Judge blocks Trump from sending National Guard troops to Portland.

Trump-appointed judge finds no basis for National Guard deployment.

Over the weekend, we saw a flurry of legal activity, as a Trump-appointed federal district court judge blocked, at least for now, the Trump administration from federalizing National Guard troops and sending them to Portland, Oregon.

The President claimed the authority to do so on a federal statute that allows the President to federalize National Guard service members “if the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

Now, you may recall that this is the same statute under which Trump sent troops to Los Angeles, and although a district court judge ruled that there was no basis to say that law enforcement was unable to execute the laws, the Ninth Circuit ultimately allowed the deployment, saying the President gets deference on security matters and that there had been enough violent protest activity in LA in the days prior to justify the President’s order.

But in this case, there had been no recent violent protest activity in Oregon, and so the judge said that even giving deference to the President, this order was unjustified and therefore violated both the statute and the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, which says that all rights not specifically given to the federal government must stay with the states.

And so the judge issued an order blocking Trump from federalizing the Oregon national guard on these grounds.

But the Trump administration then turned around and tried to mobilize national guard troops from other states on the ground that the judge’s order only blocked deployment of Oregon troops. The judge was clearly incensed at this blatant effort to defy her order and immediately called another hearing Sunday night and quickly issued another ruling widening her initial order to block the deployment of any national guard troops to Portland.

We’ll see what the Ninth Circuit says. Will it rule as it did with regard to LA, or will it see the facts in this case as distinguishable because no violent protest activity was occuring? We should know fairly soon, but for now the deployment in Portland is blocked.