US court says Trump can command Oregon troops, but deployment still on hold

A United States court of appeals has ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump can move forward with plans to deploy soldiers to Portland, Oregon, although another earlier ruling still bars it from doing so, for now.

The Monday ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court will allow the Trump administration to send 200 National Guard members to the Democrat-run city, despite the absence of any serious emergency and the objections of state and local officials.
It comes after Trump’s Department of Justice appealed the first of two rulings from US District Judge Karin Immergut, prohibiting Trump from calling up the troops so he could send them to Portland.

“After considering the record at this preliminary stage, we conclude that it is likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority” when he federalised the state’s National Guard, the Court of Appeals wrote in its majority opinion, supported by two judges out of a panel of three.

Another temporary restraining order, which prohibits the president from sending any National Guard members to Oregon at all, and which was issued by Immergut after Trump tried to evade the first order by deploying California troops instead, remains in place.

Soon after the ruling on Monday, the Justice Department asked Immergut to immediately dissolve her second order, arguing that it is not the role of the courts to second-guess the president’s determination about when to deploy troops.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, a Democrat, said he would ask for a broader panel of the appeals court to reconsider Monday’s decision.