Trump Sends Military To Portland. Uh Oh, They Got Kicked Out! Twice!
Bye!
For white supremacists, the dream of the ‘90s is alive in Portland, Oregon. The 1890’s, that is. When women and Asian Americans could not vote, and Black people were legally prohibited from even living in the state. (The 14th Amendment made that unconstitutional, but it stayed on the books anyway until 1926.)
And so over the weekend Portland got invaded by the US military, as the next stop on the Donald Trump/Stephen Miller/Pete Hegseth/Kristi Noem Goodbye Constitution national tour, following invasions in Los Angeles, Washington DC, Memphis and Chicago.
It happened in spite of a federal judge blocking the deployment of the Oregon National Guard! Hegseth just sent in the California National Guard instead. Did somebody find daddy a LOOPHOLE? No! Sunday night at around 11 p.m. Eastern the same judge issued a second restraining order against the California National Guard and troops from other states also too, after ripping the government a new one for going “in direct contravention” of her order. So now the military will be leaving for real. Right? Right?
In Oregon, the pretense for the EMERGENCY unwanted invasion is that protesters have been exercising their First Amendment rights, peacefully voicing their objections to ICE’s presence on the public street outside of the local ICE facility, the way the Constitution is very explicit about allowing. And White House spokesmouth Karoline Leavitt says Trump is going to cut off Oregon’s federal money too, just like the Constitution used to seem to be very explicit about the president not being allowed to do.
Just one more of the many facts undercutting the whole EMERGENCY SAFETY justification Trump, Hegseth and Noem have been using to invade the US of A and wage WAR against its citizens. There was also how last week at Secretary Shitfaced’s Rub-N-Tug sesh, Trump huffed and puffed in that speech to generals that should have been a spam email for boner pills: “I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”
Some emergency. And in real life, Portland is one of the safest cities in the country.
And remember how three months ago Hegseth refused to say to Democratic Reps. Elissa Slotkin and Jill Tokuda that he would not order the military to arrest or shoot protesters?
It all sure makes it hard to claim that any city on the list’s situation is an emergency.
And just hours after a judge ruled that the deployment of the Oregon Guard was illegal, federal law enforcement officers escalated the tactics used on unarmed protesters, deploying helicopters, spraying unarmed protesters with tear gas and pepper balls. And that brought out right-wing counterprotestors too.
Some clips, warning, rough stuff:
If there’s one thing all of these federal agents have in common, they seem to get genuine enjoyment from terrorizing citizens who are doing nothing but speaking out against them. Heck, right now and until the government reopens, they aren’t even getting paid!
After the judge ruled against them Saturday, Stephen Miller, the guy who Some People Say is actually in charge of the government because the president is losing his marbles, took to X to rage.
Following the Constitution, is what it’s called. The Pritzker clip:
And derp, US District Judge Karin J. Immergut is a TRUMP appointee. And she ripped the lawless administration a new asshole:
“This country has a long-standing and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs [...] This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law.”
The Temporary Restraining Order is good until October 18, and she scheduled a hearing for October 17 to see if it should be extended.
Additionally, last month US District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the regime violated the Posse Comitatus Act when it sent federal troops to California over the objections of the governor, and lied about there being some emergency.
But now it sounds like those very same California National Guard troops were being sent to Oregon.
But we guess not anymore, and not the Army’s 82nd Airborne. Apparently “CURRENTLY CLEAN ON OPSEC” SecDef had been fantasizing about sending them to Portland, according to a text message conversation on Signal between Anthony Salisbury, a deputy to Stephen Miller, and Hegseth’s adviser Patrick Weaver and others. Exchanges that someone was able to read over Salisbury’s shoulder:
WEAVER: Between you and I, I think Pete just wants the top cover from the boss if anything goes sideways with the troops there.
And Weaver said Hegseth was eager for Trump to let him: “82nd is like our top tier [quick reaction force] for abroad. So it will cause a lot of headlines. Probably why he wants potus to tell him to do it.”
Or maybe he wants POTUS to tell him to do it because he thinks it will protect him legally. But while Lord King Trump may have immunity for everything forever from the SCOTUS Six, that doesn’t mean anybody else gets it. Trump can give the order to shoot protesters all day, but that does not make the members of the administration and military who follow an illegal order immune from future consequences. Not even if Pete Hegseth fires all the military lawyers.
Between these messages and the recent New York Magazine piece about Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, and the WSJ exposé about the administration’s flailing efforts and freakouts surrounding the Epstein files coverup, and it’s more than a picture of lawlessness and incompetence. It’s one of a weak, shambolic regime of slobbering idiots, where it’s every person for themselves, all trying to curry the favor of Dear Leader and shine in his eyes the Very Most, while infighting and throwing each other under the bus. It’s like The Sopranos, but with fewer sympathetic characters.
The regime is strong, as in all the powers of the state strong, as in who will stop them strong. But the same time, they’re a bunch of incompetents beset by weakness and backstabbing inside and out, and they know it. They’re only in a good position as long as Trump likes them, and the regime lasts forever. That’s a risky bet.
So hopefully the regime will follow the judge’s ruling and get out of Portland now, for real.
Unless they force the judge to make them FAFO. Right, Pete?
[Washington Post gift link / Oregon Public Broadcasting]
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They're going for broke because they know Mad Lord Yam is decoupling from reality at an incredible pace, and they want to lock in as much of their authoritarian wet dreams as they can before he finally comes apart completely. It's why they're so clumsy and brutish about it - it's another smash-and-grab operation.
One thing- the jokes a couple of weeks ago about how their Horst Wesseling of Charlie Kirk was the same as their Reichstag Firing over the Cracker Barrel logo have been borne out.
Histrionic rage is their response to everything. They are always full of sound and fury, there is no scale. Every challenge is existential, every struggle life or death. A trans woman on a beer can, a murder of a podcaster, a chain restaurant rebrand, a nineteen year old in shorts, tights and t-shirt telling police to piss off, a videogame character having a rounder face and smaller breasts than previously- these are all the same.