The waiting game continues in Portland and nationally as the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals weighs legal arguments over whether President Donald Trump can legally send National Guard troops to the city.
There’s no deadline on the court’s ruling, though judges expressed skepticism of Oregon Judge Karin J. Immergut’s earlier decision to block the troop deployment during oral arguments Thursday. A decision could come as early as next week.
Here’s what we know.
Courts may not have the last word on troop deployment
Legal experts tell The Oregonian/OregonLive that the 9th Circuit’s decision may not ultimately matter. President Donald Trump could end-run the courts by invoking the Insurrection Act.
The 200-plus year-old federal law gives the president sweeping powers to not only deploy the National Guard, but mobilize the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force to enforce federal laws and tamp down on violent crime throughout the entire city, experts told the newsroom.
Trump hasn’t pulled that trigger yet, but if he does, he will face a much lower bar than the current legal route, those experts said. The act states that any move to send the military into cities to suppress rebellions, violence or insurrections is up to the president’s discretion “as he considers necessary.”
The tone and tenor of protests has changed
In this wait-and-see moment, the tone and tenor of the protests outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in South Portland have markedly changed.
To be sure, long-time protesters continue to harangue federal officials, as they have since demonstrations first heated up in June. Tensions are often high between right-wing and left-wing groups. Portland police monitor from a wary distance and occasionally wade in to make arrests. Federal police walk out of the facility by the dozens, standing stone-faced as vehicles come and go from the building.
But the federal agents appeared this week to have scaled back their tactics, engaging with protesters in a less aggressive way since Wednesday. Protesters, meanwhile, have started showing up in costume in ever greater numbers, prompting late-night TV hosts and others to mock Trump’s description of Portland as a war-ravaged city.
The atmospheric juxtapositions were never more evident than Friday evening, when a red carpet was rolled out about 7p.m. on the sidewalk kitty corner from the federal building, and an actual wedding took place.
War-ravaged? Huh?
The incendiary rhetoric that federal elected officials have been hurling about “bombed out,” “war ravaged,” “hell-hole” Portland has residents fielding calls and messages from people afar wondering, “Are you okay?”
The Oregonian/OregonLive sent a reporter around town Thursday to gather impressions from locals on how the protests are impacting their daily lives and what they’d like outsiders to know about life here.
The response, perhaps predictably, was a collective shrug, coupled with some outrage about how their hometown is being mis-portrayed by federal officials, social-media personalities and at times, national media outlets.
Residents variously described Portland as “community-oriented,” “egalitarian” and “peaceful.” They said they’d been mentally and emotionally impacted by the protests and sympathized with those living near the ICE building. But they scoffed at the portrayal of the city by politicians.
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