Officials in Oregon have filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops in Portland, adding to legal battles against President Trump’s use of troops in major cities.
The state of Oregon and city of Portland filed a joint lawsuit Sunday against Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over the deployment of the National Guard to the city.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court, calls the deployment of National Guard troops to Portland “heavy-handed” and unlawful.
The president, in a post on his Truth Social platform Saturday morning, directed Hegseth to “provide all necessary Troops” to deploy to Portland. The move stems from protests outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in the city, with Trump claiming the building was “under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”
The court filing, though, argued that the protests have involved fewer than 30 people in recent weeks and no arrests have been made since mid-June.
“Defendants’ heavyhanded deployment of troops threatens to escalate tensions and stokes new unrest, meaning more of the Plaintiffs’ law enforcement resources will be spent responding to the predictable consequences of Defendants’ action,” the lawsuit states.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek (D), appearing at a press conference alongside state Attorney General Dan Rayfield (D) and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson (D), called the deployment “an abuse of power and a disservice to our communities and our service members,” according to KOIN 6 in Portland.
Kotek also marched with residents in downtown Portland on Sunday, saying in a post on social platform X that “we don’t need military intervention here.”
As governor, Kotek controls her state’s National Guard. The lawsuit alleges that Trump does not have the authority to seize control of the Oregon National Guard under Title 10, Section 12406 of the U.S. Code, which gives the president the capacity to federalize state national guards if the country is facing an invasion or rebellion or the president “is unable with the regular forces to execute the law.”
The lawsuit also says Trump’s order violates the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that authority not delegated to the federal government is reserved for states. It also says the move violates the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars federal troops from being used for civilian law enforcement.
“Defendants have thus infringed on Oregon’s sovereign power to manage its own law enforcement activity and National Guard resource,” the lawsuit says. “Far from promoting public safety, Defendants’ provocative and arbitrary actions threaten to undermine public safety by inciting a public outcry.”...
Democrats need to fight back against the Malignant Fascist with every tool available. Chicago is seeing masked ICE thugs on its downtown streets as of Sunday. It's "Code Red" time.
As the Supreme Court is about to revisit some major decisions, one of the nine justices - and a key member of the conservative majority - has offered his view that there’s nothing sacred about precedent.
"At some point we need to think about what we're doing with stare decisis,” Justice Clarence Thomas said about the legal term that protects stability in the law. "And it's not some sort of talismanic deal where you can just say 'stare decisis' and not think, turn off the brain.”
Thomas offered that view in a rare public appearance at Catholic University's Columbus School of Law on Sept. 25.
He was asked about the factors he considers when deciding whether a past decision was wrong and did not address any pending cases.
In the term that begins next month, the court will revisit a nearly century-old ruling protecting the heads of independent agencies that President Donald Trump has repeatedly challenged as he’s sought greater control over the government. [snip]
The administration has asked the court to uphold Trump’s changes to birthright citizenship, threatening a 127-year-old Supreme Court ruling.
In another case, the Republican Party argues a 2001 decision limiting how much political parties can spend on advertising and other messaging in coordination with a federal candidate no longer makes sense.
And the court could gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that it has previously backed.
Those are all cases the high court has agreed to hear or is expected to hear.
Less certain is whether the justices will want to revisit the 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.
A former Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses in 2015 because of her religious beliefs has asked the court to do that.
But many legal experts think it’s unlikely the court will consider her appeal...
Here's a tip for those "legal experts": don't ever believe there's a bottom to what these six p.o.s. Republicans in robes will do. They see this as an historic window in time to undo as much of 20th Century jurisprudence as they can get away with. In the Republican MAGAt government trifecta, they don't want to be the one branch not puling its fascist weight.
President Donald Trump on Saturday shared an apparently artificially created video of himself promoting a cure-all bed with origins in conspiratorial corners of the internet.
The video, which has since been deleted, was intended to resemble a Fox News segment on the show hosted by the president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, featured an AI version of Trump promising access to new medical technology. This segment has never aired on the network.
“Every American will soon receive their own medbed card,” said the false rendering of Trump. “With it, you’ll have guaranteed access to our new hospitals led by the top doctors in the nation, equipped with the most advanced technology in the world.”
The “medbed” conspiracy theory has spread during recent years in QAnon circles online. It is a modern manifestation of an older tradition of belief in quack doctors and miracle cures and is rooted in deep distrust of government and medical institutions.
During America’s UFO-spotting craze beginning in the early post-World War Two II period, conspiracy theories emerged that the US government had reverse-engineered technology from alien craft it had secretly retrieved to create advanced healing technologies.
The conspiracy theory that the government kept this healing technology secret, and only provided cures to select elites, played into a more widely held, and still debated belief that the government was withholding information about UFOs from the public.
The QAnon conspiracy theory movement emerged in 2017, and some in those circles have long believed Trump would make available this supposed secret miracle-curing technology.
In the artificial video Trump posted and then deleted, he touts the benefits of the supposed therapy...
This "medbed" is a perfect metaphor for the quacks, charlatans, crooks, and incompetents running the Malignant Fascist's regime. We can easily imagine Brainworm or Dr. Oz endorsing this (or having a financial interest in it). The Malignant Fascist is a dangerous buffoon, an impulse- driven toddler with his little communication toy. What stupid times and stupid country we live in.
🤔 One of the bad/ugly things that Trump recently announced, and isn't getting enough coverage, is the "release the Earhart files" nonsense. There are a few people wondering who planted that BS in Trump's head cavity...here's my take:
ReplyDelete🛩💰 Timothy Mellon (the RFK,Jr. of the super-rich Mellon family...he's a raving loon and the family wishes he would shutup) is the huge donor to Trump/MAGA who has the Amelia Earhart obsession. He gave to build more border wall, donates to anti-immagratiin fights, says social welfare programs are new Black slavery to Uncle Sam, and gave more than $150M (that we know of) to Trump's 2024 campaign.
Last year, his decade-long lawsuit against a team from a 2012 Earhart expedition, which included the US State Department, was finally dismissed on appeal. [Mellon claimed that expedition took his $1M donation/ticket to go on the ride even though the team had already found the plane debris in 2010 and kept it hidden! 🤣 Right! They made the biggest historical find of the past 70 years and didn't tell anyone!]*
Trump is all Mellon has left so now we have that to distract us and probably cost us a lot of money!! 🤪🤬
*Mellon used the team's 2010 video of the ocean floor as proof of the Earhart discovery. He claimed the plane is clearly there. No one else, including Mellon's hired experts, can see the plane. Of course, Mellon claims he can also see two human heads wrapped in cellophane and a hose connecting them. Mellon speculated that Earhart and her navigator, Noonan, committed suicide. 🤪 Right! And the heads, the cellophane, and the hose survived in the ocean 70 years and are visible on that film!! Yikes!! 😬😵💫
Cleora -- interesting! The ways tidbits penetrate the diseased mind of the MF, and the sketchy people who plant them! Thanks!
ReplyDelete