On Sunday, the Trump administration sent a memo to Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek authorizing the deployment of 200 Oregon National Guard members in Portland immediately for 60 days. The memo says the troops will be deployed to protect federal property and personnel in Portland, which President Trump has called a “war-ravaged city.” Portland and state officials responded by filing a lawsuit and, on Monday, a temporary restraining order to block the Trump administration’s federalization of the Oregon National Guard.
Gov. Kotek, AG Rayfield and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson held a news conference on Sunday to announce the lawsuit and counter President Trump’s characterization of Portland. “To bring this narrative to Portland, to say that we are anything but a city on the rise, is counter what truth is,” Wilson said. Gov. Kotek said she had spoken with President Trump and told him that there was no public safety threat that required military intervention in Portland.
Several hundred people gathered outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland on Sunday afternoon and evening to protest the deployment of federal troops in the city. More than a dozen counterprotesters verbally clashed with protesters, several of whom were hit with pepper balls as ICE agents attempted to escort cars into the building. On Monday morning, Portland Police announced the arrest of two people on assault charges during the protest on Sunday evening.
OPB reporters Conrad Wilson and Troy Brynelson join us to discuss the latest developments.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Jenn Chávez: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB, I’m Jenn Chávez, in today for Dave Miller. Portland, Oregon once again found itself in the national spotlight this weekend. On Friday, reports of a ramp-up of federal officers in the city. On Saturday, an announcement by President Donald Trump that his administration would send troops into what he called “war-ravaged Portland.” On Sunday, a Department of Defense memo calling Oregon National Guard members into federal service, followed by legal action seeking to block that deployment by city and state officials.
Today we’re in OPB’s Gert Boyle studio in Portland to take stock of the fast developing news in our city and look ahead to what could be next. Joining me to help us get up to speed are my friends Conrad Wilson, OPB’s legal affairs reporter, and Troy Brynelson, OPB’s public safety reporter. Conrad and Troy, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.
Conrad Wilson/Troy Brynelson: Thanks for having us. Great to be here.
Chávez: Conrad, I want to start off with you. Yesterday morning, the Trump administration sent a memo to Oregon Governor Tina Kotek calling 200 Oregon National Guard members into federal service. What are the details there, and what did the memo say about why this was happening?
Wilson: The Trump administration called 200 members, as you said, of the National Guard, called them into federal service for a 60-day deployment, and there really are not a lot of details about what those guard members are going to do. There are some.
I mean, what we know is that over the weekend, President Trump invoked Title 10, which allows him to federalize members of the state’s National Guard. In this memo to Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, it talks about protecting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff, as well as federal facilities where there are likely to be protests.
Chávez: And it’s felt like something like this has been coming for weeks. What has the president and other members of the administration been saying about Portland lately?
Wilson: The president has inserted the city of Portland into a number of comments that he made in the Oval Office, when he’s talked about federalizing the National Guard in other cities like Chicago, where it hasn’t happened yet, and Washington D.C., where it has, and Memphis, where National Guard troops are expected to hit the streets this week.
As recently as last week, President Trump called Portland, questioning why people live there, saying it’s “anarchy.”
His administration has cited protests outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. And over the weekend, when he announced the plan to send the National Guard troops, he said he was doing it to “protect war-ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE facilities under siege from attack by antifa and other domestic terrorists.”
Chávez: All weekend my social media feeds have been full of Portlanders posting images and videos of what appeared to be an extremely normal and chill fall weekend in the city. So where are these characterizations we’re hearing of Portland as war ravaged, like living in hell, etc., coming from?
Wilson: Yeah, I mean, it was a gorgeous weekend, weather-wise, and really having been all over the city, I think it’s safe to conclude that Portland is not war ravaged. And honestly, many state and local officials have disputed Trump’s framing, saying that the president is relying on an outdated view of the city and really, maybe referencing videos from 2020, when the city saw months-long protests outside the federal courthouse.
Earlier this month, the president first floated the idea that Portland could be on a short list for the National Guard, referencing a TV report that he saw the day before that appears to have aired on Fox News about ongoing protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Portland.
And over the weekend, we heard from both protesters and public officials that there was just really a disconnect about what was actually happening in Portland, and national rhetoric.
Chávez: Many of the public officials that we’ve been hearing from who have spoken out against this move have been Democrats, but I think it’s important to ask what we’ve been hearing about this from prominent Oregon Republicans, some of whom, it’s my understanding, are supporting this move?
Wilson: Yeah, there are definitely those who support what the president is doing. Some Oregon Republicans, including U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, welcomed Trump’s decision over the weekend. The former Oregon congresswoman called the city “a crime-ridden war zone,” and Oregon House minority Leader Christine Drazan also echoed what the president said. She called the protests outside the ICE building violent mobs and domestic terrorists, saying that safety needed to be restored.
Chávez: As things developed over the weekend ‒ every day there was some new update ‒ had there been efforts by Oregon leaders to get the administration to potentially pull back from increasing federal presence in Portland prior to things coming to a head in the way they have?
Wilson: Yeah, absolutely. After Trump’s announcement on Saturday morning, Kotek spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on the phone, and later she said she spoke in a separate call with President Trump. The governor and Trump texted as well, but it doesn’t seem to have really made a difference, or at least moved the needle. During a news conference yesterday, Kotek described her conversations with Trump and the administration.
Governor Kotek: We just have a substantive disagreement about what the situation is. We have free speech demonstrations that are happening near a federal facility, one federal facility. Portland police is actively engaged in managing those with the federal folks who are at the facility, and when people cross the line, there’s unlawful activity, people are being held accountable. This is not an insurrection. This does not require military troops in an American city.
Chávez: Okay, let’s get back to this memo deploying those troops. Within hours of this being sent, the State of Oregon, the City of Portland, actually filed a lawsuit over the troop deployment, and this morning I know they also filed a temporary restraining order. What is the legal argument they’re making here with these legal actions?
Wilson: They’re basically saying that the administration doesn’t have the power to do what it’s doing, that it’s overreaching, and really specifically they argue President Trump is violating federal law, which prohibits using the military for domestic law enforcement.
Chávez: I know you mentioned a couple of other cities a few minutes ago. Can we look to other cities where members of the military or federal law enforcement have been sent in by the Trump administration, in terms of what might occur here, or how other cities have responded to similar actions?
Wilson: Well, from a legal standpoint, I think it’s good to look at Los Angeles, because you might remember back in June, when the president sent National Guard and U.S. military troops there to deal with some of the protests around immigration enforcement. Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled the Trump administration willfully violated federal law by deploying National Guard members to engage in domestic law enforcement activities.
The judge said that he was concerned that the Trump administration was talking about future deployments to other cities, which the judge worried could create, and I’m quoting here, “a national police force with the President as its chief.”
Now, the thing about that ruling, while it’s referenced in Oregon’s court documents, it does only apply to California.
Chávez: Got it. Thank you for laying that out.
Troy, I want to turn to you now. Thank you so much for joining us, as well. As we’ve been hearing, much of the outside attention to Portland has been centered around an ICE facility located near the city’s South Waterfront district.
I know over the years there have been protests there from time to time, and this year protests have resumed there, much like elsewhere in the country. What have the protests at the ICE building looked like in recent weeks and months that you’ve seen?
Brynelson: I would say it’s really ebbed and flowed. On a slow night it’ll look like dozens of protesters out there outside the ICE facility, haranguing the ICE agents as they’re trying to escort vehicles coming and going, certainly voicing their disapproval of Trump’s deportation plans.
On a busier night, well, and I should say, also on those quieter nights, you’re seeing people dancing and chanting and it’s a little bit more jovial,I would say, than what you might see on a lot of the social media that was going around that Conrad was just mentioning.
But yeah, on these busier nights, these tend to coincide with large events, and big headlines. The “No Kings” rally demonstration earlier this summer was one example where you really saw hundreds of protesters outside the building, and a lot more actual clashing. And on the day of that “No Kings” protest, for example, you saw a lot of chemical munitions being used – pepper balls.
But those, like I said, it’s ebbing and flowing, so those bigger days usually coincide, like when Los Angeles had their own federal troop deployment, Portlanders also came out for that. And another instance might be like when we saw the dad who was arrested by ICE agents when he was dropping off his child at preschool, another instance where protesters came out in force.
Chávez: I know you reported from outside the ICE building just last night, where protesters gathered again in the wake of all the weekend’s news. Several hundred people came out to demonstrate against the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard. What was the protest generally like? What was the vibe like out there?
Brynelson: I was out there Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And you could really tell over the course of those three days, how the slow trickle of news was ramping up, and how the protesters and the crowd sizes were responding to that news. We were talking earlier about how there’s this disconnect between what Trump has described as a “war-ravaged Portland,” vs what a lot of people on the streets were disagreeing with, how they see their city. I mean, I talked to Eric and Catherine Palmer, who really took issue with that characterization by the federal government.
Eric Palmer: She went to a book signing tonight. I went to a gallery opening.
Catherine Palmer: I went to improv class this afternoon. You know, it’s like, we’re just living our regular lives.
Eric Palmer: Portland has had its ups and downs, but it’s a lovely town, and we love being here, and it’s frustrating that the national, the message from the government is different from the reality on the ground.
Brynelson: And that interview occurred prior to Trump’s announcement that he was sending the National Guard. So the next day, Sunday, last night, it was far more contentious.
I mean, we had large groups of people coming out, of various demographics. We saw grandparents, moms, kids, but that was all during the day.
And then as nightfall happened, you were starting to see counter-protesters showing up in force, and that led to a lot more verbal confrontations and even some tussles. We know that the Portland Police Bureau actually made two arrests last night, as well.
Chávez: Yeah, tell me a little bit more about that. How did you see law enforcement officers respond to protesters last night?
Brynelson: Well, I would say last night in particular, we saw a lot of… it was pretty hands off. Throughout the second Trump administration, there’s been a lot of consternation about whether or not the Portland Police Bureau is going to respond to these kinds of protests similar to how they were in 2020.
I think last night was a good example of how they have actually changed in a lot of ways. We saw, rather than five years ago ‒ a riot-type response ‒ we were seeing bike police try to corral the crowds around a little bit more soft-handed. And these white-shirted Portland Police liaisons ‒ these dialogue officers ‒ who are actually actively communicating with protesters, trying to understand what their plans are, to plan ahead, and less about actually enforcing things in the moment.
I did mention those counter-protesters, and I’ll say that these are large crowds, the tussles kind of converge on people, and it seemed you could tell how much more dynamic and difficult of a policing situation those are, when the tensions are heightened like they were last night.
Chávez: City and state leaders earlier this weekend sent a message to city residents to stay calm and “Don’t take the bait.” The suggestion, I think, is that the Trump administration and federal law enforcement are intentionally trying to provoke people. Did you hear anything about how protesters were reacting to that message?
Brynelson: You know, I talked to a lot of protesters and it’s…they’re not a monolith, and so there’s a spectrum of answers that they’re giving. Certainly there are groups of people who were showing up last night who hadn’t been there a lot and were saying, “we want to see nonviolent protests,” and to not react, don’t take the bait, like they’re saying.
But there are also protesters who’ve been out there, like this protester, Dina, who’s been almost on a nightly basis, and to her, she says it felt like they have not been taking the bait at all, even up to this point, and so to suddenly say that, in her view felt like victim blaming.
Dina: Of the over 100-plus days that we’ve had our constant presence, I can count on one hand how many of them became violent at all on behalf of the protesters, you know, exuding anything. And even in those cases, it was very much like the 2020’s down in downtown Portland where it was not until after they had been attacked multiple times by the feds that any retaliation began to happen. So just the whole argument of, “don’t take the bait,” it’s just absolutely disgusting that our own representatives would talk about the people of Portland in that manner.
Chávez: All right, we just have about a minute or less left, but in his statement about sending military members into Portland over the weekend, Trump did say he was authorizing “full force,” if necessary. It’s unclear exactly what he was referring to, but what will you be looking out for in that regard?
Brynelson: That’s a really good question. I mean, we’re gonna be looking for changes really in tactics, different types of agencies showing up. We’ve seen recently that, all of a sudden over the weekend there’s more air presence, for example. So those are the kinds of things that we don’t necessarily know what “full force,” is, but that’s what we’ll be looking for.
Chávez: Well, Troy and Conrad, thank you so much for your reporting all this weekend and today, and for joining us here in the studio.
Wilson / Brynelson: You’re welcome. Thanks for having us.
Chávez: That was OPB reporters Conrad Wilson and Troy Brynelson.
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