Title: President Trump's National Guard Plans

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. As you've been hearing in the news, President Trump has ordered National Guard troops into Portland and Chicago, saying they're needed to protect federal officials from violent unrest, but state and local leaders in the two places say that threat doesn't exist and that the president is overstepping his authority. Over the weekend, a federal judge in Oregon appointed by Trump blocked the deployment twice on the grounds that the president's claim were "untethered to the facts" and violated state sovereignty.

Within hours, the administration tried to get around that order by sending Guard members from California and Texas rather than Oregon itself instead. Now, California and Oregon are back in court, arguing the move defies the Constitution and the judge's direct orders. In Chicago, Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois has condemned what he calls "Trump's invasion." We'll get the latest now from Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs reporter at POLITICO. Kyle, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Kyle Cheney: Good to be with you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Kyle, as we speak this morning, are there National Guard troops on the ground in Portland or Chicago?

Kyle Cheney: Our understanding is there are troops on the ground in Portland, at least a couple hundred that were brought in from California before the judge entered her order late Sunday last night, saying that that was illegal. We don't know if they're actually performing any work, and presumably, now they're not, given the judge's order, as long as they're adhering to that, but they were at least en route, if not already in Portland, when that hearing happened last night.

Brian Lehrer: What exactly did President Trump order, and what reason did he give for sending these troops as specifically as he tried to argue it?

Kyle Cheney: Sure. President Trump, basically on Truth Social, authorized this on his social media site. He said there's such rampant daily violence in Portland outside ICE facilities and blocking our ICE officials from doing their jobs, that we need military intervention. That defied the reality on the ground. There was just no evidence that the protests there had gotten so great that they were impeding ICE's ability to do its work. Even if that was true a few months ago, that didn't seem to be what was happening at the time the president posted about it, and the police had had things well in hand.

That's why the judge said, "Hold on, this doesn't meet reality. This is untethered to the facts because it's just not what anyone is seeing, including the police who issued sworn statements about it.

Brian Lehrer: This is Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee who used those words that you just cited, and I cited in the intro, that Trump's claims were "untethered to the facts." Did she cite any specific evidence in reaching that conclusion?

Kyle Cheney: Sure. The evidence she had in front of her, which, again, the Trump administration had every opportunity to present its own evidence to the contrary, but came from the Portland police and Portland officials who said, "Look, the protests had been, maybe 20 people roughly daily, 20 people outside ICE facilities in September in the lead up to Trump's social media posts." There had been some larger protests weeks and months earlier, and that may have formed the impression Trump had in his mind, but certainly, the reality on the ground at the time Trump issued his call-up order was not that.

It was not this daily violence that police could not handle, and that's what the judge said was there's nothing in the record here that suggests the police can't do this. In fact, the opposite. They're showing how well they're working with their partners and state officials, state police, everyone, to keep these things contained, the protests contained.

Brian Lehrer: Judge Immergut also warned that Trump's actions risk "plunging the nation into an unconstitutional form of military rule." Strong words from a Trump appointee. He can't turn around in this case and say, "Oh, it's an Obama judge. It's a Biden judge." What has he said in response to his own appointee from the bench?

Kyle Cheney: That's what's remarkable here is he said, "I guess I got bad advice when I appointed her." He's groused before about maybe the people who told me who to appoint to the bench gave me bad advice, not just in this case, but in other cases. That's where he went here. He said, "I guess whoever told me to appoint this person gave me bad information."

Brian Lehrer: Governor Gavin Newsom of California called it a "breathtaking abuse of the law and power." Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, obviously, they're both Democrats, described it as "Trump's invasion." Strong words all around. After Judge Immergut's ruling, the administration, barred from sending Oregon National Guard troops to Portland or Illinois National Guard troops to Chicago, sent troops from California and Texas instead. What's the legal argument for doing that?

Kyle Cheney: It's a bit strained. The judge, this is why she sounded off last night, was they said, basically, "Well, we had already called up the California troops for Los Angeles, so they were already in federal service, so we just steered them to Portland instead." As for the Texas Guard troops, they said, "Well, look, Governor Abbott agreed. We're in partnership, essentially, with Governor Abbott to use Texas National Guard troops for whatever purposes we may need them for." The judge didn't like that, because her order wasn't just that, "Oh, you can't use Oregon troops, but you can use some other troops."

There is no basis, no factual or legal basis to send federalized troops into Portland at all. Even though her original order was really steered toward the Oregon troops, the logic behind it extended much more broadly, so she expanded her order last night to cover all those out-of-state Guard troops, too. Just saying, "There's just no rational reason for this." She really said, "You essentially defied my order."

Brian Lehrer: What is the status of mobilizing those troops then?

Kyle Cheney: They're blocked now. Now, the administration is going to appeal that quickly. They asked her to stay her order to get a chance to get an appeals court order lifting her order, but she rejected that. As of now, those troops are blocked. I expect the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to weigh in at some point, possibly today, to decide whether that block will continue or not.

Brian Lehrer: At least we can say that the Trump administration is following the court's orders and not trying to take that step that many people have wondered whether he might take over one thing or another. Arguably, he may have taken it over some immigration rulings, deportation rulings, but with respect to this, he's not saying, "Take your wrong rulings and put them wherever. I'm doing this."

Kyle Cheney: This may be the closest we've gotten aside from the deportation rulings you mentioned, because the judge here said, "You tried to get around my order. My order, yes, maybe technically, it was only about Oregon troops, but you understood what I meant. There was no basis to send troops here. So you're going to send California troops in basically to do the same job you were going to have the Oregon troops do that I said was illegal?" She came as close as any judge by saying, "You outright defied me," at least since the Alien Enemies Act rulings from back in the spring, which were, as you mentioned, those deportation orders. This is right up to that line, if not over that line, in a way we haven't seen very much.

Brian Lehrer: What are the people of Chicago and Portland think about this? I'm going to take a call, actually, from David in Englewood, who is in Englewood, New Jersey now, but says he grew up in Chicago, and I think maybe sympathetic to what President Trump is at least trying to do. David, you're on WNYC. Hi there. Did I get that roughly right?

David: Yes. I grew up in Chicago until I was 36 years old, went to public school there, went to the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Northwestern for grad school, and my brother still lives on the South Side. First of all, I just want to point out, judges, even though one president may have, and you know this, Brian, may appoint a judge, oftentimes, it's the senators of that state that decide which judge will actually be appointed. Even though Trump may have appointed this judge, it oftentimes, as it happens in New York, if the senators say no, then that judge is not going to be appointed. It's called a blue slip, I think.

Anyway, my main point is that Chicago is a mess, okay? I was there for my high school reunion two years ago. I was there this past February. There are whole swaths of Chicago that I know like the back of my hand that I am simply told, "Do not go there." Governor Pritzker, what I call a trust fund baby from the Pritzker family, he gets on TV and walks down the street and says, "Oh, it's so safe." Well, you know where he's walking? He lives on the Gold Coast, which is right by Oak Street Beach. He's walking on Oak Street Beach with bodyguards. I have a specific place. I challenge any of these politicians, including the mayor. My old neighborhood, 79th in Essex. Go there at nine o'clock at night with no bodyguards.

Brian Lehrer: David, let me jump in and ask you a follow-up question. I'm jumping in for time. Regardless of the perceptions of crime in Chicago, does it concern you that the president would try to usurp the authority of the governor and the mayor and presumably the will of the people of the city because they were elected by them to insert National Guard troops from Texas, let's say, over what appears to be the will of the people in Chicago itself?

David: Yes, that does bother me. At the same time, the media is not giving the people that watch the so-called mainstream media the true picture of crime. Chicago has dozens, sometimes over 50 people, shot on any weekend. I'm not talking about a holiday weekend. This is just ignored, so it's not safe. The mayor has less than 10% approval rating. My friends that still live there, they can't wait to get rid of this guy. None of his policies, fiscal or crime-fighting, have worked.

Brian Lehrer: David, thank you for your call. Kyle, you're a legal analyst. I don't know if you can follow up on that with any Chicago-specific reporting. He talks about different media. I watch everything and consume a lot of stuff online. I know that on Fox News, they have any number of people, including Black people, to the extent that that matters, I think they're trying to make a point with who they bring on, who will go on Fox and say things similar to what the caller David just said and say they want the federal government to do something because the city isn't doing it. Do you have any sense of how much of that there is, how divided the population may be on that?

Kyle Cheney: Sure. Look, I think there's polling that suggests that people agree that crime is a problem, that even though a lot of city and state leaders keep saying, "Well, the numbers show violent crime is declining, it's been declining since the pandemic." That's not really the reality for a lot of people in their real life. There's a distinct issue about people's view of crime and whether they want the government to do more to prevent crime, especially violent crime, and the use of the military in that context, which is a distinct issue and where we're getting into much larger questions about the role of, again, the military in civilian life and the hard line between those things.

Even David, the caller, said he had some concerns about the usurping of state and local authority to do that, despite his concerns about crime. I think that's why those are two distinct issues that I guess I think the White House wants to blend together. Really, I think most people see them as different issues.

Brian Lehrer: A text from a listener says, "I'm also a born Chicago South Sider, and I completely disagree with this caller," referring to the caller we just had on. "Chicago is not a mess, and this is total BS. Chicago is actually much more functional now than it was in the 1980s and '90s. Does Pritzker live in the Gold Coast or in Kenwood on the South Side? Crime is also way down on the South Side compared to the 1980s and 1990s." A different Chicago listener with that comparative take. Now, the state of Illinois has gone to court over this deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago, or attempting the deployment of National Guard from out of state to Chicago.

There are multiple states now in court against Trump. Do you expect this to wind up at the Supreme Court? If so, how quickly?

Kyle Cheney: I think it could very easily. California's lawsuit over the deployment to Los Angeles has already gone to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which actually also oversees Oregon, too. I expect those to be rolled together at some point. Once the Ninth Circuit rules on at least some of the preliminary issues about the deployment, that could end up at the Supreme Court very fast. Illinois, I expect a judge to handle that case very quickly. We've seen judges, Immergut, got that case a couple of days before she ruled, so judges are taking this very urgently. I expect an Illinois judge will act, and that could go to the appeals court within a day if a judge rules particularly against the administration.

It hasn't reached the Supreme Court yet, but I think it could happen within weeks, if not sooner.

Brian Lehrer: Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs reporter for POLITICO, we always appreciate when you come on with us. Thank you.

Kyle Cheney: Glad to be here. Thanks so much.

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