Never before has a President of the United States ordered troops to invade a city unless we are talking about Civil War. With this violent threat, is Trump giving his Red State Southern base, a victory, in the name of Robert E. Lee? How about……
IN THE NAME OF GOD?
-Minute Phone Call, Kotek Tells Trump He’s Planning to Deploy Troops Based on Bad Intel
Kotek said she told the president that Portland is not the violent place its made out to be.
September 27, 2025 5:00PM PDT
Gov. Tina Kotek says she spoke to President Donald Trump midday Saturday “as one executive to another,” and told him there was no reason to carry out the plan he announced hours prior to send U.S. troops to protect Portland and its U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
“My conversation with President Trump was trying to understand his rationale,” she recalled of the conversation, “and I believe it is based on information that is not accurate today. There are protests here. But it is not what we saw during the pandemic, where we had significant violent protests. I told him that. He thinks there are elements here that are creating an insurrection. I told him there is no insurrection here, and that we have this under control.”
Trump, she said, responded, “Let’s keep talking.”
Kotek recounted the exchange in a press conference on a pleasant autumn afternoon that seemed designed to prove her point about Portland not being so bad as it’s made out to be.
Bikers biked. Strollers strolled. The Willamette River flowed under the Hawthorne Bridge in the background. And local, state and U.S. Congressional officials stood together at Tom McCall Waterfront Park to signal their collective opposition to Trump’s announcement Saturday morning that he was authorizing a U.S. military mission to protect Portland from “Antifa, and other domestic terrorists”—and that he would authorize “full force,” if necessary.
Two miles south, at the ICE facility on South Bancroft Street, about two dozen protesters milled outside the federal building. Few were masked. Demonstrators had stacked boxes of donuts and cases of Gatorade along the sidewalk. One man wore a chicken suit and waved a sign reading, “Portland will outlive him,” to passing traffic.
It’s this location that has regularly seen nighttime skirmishes between federal officers and protesters since June. It’s those small-scale clashes that caused Republicans, including House Minority Leader Christine Drazan, to celebrate the potential deployment of troops as an action long overdue after local authorities failed to allow ICE to operate unmolested.
At 1:36 pm the chief Pentagon spokesperson told WW that “We stand ready to mobilize U.S. military personnel in support of DHS operations in Portland at the President’s direction.” About an hour later, local officials at the press conference in downtown Portland said they were not aware of any federal troops deployed in Oregon at the behest of Trump, nor should there be.
“I believe the president does not have the authority to deploy federal troops on state soil,” Kotek said, adding that she’s coordinating with Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield to see if any response is necessary. “And we will be prepared to respond if we have to.”
Officials had held an earlier press conference at a Portland church Friday night to warn of increased federal law enforcement activity in Portland and what it might portend—and they urged Portlanders not to take the bait as the Trump administration sought a pretext for a broader crackdown.
Still, Trump’s Saturday morning post on his social media platform appeared to land as a surprise. Kotek said she awoke to the post, just like every other Oregonian.
In the post, Trump said he was directing “Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” He said the move came at the request of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Kotek she said the White House had not communicated with her office before she reached out. She spoke with Noem at 9:55 a.m. for 12 minutes, said Lucas Bezerra, a spokesperson for the governor. At 12:20 p.m., Bezerra said, Kotek spoke with Trump himself in a call that lasted seven minutes.
Kotek recalled that she tried to understand Trump’s reasoning for his announcement. And she said she told him that “we are taking care of it”—that she had faith in Portland police to manage the city’s public safety needs, and enforce the law when protestors crossed the line into violence or illegal activity.
Still, at the press conference, she added, “I also want to say that we all have a responsibility to speak our voices, lift our voices, speak our political truth peacefully.” Oregonians, she said have been doing that peacefully and lawfully for months.
She said she has been in contact with Governors JB Pritzker of Illinois and Gavin Newsom of California to learn from their experiences when Trump sent or threatened to deploy U.S. troops to their states without their consent.
“Any federal takeover with military troops in our state is a threat to communities across Oregon,” she said. “It violates our right to govern ourselves. It interferes with local law enforcement’s ability to fulfill their mission. Frankly, it drains tax payer resources that could be better spent elsewhere. And again, I communicated that to the president directly. Oregon is our home. It is not a military target.”
Military service members should be dedicated to real emergencies, she added, and Portland was safe and calm. She described students going to see the Lion King a the Keller Auditorium, Timbers fans revving up for a match, people going to work at restaurants. She said she told Trump of this reality.
Portland has its challenges, she added, with people worried about schools and affordability and jobs. She said she would welcome federal help for things like that.
Her rhetoric largely matched what Mayor Keith Wilson said the night before at Westminster Presbyterian Church. The mayor said Portland could use all kinds of help but, “if the federal government didn’t come here to lend us a hand, then take a hike.”
Trump orders deployment of troops to Portland and authorises ‘full force’
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Nadine Yousif
0:39Watch: Oregon governor says Trump does not have authority to deploy troops to Portland
President Donald Trump has ordered the deployment of US troops to Portland, Oregon, authorising use of “full force” if needed, to suppress protests targeting immigration detention centres.
Trump said he was “directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland”.
He claimed that the move would help protect “any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists,” adding on Truth Social: “I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”
The announcement drew pushback from Democratic lawmakers, who said there was no need for federal troops to be deployed to the city.
“There is no national security threat in Portland. Our communities are safe and calm,” said Oregon Governor Tina Kotek.
At a news conference on Saturday, Kotek said that “any deployment would be an abuse of power”, and that she was coordinating with Oregon’s attorney general, Dan Rayfield, “to see if any response is necessary”.
“We will be prepared to respond if we have to,” Kotek added.
Saturday’s announcement marks the further expansion of deployment of troops in American cities, amid a wider crackdown by the Trump administration on illegal immigration.
Trump’s post does not specify whether he intends to activate national guard or regular US military. The post also did not specify what is meant by the use of “full force”.
“We stand ready to mobilize U.S. military personnel in support of DHS operations in Portland at the President’s direction,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell told the BBC. “The Department will provide information and updates as they become available.”
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Portland has been targeted by protesters since early June, sometimes leading to violent clashes.
As of 8 September, the US Attorney’s Office had brought federal charges against 26 people for crimes including arson, assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.
On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that demonstrators had “repeatedly attacked and laid siege to an ICE processing centre” in Portland.
In a post on the social media platform X, the department stated that several individuals had been arrested and charged with federal offences.
“Rose City Antifa, a recently designated domestic terrorist organization, illegally doxed ICE officers. They published their home address online and on public flyers. Individuals associated with Antifa also sent death threats to DHS personnel,” DHS wrote on X.
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Earlier this week, Trump signed an order formally designating antifa as a domestic terrorist organisation.
Antifa, short for “anti-fascist”, is a loosely organised movement of primarily far-left activists.
Legal experts have pointed out that there is no legal mechanism in the US that would formally establish any group as a domestic terror organisation. Such efforts, they said, could face constitutional challenges under the First Amendment, which protects free speech and assembly.
Democratic lawmakers have criticised both the president’s rhetoric and the reported actions of ICE agents in the state.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said on Friday that there were “credible” reports that federal agents “may be replaying the 2020 playbook “, in a reference to federal forces being deployed in response to protests against the murder of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody.
“I urge Oregonians not to fall into Trump’s attempt to incite violence,” Wyden said.
Local lawmakers have also accused ICE of going after people who are not an actual danger to society.
“ICE has said they’re targeting people for arrest and detainment who have committed crimes. That’s what they told us. But that’s not what we are seeing,” said Democratic house representative Suzanne Bonamici on Friday.
Lawmakers cited recent incidents, including the detention of a father outside his child’s preschool and a wildland firefighter who was arrested while battling fires in the Olympic National Forest.
They also pointed to a statistic published by the Cato Institute, a US think tank based in Washington DC, which reported that 65% of people detained by ICE had no criminal convictions.
0:51Watch: National Guard arrives in Washington DC in August
Despite the backlash from Democrats, the move has drawn support from some Republican officials.
US labour secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said she had seen how “lawlessness” had turned Portland into a “crime-ridden war zone”.
In a post on X, Chavez-DeRemer, who previously served as a Republican house representative for an Oregon district, thanked Trump “for taking action to keep our ICE facilities protected and Make America Great Again”.
Earlier this year, Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles and Washington DC, and federal agents are expected to arrive in Memphis next week.
In Los Angeles, the president ordered 2,000 federal personnel to deal with unrest over raids on undocumented migrants. Clashes erupted over several days, and tear gas was used to disperse protesting crowds.
A federal judge in California ruled earlier this month that the National Guard deployment to Los Angeles was illegal, and that it violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the power of the federal government to use military force for domestic matters.
It is unclear whether the president has legal ground to deploy federal forces to Oregon.
Rosamond Press 
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