At a hearing in a federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, a DOJ attorney defended the president’s federalization of 200 guardsmen. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton said that the president has met the conditions of 10 U.S.C. 12406, having made a proper determination that Portland has become so violent that “regular forces cannot execute the laws of the United States.”
Which determination would that be? “The most important determination is reflected in posts he made on Truth Social,” Hamilton told Judge Karin J. Immergut, specifying posts made on September 27 and October 1, where the president called Portland a “war zone” occupied by “domestic terrorists.”
Scott Kennedy, representing the state of Oregon, called the president’s posts “vague, incendiary hyperbole that lacks a good faith assessment of the facts,” saying they simply did not line up with the reality of what was happening on the ground.
