TOI correspondent from Washington: A Trump-appointed federal judge in Oregon on Sunday blocked the White House from sending troops to Portland, the state’s biggest city, amid a contentious stand-off between the US President and Democrat-run states and cities that is now spiraling towards a civil war. Separately, the home of a South Carolina judge who had ruled against the Trump administration and had received death threats was destroyed in a fire-bombing incident even as Trump aides lashed out at the judiciary for undermining Presidential powers, while Red and Blue states clashed – verbally for now. The latest judicial intervention in Oregon represented a significant setback for President Trump’s efforts to use military assets to quell protests and support purported federal immigration enforcement in Democrat-run states and cities where local officials actively oppose the federal presence. The confrontation now spans three states, pitting the President against the Democrat governors of Oregon, California, and Illinois. Republican governors – notably the governor of Texas – are lining up behind the President. The Trump administration has been trying to federalize the National Guard in Democrat-run states and also send troops from Republican-run states like Texas to Democratic cities to quell what it characterizes as an insurrection against immigration enforcement. Local officials say allegations of insurrection are nonsense and “Trump’s gestapo” is simply running amuck rounding up immigrants and peaceful protestors.On Saturday, Oregon Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, first issued an initial temporary restraining order (TRO), blocking the administration’s plan to federalize and deploy Oregon’s own National Guard over the objections of Democrat Governor Tina Kotek. She then expanded the order on Sunday to cover deployment of ANY state’s National Guard troops under federal control to Oregon, when the White House sought to bring troops in from California. Oregon and California, both Democrat-run states, joined hands to file the suit. The Trump administration’s claim of an “insurrection” or threat to national security was “untethered to the facts,” Judge Immergut ruled, adding that a bad-faith justification to call up the National Guard risked plunging the country into a form of unconstitutional military rule. In a related development, Illinois’ Democratic Governor JB Pritzker also balked at the White House-directed deployment of National Guard from Texas to Chicago, calling it a “Trump’s invasion.” Texas’s Republican governor Greg Abbott, a Trump supporter, said he backed the President’s call up of 400 members of the Texas National Guard telling Democrat-run states “you can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it. “Sorry, champ – the Constitution’s in the way. A respected federal judge just ruled you can’t send your troops to Oregon,” California’s governor Gavin Newsom clapped back, calling Abbott “Trump’s lapdog,” amid a war of words between governors. Trump aide and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller meanwhile alleged that there is an “organized campaign of domestic terrorism targeting the core operations of the federal government,” calling the Oregon ruling “one of the most egregious and thunderous violations of constitutional order we have ever seen .”“Either we have a federal government, a supremacy clause, and a nation, or we don’t,” Miller raged. Amid growing tensions in a country with a substantially armed population, Democrats countered that immigration enforcement is just an excuse to bring about military rule in the US. “America is on the brink of martial law. Do not be silent,” warned California governor Gavin Newsom.
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