability to execute the laws using nonmilitary federal law enforcement,” the judge wrote, addressing the 9th Circuit decision.
“The President is certainly entitled ‘a great level of deference,’” Immergut continued. “But ‘a great level of deference’ is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground. … The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”
But exactly where the appellate court may draw the line on presidential fact-finding is tricky, experts said.
“How much deference is owed to the president? That’s something we’re all talking about,” said John C. Dehn, a professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.
Whether courts can review the president’s judgment at all is a matter that splits even some of the president’s most conservative judicial picks from his current justice department attorneys.
So far, Trump has relied on an esoteric subsection of the U.S. Code for the authority to send soldiers on immigration raids and to control crowds of protesters.
Dehn and others have characterized that reading of the code as semantic and divorced from its legal context.
“They’re looking at the words in a vacuum and arguing the broadest possible meaning they could can think of,” Dehn said. “The administration is not engaged in good faith statutory interpretation — they’re engaged in linguistic manipulation of these statues.”
Immegur agreed, quoting Supreme Court precedent saying “[i]nterpretation of a word or phrase depends upon reading the whole statutory text.”
For some conservative legal scholars, Trump appointees’ willingness to push back on repeated deployments could signal a limit — or a dangerous new escalation in the administration’s attacks on jurists who defy them.
“It’s obvious the administration is trying to do this on a bigger scale,” Somin said. “Ideally we would not rely on litigation alone to deal with it.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump rocked American politics at the outset of his first campaign when he first labeled his rivals as enemies of the American people. But the rhetoric of his top confidantes has grown more extreme in recent days.
Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff, declared over the weekend that “a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country” is fueling a historic national schism, “shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general.”
“The only remedy,” Miller said, “is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”
It was a maxim from an unelected presidential advisor who is already unleashing the federal government in unprecedented ways, overseeing the federalization of police forces and a sweeping deportation campaign challenging basic tenets of civil liberty.
Miller’s rhetoric comes amid a federal crackdown on Portland, Ore., where he says the president has unchecked authority to protect federal lives and property — and as another controversial Trump advisor harnesses an ongoing government shutdown as pretext for the mass firing of federal workers.
Russ Vought, the president’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, plays the grim reaper in an AI video shared by the president, featuring him roving Washington for bureaucrats to cut from the deep state during the shutdown.
His goal, Trump has said, is to specifically target Democrats.
As of Monday afternoon, it was unclear exactly how many federal workers or what federal agencies would be targeted.
“We don’t want to see people laid off, but unfortunately, if this shutdown continues layoffs are going to be an unfortunate consequence of that,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Levitt said during a news briefing.
‘A nation of Constitutional law’
Karin Immergut, a federal judge appointed by Trump, said this weekend that the administration’s justification for deploying California National Guard troops in Portland was “simply untethered to the facts.”
“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, chiding the Trump administration for attempting to circumvent a prior order from her against a federal deployment to the city.
“This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition,” she added: “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”
The administration is expected to appeal the judge’s decision, Leavitt said, while calling the judge’s ruling “untethered in reality and in the law.”
“We’re very confident in the president’s legal authority to do this, and we are very confident we will win on the merits of the law,” Leavitt said.
If the courts were to side with the administration, Leavitt said local leaders — most of whom are Democrats — should not be concerned about the possibility of long-term plans to have their cities occupied by the military.
“Why should they be concerned about the federal government offering help to make their cities a safer place?” Leavitt said. “They should be concerned about the fact that people in their cities right now are being gunned down every single night and the president, all he is trying to do, is fix it.”
Moments later, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that though he does not believe it is necessary yet, he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act “if courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up.”
“Sure, I’d do that,” Trump said. “We have to make sure that our cities are safe.”
The Insurrection Act gives the president sweeping emergency power to deploy military forces within the United States if the president deems it is needed to quell civil unrest. The last time this occurred was in 1992, when California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush to send federal troops to help stop the Los Angeles riots that occurred after police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King.
Subsequent posts from Miller on social media over the weekend escalated the stakes to existential heights, accusing Democrats of allying themselves with “domestic terrorists” seeking to overturn the will of the people reflected in Trump’s election win last year.
On Monday, in an interview with CNN, Miller suggested that the administration would continue working to sidestep Immergut’s orders.
“The administration will abide by the ruling insofar as it affects the covered parties,” he said, “but there are also many options the president has to deploy federal resources under the U.S. military to Portland.”
Other Republicans have used similar rhetoric since the slaying of Charlie Kirk, a conservative youth activist, in Utah last month.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) wrote that posts from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office have reached “the threshold of domestic terrorism,” after the Democratic governor referred to Miller on social media as a fascist. And Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) said Monday that Democrats demanding an extension of healthcare benefits as a condition for reopening the government were equivalent to terrorists.
“I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Fine told Newsmax, “and what we’ve learned in whether it’s dealing with Muslim terrorists or Democrats, you’ve gotta stand and you’ve gotta do the right thing.”
Investigating donor networks
Republicans’ keenness to label Democrats as terrorists comes two weeks after Trump signed an executive order declaring a left-wing antifascist movement, known as antifa, as a “domestic terrorist organization” — a designation that does not exist under U.S. law.
The order, which opened a new front in Trump’s battle against his political foes, also threatened to investigate and prosecute individuals who funded “any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of antifa.”
Leavitt told reporters Monday that the administration is “aggressively” looking into who is financially backing these operations.
Trump has floated the possibility of going after people such as George Soros, a billionaire who has supported many left-leaning causes around the world.
“If you look at Soros, he is at the top of everything,” Trump said during an Oval Office appearance last month.
The White House has not yet made public any details about a formal investigation into donors, but Leavitt said the administration’s efforts are underway.
“We will continue to get to the bottom of who is funding these organizations and this organized anarchy against our country and our government,” Leavitt said. “We are committed to uncovering it.”
CHICAGO — Illinois and Chicago filed a lawsuit Monday aiming to stop President Trump’s administration from sending hundreds of National Guard troops to the city, just as troops prepared to deploy and hours after a federal judge blocked troops from being sent to Portland, Oregon.
The quickly unfolding developments come as the administration portrays the Democrat-led cities as war-ravaged and lawless and amid Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Officials in both cities have disputed the president’s characterizations, saying military intervention isn’t needed and it’s federal involvement that’s inflaming the situation.
The legal challenge comes after Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said some 300 of the state’s guard troops were to be federalized and deployed to the nation’s third-largest city, along with 400 others from Texas.
The lawsuit alleges that “these advances in President Trump’s long-declared ‘War’ on Chicago and Illinois are unlawful and dangerous.”
“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the lawsuit says.
Pritzker said the potential deployment amounted to “Trump’s invasion” and called on Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to block it. Abbott pushed back and said the crackdown was needed to protect federal workers who are in the city as part of the president’s increased immigration enforcement.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed in a weekend statement that Trump authorized using Illinois National Guard members, citing what she called “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” that local leaders have not quelled.
In Chicago, the sight of armed Border Patrol agents making arrests near famous landmarks amplified concerns from residents already uneasy after an immigration crackdown that began last month. Agents have targeted immigrant-heavy and largely Latino areas.
Protesters have frequently rallied near an immigration facility outside the city, and federal officials reported the arrests of 13 protesters on Friday near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview.
The Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that federal agents shot a woman Saturday morning on the southwest side of Chicago. A department statement said it happened after Border Patrol agents patrolling the area “were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.”
No law enforcement officers were seriously injured, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.
In Portland, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut granted a temporary restraining order sought by Oregon and California to block the deployment of guard troops from those states to the city.
There has been a sustained and low-level protest outside the Portland ICE facility, but it’s been less disruptive than the downtown clashes of 2020 when demonstrations erupted after George Floyd’s killing.
Immergut, a first-term Trump appointee, seemed incredulous that the president moved to send National Guard troops to Oregon from neighboring California and then from Texas on Sunday.
“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she said. “Why is this appropriate?”
Local officials have suggested that many of the president’s claims and social media posts about Portland appear to rely on images from 2020. Under a new mayor, the city has reduced crime, and downtown has seen fewer homeless encampments and increased foot traffic.
Most violent crime around the U.S. has actually declined in recent years, including in Portland, where a recent report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association found that homicides from January through June decreased by 51% this year compared to the same period in 2024.
Since the start of his second term, Trump has sent or talked about sending troops to 10 cities, including Baltimore; Memphis, Tennessee; the District of Columbia; New Orleans; and the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
A federal judge in September said the administration “willfully” broke federal law by deploying guard troops to Los Angeles over protests about immigration raids.
Members of the National Guard patrol along the Tidal Basin on the National Mall in Washington, DC., in August. The Trump administration ordered 200 hundred soldiers to Portland which was blocked by a court order. File photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
Oct. 5 (UPI) — The Justice Department has appealed a ruling by a lower court judge blocking the mobilization of 200 National Guard troops to Portland.
Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsome called the Trump administration’s move to send National Guard troops to Portland an abuse of law and power.
“The Trump administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words – ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents.
Hundreds of protestors marched at the Portland Immigration and Customs Enforcement office Saturday, the latest in a series of demonstrations in the city since the Trump administration announced it would deploy the troops.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., criticized President Donald Trump in a social media post referring to the court’s order to block the deployment that said Trump’s “determination is simply untethered from the facts.”
A White House spokesperson said that Trump “exercised his authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement.”
PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard in Portland, ruling Saturday in a lawsuit brought by the state and city.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut issued the order pending further arguments in the case. She said that the relatively small protests the city has seen did not justify the use of federalized forces and that allowing the deployment could harm Oregon’s state sovereignty.
“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.”
State and city officials sued to stop the deployment last week, one day after the Trump administration announced that 200 Oregon National Guard troops would be federalized to protect federal buildings. The president called the city “war-ravaged.”
Oregon officials said that characterization was ludicrous. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in the city has been the site of nightly protests that typically drew a couple dozen people in recent weeks before the deployment was announced.
Generally speaking the president is allowed “a great level of deference” to federalize National Guard troops in situations where regular law enforcement forces are not able to execute the laws of the United States, the judge said, but that has not been the case in Portland.
Plaintiffs were able to show that the demonstrations at the immigration building were not significantly violent or disruptive ahead of the president’s order, the judge wrote, and “overall, the protests were small and uneventful.”
“The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” Immergut wrote.
After the ruling, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said that “President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement — we expect to be vindicated by a higher court.”
Trump has deployed or threatened to deploy troops in several U.S. cities, particularly ones led by Democrats, including Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and Memphis, Tenn. Speaking Tuesday to U.S. military leaders in Virginia, he proposed using cities as training grounds for the armed forces, alarming many military analysts.
Last month a federal judge ruled that the president’s deployment of some 4,700 National Guard soldiers and Marines in Los Angeles this year was illegal, but he allowed the 300 who remain in the city to stay as long as they do not enforce civilian laws. The Trump administration appealed, and an appellate panel has put the lower court’s block on hold while it moves forward.
The Portland protests have been limited to a one-block area in a city that covers about 145 square miles and has about 636,000 residents.
The protests grew somewhat following the Sept. 28 announcement of the Guard deployment. The Portland Police Bureau, which has said it does not participate in immigration enforcement and intervenes in the protests only if there is vandalism or criminal activity, arrested two people on assault charges. A peaceful march earlier that day drew thousands to downtown and saw no arrests, police said.
On Saturday, before the ruling was released, roughly 400 people marched to the ICE facility. The crowd included people of all ages and races, families with children and older people using walkers. Federal agents responded with chemical crowd-control munitions, including tear gas canisters and less-lethal guns that sprayed pepper balls. At least six people were arrested as the protesters reached the ICE building.
During his first term, Trump sent federal officers to Portland over the objections of local and state leaders in 2020 during long-running racial justice protests after George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. The administration sent hundreds of agents for the stated purpose of protecting the federal courthouse and other federal property from vandalism.
That deployment antagonized demonstrators and prompted nightly clashes. Federal officers fired rubber bullets and used tear gas.
Viral videos captured federal officers arresting people and hustling them into unmarked vehicles. A report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found that while the federal government had legal authority to deploy the officers, many of them lacked the training and equipment necessary for the mission.
The government agreed this year to settle an excessive-force lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union by compensating several plaintiffs for their injuries.
Rush and Boone write for the Associated Press and reported from Portland and Boise, Idaho, respectively. AP writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Five years after protests roiled Portland, Oregon, the city known for its history of civil disobedience is again at the center of a political maelstrom as it braces for the arrival of federal troops being deployed by President Donald Trump.
Months of demonstrations outside Portland’s immigration detention facility have escalated after conservative influencer Nick Sortor was arrested late Thursday on a disorderly conduct charge by Portland Police.
On Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the agency would send additional federal agents. She also said the Justice Department was launching a civil rights investigation into the circumstances surrounding Sortor’s arrest, and whether Portland Police engage in viewpoint discrimination.
Meanwhile, a federal judge heard arguments Friday — but did not immediately rule — on whether to temporarily block Trump’s call-up of 200 Oregon National Guard members to protect the ICE facility and other federal buildings.
The escalation of federal law enforcement in Portland, population 636,000 and Oregon’s largest city, follows similar crackdowns to combat crime in other cities, including Chicago, Baltimore and Memphis. He deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles over the summer and as part of his law enforcement takeover in Washington, D.C.
A conservative influencer arrested in Portland
Sortor, 27, who’s a regular guest on Fox News and whose X profile has more than 1 million followers, was arrested Thursday night with two other people outside the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. He is set to be arraigned on Monday.
What exactly led up to the arrests was not immediately clear. Portland police said in a news release that officers observed two men fighting and one of the men was knocked to the ground. Neither of the men wanted to file a police report. Police moved in about three hours later, as fights continued to break out, and arrested Sorter and two others.
All three were charged with second-degree disorderly conduct. Sorter was released Friday on his own recognizance, according to Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office’s online records. An email seeking comment from Sortor sent Friday went unanswered and no one answered phone numbers listed for him.
In a post on X on Friday morning, Sortor said his arrest proved that Portland Police are corrupt and controlled by “vioIent Antifa thugs who terrorize the streets.”
“You thought arresting me would make me shut up and go away,” he wrote.
Sortor also said that Attorney General Pam Bondi had ordered an investigation into the circumstances of his arrest and of the Portland Police Bureau.
A history of Portland protests led to this moment
Portland famously erupted in more than 100 days of sustained, nightly protests in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter movement. In his first term, Trump sent federal law enforcement to the city to protect the U.S. District Courthouse in the heart of Portland after protests attracted thousands of people following George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police.
The presence of the federal agents further inflamed the situation, with federal officers repeatedly firing rubber bullets and teargassing protestors. Viral videos captured militarized federal officers, often unidentified, arresting people and hustling them into unmarked vehicles.
At the same time, Portland police were unable to keep ahead of splinter groups of black-clad protesters who broke off and roamed the downtown area, at times breaking windows, spraying graffiti and setting small fires in moments that were also captured on video and shared widely on social media.
A report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found that while the federal government had legal authority to deploy the officers, many of them lacked the training and equipment needed to carry out the mission.
The tensions reached a peak in September 2020 when a self-identified member of the far-left anti-fascist movement fatally shot 39-year-old Aaron “Jay” Danielson in the chest. Danielson and a friend were seen heading downtown to protect a flag-waving caravan of Trump supporters shortly before the shooting.
The shooter, Michael Forest Reinoehl, was himself later shot and killed when he pulled a gun as a federal task force attempted to apprehend him near Lacey, Washington.
A different context for today’s protests
The situation in Portland is very different now.
There’s been a sustained and low-level protest outside the Portland ICE facility — far from the downtown clashes of 2020 — since Trump took office in January. Those protests flared in June, during the national protests surrounding Trump’s military parade, but have rarely attracted more than a few dozen people in the past two months.
Trump has once more turned his attention to the city, calling Portland “war ravaged,” and a “war zone” that is “burning down” and like “living in hell.” But local officials have suggested that many of his claims and social media posts appear to rely on images from 2020. Under a new mayor, the city has reduced crime, and the downtown has seen a decrease in homeless encampments and increased foot traffic.
Most violent crime around the country has actually declined in recent years, including in Portland, where a recent report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association found that homicides from January through June decreased by 51% this year compared to the same period in 2024.
City leaders have urged restraint and told residents not to “take the bait” this week after the announcement that the National Guard would be sent to Portland.
Oregon seeks to block National Guard deployment by Trump
On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Karin J. Immergut heard arguments on whether to block the deployment of National Guard troops in Portland, where they would defend federal buildings such as the ICE facility from vandalism.
Oregon sued to stop the deployment on Sept. 28 after Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek failed to convince Trump to call off the deployment in a 10-minute phone call on Sept. 27.
Immergut did not immediately issue a ruling Friday after a short hearing and said she would issue an order later that day or over the weekend.
Meanwhile, the National Guard troops — from communities not too far from Portland — were training on the Oregon Coast in anticipation of deployment.
Thursday’s arrest of Sortor, however, likely means more federal law enforcement presence in Portland.
In an X post, which reposted a video from the protest and a photo of Sortor being detained, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said there would be an immediate increase in federal resources to the city with enhanced Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement resources.
“This violence will end under @POTUS Trump,” McLaughlin wrote.
PORTLAND, Ore. — There is a rhetorical battle raging here in this heavily Democratic city, known for its delicious coffee, plethora of fancy restaurants, bespoke doughnuts and also for its small faction of black-clad activists.
It started Saturday when President Trump suddenly announced that he was sending the National Guard to “war-ravaged” Portland — where a small group of demonstrators have been staging a monthslong protest at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building south of downtown.
Oregon officials have pushed back forcefully, flooding their own social media with images of colorful cafe tables, sun-drenched farmers markets, rose gardens in full bloom and parks bursting with children, families and frolicking dogs. Officials would prefer the city be known for its Portlandia vibe, and are begging residents to stay peaceful and not give the Trump administration a protest spectacle.
A protester waves to Department of Homeland Security officials as they walk to the gates of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility after inspecting an area outside in Portland, Ore.
(Jenny Kane / Associated Press)
“There is no need or legal justification for military troops,” Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has said, over and over again, on her Instagram and in texts to President Trump that have been released publicly. Officials have gone to court seeking an order to stop the deployment, with a hearing set for Friday.
But the president seems resolute. In a Tuesday speech before a gathering of generals and admirals, he sketched out a controversial vision of dispatching troops to Democratic cities “as training grounds for our military” to combat an “invasion from within.” He described Portland as “a nightmare” that “looks like a warzone … like World War II.”
“The Radical Left’s reign of terror in Portland ends now,” a White House press release read, “with President Donald J. Trump mobilizing federal resources to stopAntifa-led hellfire in its tracks.”
Trump’s targeting of Portland comes after he deployed troops to Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, and threatened to do so elsewhere. The president says he is delivering on campaign pledges to restore public safety, but detractors say he’s attempting to intimidate and provoke Democratic strongholds, while distracting the nation from his various controversies.
As they wait to see whether and when the National Guard will arrive, city residents this week reacted with a mixture of rage, bafflement and sorrow.
A man rests under a public art sculpture in downtown Portland, Ore.
(Richard Darbonne / For The Times)
Many acknowledged that Portland has problems: Homelessness and open drug abuse are endemic, and encampments crowd some sidewalks. The city’s downtown has never recovered from pandemic closures and rioting that took place during George Floyd protests in 2020.
More recently, Intel — one of Oregon’s largest private employers — announced it was laying off 2,400 employees in a county just west of Portland. Like Los Angeles and many other cities, Portland has seen a big drop in tourism this year, a trend that city leaders say is not helped by Trump’s military interventions.
“We need federal help to renew our infrastructure, and build affordable housing, to help clean our rivers and plant trees,” said Portland Mayor Keith Wilson on his social media. “Instead of help, they’re sending armored vehicles and masked men.”
All across the city this week, residents echoed similar themes.
“Nothing is happening here. This is a gorgeous, peaceful city,” said Hannah O’Malley, who was snacking on french fries at a table with a view of the Willamette River outside the Portland Sports Bar and Grill.
Patrons are reflected in the window at Honey Pearl Cafe PDX in downtown Portland.
(Richard Darbonne / For The Times)
The restaurant was just a few blocks from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building where the ongoing demonstration has become the latest focus of the president’s ire against the city.
A small group of people — a number of them women in their 60s and 70s with gray braids and top-of-the-line rain jackets — have been congregating here for months to protest the federal immigration crackdown.
In June, there were several clashes with law enforcement at the site. Police declared a riot one night, and on another night made several arrests outside the facility, including one person accused of choking a police officer. On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that they had arrested “four criminal illegal aliens” who allegedly conducted laser strikes on a Border Patrol helicopter “in an attempt to temporarily blind the pilot.”
But day in and day out, the protests have been largely peaceful and fairly small and nothing the city’s police force can’t handle, according to city officials and the protesters themselves.
On Monday afternoon, a group of about 40 people including grandmothers, parents and their children, and a man in a chicken costume, held flowers and signs. A few yelled abuse through a metal gate at ICE officers standing in the driveway.
People protest outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 28 in Portland, Ore.
(Jenny Kane / Associated Press)
“We’re so scary,” joked Kat Barnard, 67, a retired accountant for nonprofits who said she began protesting a few months ago, fitting it in between caring for her grandson. She added that she has found a sense of community while standing against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. “I’ve met so many people,” she said. “It’s just beautiful. It makes me happy.”
A few miles away, in the cafe at the city’s famed bookstore, Powell’s Books, a trio of retired friends bemoaned their beloved city’s negative image.
“This is the most peaceful, kind community I’ve ever lived in” said Lynne Avril, 74, who moved to Portland from Phoenix a few years ago. Avril, a retired illustrator who penned the artwork for the young Amelia Bedelia books, said she routinely walks home alone late at night through the city’s darkened streets, and feels perfectly safe doing so.
The president “wants another spectacle,” added Avril’s friend, Signa Schuster, 73, a retired estate manager.
“That’s what we’re afraid of,” answered Avril.
“There’s no problem here,” added Annie Olsen, 72, a retired federal worker. “It’s all performative and stupid.”
Still, the women said, they are keenly aware that their beloved city has a negative reputation nationally. Avril said that when she told friends in Phoenix that she had decided to move to Portland, “People were like: ‘Why would you move here [with] all the violence?’”
Olsen sighed and nodded. “So much misinformation,” she said.
In the front lobby of the famed bookstore, the local bestseller lists provided a window into many residents’ concerns. Two books on authoritarianism and censorship — George Orwell’s “1984” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” — were on the shelves. Over in nonfiction, it was the same story, with “How Fascism Works” and “On Tyranny” both making appearances.
The Willamette River runs through downtown Portland, Ore.
(Richard Darbonne / For The Times)
But outside, the sky was blue and bright despite the rain in the forecast and many residents were doing what Portlanders do with an unexpected gift from the weather gods: They were jogging and biking along the Willamette River, and sitting in outdoor cafes sipping their city’s famous coffee and nibbling on buttery pastries.
“Trump is unhinged,” said Shannon O’Connor, 57. She said that Portland has problems for sure — “homelessness, fentanyl, a huge drug problem” — but unrest is not among them.
Sprawled on a sidewalk near a freeway on-ramp, a man calling himself “Rabbit” was panhandling for money accompanied by his two beagle-pit bull mixes, Pooh Bear and Piglet.
Rabbit, 48, said he hadn’t heard of the president’s plan to send in the National Guard, but didn’t think it was necessary. He had come to Portland two years ago “to get away from all the craziness,” he said, and found it to be safe. “I haven’t been threatened yet,” he said, then knocked on wood.
Many residents said they think the president may be confusing what is happening in Portland now with a period in 2020 in which the city was briefly convulsed over Black Live Matter protests.
“We had a lot of trouble then,” said a woman who asked to be referred to only as “Sue” for fear of being doxed. “Nothing like that now.” A lifelong Portlander, she is retired and among those who have been demonstrating at the ICE facility south of downtown.
She and other residents said they have noticed that clips of the riots and other violence from 2020 have recently been recirculating on social media and even some cable news shows.
“Either he is mistaken or it is part of his propaganda,” she said of the president’s portrayal of Portland, adding that it makes her “very sad. I’ve never protested until this go-around. But we have to do something.”
As afternoon turned to evening Tuesday, the blue skies over the city gave way to clouds and drizzle. The parks and outdoor cafes emptied out.
As night fell, the retired women and children who had been protesting outside the ICE facility went home, and more and more younger people began to take their places.
By 10 p.m., law enforcement was massed on the roof of the ICE building in tactical gear. Black-clad protesters — watched over by local television reporters and some independent media — played cat and mouse with the officers, stepping toward the building only to be repelled by rounds of pepper balls.
A 39-year-old man, who asked to be called “Mushu” and who had only his eyes visible amid his black garb, stood on the corner across the street, gesturing to the independent media livestreaming the protests. “They are showing that hell that is Portland,” he said, his voice dripping with irony.
About the same time, Katie Daviscourt, a reporter with the Post Millennial, posted on X that she had been “assaulted by an Antifa agitator.” She also tweeted that “the suspect escaped into the Antifa safe house.”
A few minutes later, a group of officers burst out of a van and appeared to detain one of the protesters. Then the officers dispersed, and the standoff resumed.
Around the corner, a couple with gray hair sporting sleek rain jackets walked their little dog along the street. If they were concerned about the made-for-video drama that was playing out a few yards away, they didn’t show it. They just continued to walk their dog.
On Wednesday morning, the president weighed in again, writing on Truth Social, “Conditions continue to deteriorate into lawless mayhem.”
WASHINGTON — Two hundred members of the Oregon National Guard are being placed under federal control and deployed within the state, a move the Trump administration says is needed to protect immigration enforcement officers and government facilities, according to a Defense Department memo received by state leaders on Sunday.
The deployment is being made over the objections of state leaders and is similar to one in June in Los Angeles, where protesters demonstrated against federal immigration raids, though on a much smaller scale.
There was no immediate comment from the White House. Multiple Pentagon officials were contacted, but none would confirm or deny the authenticity of the memo.
President Trump had announced Saturday that he would send troops to Portland. The state’s governor, Democrat Tina Kotek, said Sunday that she objected to the deployment in a conversation with the president.
“Oregon is our home — not a military target,” she said in a statement.
Dan Rayfield, the state attorney general, said he was filing a federal lawsuit arguing that Trump was overstepping his authority.
“What we’re seeing is not about public safety,” he said. “It’s about the president flexing political muscle under the guise of law and order, chasing a media hit at the expense of our community.”
The Pentagon memo provided by Oregon leaders drew a direct comparison between the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops to Los Angeles and the proposed deployment to the state, adding, “This memorandum further implements the President’s direction.”
While the memorandum does not specifically cite Portland as the target of the proposed deployment, Trump, in a social media post Saturday, said he directed the Pentagon, at the request of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, “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.”
“I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary,” Trump added.
Unlike in Los Angeles, it does not appear that Trump or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are currently directing the deployment of active-duty troops to the state. The Trump administration deployed about 700 active-duty Marines to Los Angeles, who were withdrawn about a month later.
The action also would be far less than Trump’s deployment to Washington, D.C., where more than 1,000 National Guard troops, including units from other states, have patrolled the streets for weeks. He also has been suggesting that he will send troops into Chicago, but so far has not done so.
Megerian and Toropin write for the Associated Press.
