Newsom: Trump sending California National Guard after Oregon judge blocks move

President Donald Trump is sending in the California National Guard after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked the administration’s move to federalize troops in Portland, according to Governor Gavin Newsom.

“We are taking this fight back to court,” Newsom said in an X post on Sunday morning. In a separate post, Newsom said, “We’re suing Donald Trump. His deployment of the California National Guard to Oregon isn’t about crime. It’s about power.”

The governor, who also announced plans to sue Trump over his National Guard deployment in Los Angeles over the summer, said the president is now deploying 300 California troops to head to protests in Portland.

“They are on their way there now,” said Newsom. “The public cannot stay silent in the face of such reckless and authoritarian conduct by the President of the United States.”

The White House did not publicly respond or confirm this move as of 11:30 a.m. Sunday.

Portland is one of the latest cities to erupt in protests in a nationwide series dating back to the June unrest in Los Angeles following an uptick in federal immigration raids.

On Saturday, federal agents took several protestors into custody and deployed gas and pepper balls into a crowd of hundreds of demonstrators outside Portland’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.

Despite this, the U.S. District Judge who ruled to block Trump’s attempt to deploy Oregon troops on Saturday said the protests have been relatively small, and did not justify the use of federalized forces. Trump, who has described Portland as a “war-ravaged” city, later had his administration file a notice of appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

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