LOS ANGELES, United States: A US appeals court said Monday that President Donald Trump can send National Guard troops to Portland, despite objections from Oregon’s governor.
The ruling is the latest step in a battle pitting the White House against liberal states who have pushed back against what they characterize as Trump’s authoritarian over-reach and a creeping militarization of US society.
“After considering the record at this preliminary stage, we conclude that it is likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority” when he federalized the state’s National Guard, the Ninth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals said.
The ruling clears the way for 200 National Guard personnel to be deployed to protect federal buildings, where authorities say protesters — many dressed in animal costumes — are impeding immigration enforcement.
Portland, along with Chicago, became the latest flashpoints in the Trump administration’s rollout of raids, following the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, Washington and Memphis.
In such raids, groups of masked, armed men in unmarked cars or armored vehicles target residential neighborhoods and businesses.
The state of Oregon took the administration to court to try to prevent its forces being used, obtaining a stay from a lower court that prevented any boots on the ground while the matter was decided.
Monday’s decision — by two out of the three justices on the appeals panel — overturns the stay.
Trump has repeatedly called Portland “war-ravaged” and riddled with violent crime. But in her original ruling granting the stay, US District Judge Karin Immergut dismissed his comments as “simply untethered to the facts.”
Although the city has seen scattered attacks on federal officers and property, the Trump administration failed to demonstrate “that those episodes of violence were part of an organized attempt to overthrow the government as a whole,” Immergut wrote.
Protests in Portland did not pose a “danger of rebellion” and “regular law enforcement forces” could handle such incidents, Immergut said.
Circuit Judge Susan Graber, dissenting from the ruling released Monday, said the administration’s seizing of Oregon’s National Guard — a force usually under the control of the state’s governor — was a dangerous erosion of constitutional rights.
“Given Portland protesters’ well-known penchant for wearing chicken suits, inflatable frog costumes, or nothing at all when expressing their disagreement with the methods employed by ICE, observers may be tempted to view the majority’s ruling, which accepts the government’s characterization of Portland as a war zone, as merely absurd,” she wrote.
“But today’s decision is not merely absurd. It erodes core constitutional principles, including sovereign States’ control over their States’ militias and the people’s First Amendment rights to assemble and to object to the government’s policies and actions.”
Oregon’s Attorney General Dan Rayfield called for an immediate “en banc” hearing — a gathering of the most senior judge on the circuit and 10 other justices, who could override Monday’s judgment.
“Today’s ruling, if allowed to stand, would give the president unilateral power to put Oregon soldiers on our streets with almost no justification. We are on a dangerous path in America,” he said.
Governor Tina Kotek said she wanted to hear from Trump exactly what he expected National Guard troops to do in a city where people protest peacefully.
“The Trump Administration is being dishonest, and these actions to deploy troops are a gross, un-American abuse of power,” she said.
US appeals court says Trump can deploy soldiers in Portland
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US appeals court says Trump can deploy soldiers in Portland
- Portland, along with Chicago, became the latest flashpoints in the Trump administration’s rollout of raids, following the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, Washington and Memphis
Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base as fighting enters fourth day
- The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years
- Pakistan accuses Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it
KABUL: Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former US military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan.
The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkiye in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m.
The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s military or government regarding Kabul’s claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.
Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation that Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers.
Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having seized it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports “baseless.”
Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.
The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.
There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.
