The Daily Fuckup

A federal judge in Oregon on Oct. 4 temporarily blocked the Trump administration from federalizing and deploying 200 Oregon National Guard troops to Portland. U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut granted Oregon and Portland’s request for a temporary restraining order after a hearing the day before.

In her written order, Immergut said the plaintiffs had shown enough at this early stage to justify emergency relief. She pointed to evidence that protests near the city’s ICE facility had been mostly peaceful in the period leading up to the administration’s directive, and she said the court was being asked to weigh a federal military response against a record that did not show the kind of emergency the government claimed.

The order was set to last 14 days, until Oct. 18, unless extended. It covered the September memorandum ordering the federalization and deployment of the Oregon Guard, but it did not end the case. The broader fight over whether the president can lawfully bring state Guard troops under federal control for Portland remained in court after the ruling.

Oregon and Portland had argued that local and state law enforcement could handle the situation without military intervention and that the federal government had exceeded its authority. The judge’s ruling gave them an immediate win, but only for the moment. A later order on Oct. 5 expanded the dispute to any National Guard deployment to Portland.