President Trump ordered the Oregon National Guard to Portland to protect federal law enforcement activities in that embattled city. Federal judge Karin Immergut then temporarily blocked the deployment, substituting her judgment of the severity of events in Portland for the President’s:
“Overall, the protests were small and uneventful,” she wrote. “The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”
Trump responded by ordering the California National Guard to deploy to Portland. Some newspaper headlines say that Trump thus “defied” Judge Immergut’s ruling, which is not, strictly speaking correct, although her logic would imply that Guards outside Oregon should not be mobilized in Portland, either. Governor Gavin Newsom has already sued to stop the deployment of his state’s Guard.
At issue here is the Insurrection Act:
Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or
assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable
to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial
proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use
such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress
the rebellion.
In cities like Portland and Chicago, militant leftists have made it difficult or impossible to enforce our nation’s immigration laws. In some instances, ICE officers have been attacked or shot at. While this further condition is not necessary under the law, it is not unreasonable to conclude that those cities (or a state like Illinois) are in rebellion, given that they are openly doing what they can to frustrate the enforcement of federal law.
We have on our hands, in my opinion, a constitutional crisis: multiple states and cities acting to make difficult or impossible the enforcement of one of our nation’s most important bodies of law, that relating to immigration. As Bill Glahn suggests, our long-simmering cold civil war may be turning hot. Whether that proves true or not, I think the Supreme Court should, and probably will, side with President Trump on the central question–whether conditions in cities like Portland and Chicago are so hostile to the enforcement of federal law that the Insurrection Act can be invoked.
