U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut issued an order late Sunday prohibiting the deployment or relocation of any federalized members of any state’s National Guard to Oregon.
The restraining order – Immergut’s second in as many days – capped a dramatic 24 hours that saw California join Oregon’s efforts to block the Trump administration from sending hundreds of federalized members of the California National Guard to Portland. On Saturday, Immergut blocked Trump’s plan to federalize 200 members of the Oregon National Guard.
The Department of Defense on Sunday summoned up to 400 members of the Texas National Guard to Portland and Chicago, according to a memo filed with the court. Immergut’s order would seemingly stop that from happening.
Immergut’s order came just a few hours after a press conference featuring Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, Attorney General Dan Rayfield and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson.
“Oregon is our home,” Kotek said during that press conference. “It is not a military target.”
But less than four hours later, Kotek was again issuing a statement, this time decrying the revelation that Texas guard members were similarly summoned across state lines. “This is a continuation and escalation of the President’s dangerous, un-American misuse of states’ National Guard members and hard-earned taxpayer dollars,” Kotek said in that statement.
But Sunday’s developments raised an entirely different and more alarming possibility: A Republican president sending troops from a Republican-led state to a Democratic-led state.
Kotek and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called on Texas. Gov. Abbott for assistance. Abbott, the Republican leader of Texas for the past decade, showed no inkling of supporting his fellow governors’ calls. “You can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it,” Abbott said on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
This may be the point where the Civil War starts, when the Oregon National Guard is deployed by the Governor to block the Texas National Guard from entering.
Or, my preferred tactic: deploy local troops to shadow the incoming out-of-state troops, one to one, with body cams that are live streaming everything. Make sure that we all know what those out-of-state troops are doing.