The Trump administration’s National Guard Tour 2025 has rolled from coast to coast, and Portland is the latest venue. LA was the first stop before they decided to hit up D.C., then swung back around to Memphis, and now Oregon’s taking center stage. Okay, sure, the whole tour bus analogy doesn’t really work when you consider that National Guard troops are deployed locally and don’t literally travel like a minor league baseball team, but you get the point.
If you’ve been following the federalization of the National Guard over state objections, you know it’s been met with plenty of resistance — including in the courts. A federal judge eventually ordered their withdrawal after ruling that deploying the Guard in California violated the Posse Comitatus Act (which generally bans domestic use of the military for law enforcement unless Congress specifically authorizes it). In Chicago, multiple lawsuits quickly led to a series of restraining orders blocking troop activity.
Here’s a detailed look at how we got here, what’s happened so far in the courts, and where things stand.
POTUS v. PDX
The roots of Oregon v. Trump trace back to a summer marked by escalating tensions over immigration enforcement and protest activity near Portland’s ICE facility. This past June, federal authorities arrested an asylum-seeker at Portland’s Immigration Court for the first time. That catalyzed a series of small but persistent protests outside the city’s ICE building.
While these protests were initially more energetic, sometimes involving up to 100 people, they quickly tapered off. By late summer, most demonstrations involved fewer than 30 participants and rarely required police intervention. Portland Police Bureau (PPB) officers monitored the situation closely, activating specialized teams only when necessary, and local officials repeatedly emphasized that they had matters under control.
Despite this, POTUS began referencing Portland in public statements as a city “under siege” from “domestic terrorists,” promising to restore order with “Full Force” if necessary. Late last month, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was directing the newly-rebranded “War Department” to deploy troops to “protect War ravaged Portland” and its ICE facilities from Antifa and other “domestic terrorists.”
That same day, Major General Timothy L. Rieger requested that Oregon Governor Tina Kotek authorize mobilization of the state’s National Guard for federal purposes—a request she firmly rejected. Hours later, Secretary Hegseth issued a memorandum federalizing 200 members of the Oregon National Guard for a period of 60 days – but state and local officials were already one step ahead.
Oregon and Portland Push Back
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield immediately teamed up with Portland City Attorney Robert Taylor. The same day the memo was issued, these two jointly filed a comprehensive federal lawsuit challenging the President’s orders on statutory and constitutional grounds. The 34-page complaint laid out an aggressive argument that Trump had trampled state authority and disregarded limits on federalizing the Guard.
The core legal battlefield quickly emerged around 10 U.S.C. § 12406: the Cold War relic that authorizes a president to call up a state’s guard only in the event of “invasion, rebellion,” or failure of regular forces to enforce federal law. The plaintiffs argued that none of these circumstances remotely applied in Portland: there had been no foreign invaders, no insurrection, and, if anything, federal police had been overzealous in their ICE-related activities.
To bolster their point, Oregon borrowed an idea from its sunnier southern neighbor and invoked the Posse Comitatus Act. The lawsuit made clear: no matter how heated the President’s rhetoric about "war-ravaged Portland" or "domestic terrorists," civil unrest in the form of burnout ICE protests did not meet any of these high bars. State sovereignty, the Tenth Amendment, and the principles of separation of powers, they said, were all being bulldozed in the process.
Marching Orders Meet Court Orders
Rayfield and Taylor sought a temporary restraining order (TRO) seeking to halt any mobilization, and federal District Court Judge Karin Immergut granted the motion on October 4. She noted that the protests had barely registered as a disturbance in recent weeks, let alone an emergency justifying military intervention. Immergut was unconvinced by the White House’s insistence on “rebellion” and found little merit in the notion that Portland constituted some ungoverned war zone in need of troops.
But that relief didn’t last long. Within twenty‑four hours, reports surfaced that the Trump administration was exploring a workaround: if Oregon’s National Guard couldn’t deploy, out‑of‑state units would. The War Department began organizing troops from California and Texas (roughly 300 and 400 soldiers respectively) to supplement federal law enforcement in Portland.
Plaintiffs rushed back to federal court and secured a second TRO on October 5 – this time specifically barring deployment of any federalized National Guard members (homegrown or borrowed) within Oregon’s borders. In rapid-fire succession, the Trump administration appealed both orders to the Ninth Circuit and requested an emergency administrative stay to unfreeze the deployments.
Ninth Circuit Raises the Stakes
On October 8, a Ninth Circuit panel issued an administrative stay, basically tabling Judge Immergut’s earlier TRO while it considered whether to leave the Guard benched for longer. Meanwhile, the legal filings piled up in both directions, with amici from former military brass to state governors weighing in.
Then, on October 20, a divided three-judge Ninth Circuit panel issued its highly-anticipated ruling. By a 2-1 vote, the court found that Trump had at least a “substantial likelihood” of prevailing, siding with the argument that stretched-thin federal law enforcement and national security needs could justify his invocation of §12406(3). The majority stressed that under federal law, the President is owed broad deference on questions of necessity — especially when regular forces are (in the administration’s view) tied up or insufficient in responding to unrest.
Judge Susan Graber’s strongly dissented. She insisted that the record showed nothing close to a rebellion or failure of federal forces, and warned that military intervention without hard evidence eroded the most basic state and constitutional protections.
Next Tour Stop: SCOTUS?
Does that mean that Guard boots are on Burnside? Not quite. The TROs, for now, remain largely intact pending additional Ninth Circuit review.
In the aftermath, both deployed and would-be deployed troops found themselves parked in legal limbo. Local news reported that the Oregon Guard units remained sequestered at Camp Rilea, out on the coast, and a detachment of California National Guard members (pre-trained for crowd-control duties) were cooling their heels at Camp Withycombe, just outside Portland. Neither group was permitted to set foot in Portland proper.
Governor Tina Kotek did little to mask her irritation as she requested more information from the federal government and called for judicial oversight. Attorney General Rayfield pushed even further, petitioning the Ninth Circuit for an en banc review, raising the stakes and framing the legal drama as an issue of deep constitutional consequence. While the courts haggle over briefing deadlines, it’s very possible the Supreme Court will decide to step in.
Related Resources:
- Court Rules Trump Overstepped With Role of Marines and National Guard in Los Angeles (FindLaw's Courtside)
- Who Controls the National Guard? (FindLaw's Law and Daily Life)
- SCOTUS Clears Path for Trump's Trans Military Ban (FindLaw's Federal Courts)
