Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield is hitting back against President Donald Trump by suing the Trump administration to prevent the POTUS from sending Oregon National Guard troops into the city of Portland. Rayfield — along with Governor Tina Kotek — refutes Trump’s assertion that the Rose City is “war-ravaged” and dangerous, and in need of federal military policing help.
Over the weekend, Trump said he invoked Title 10 and ordered the troops into Portland, claiming on Truth Social that the move was necessary to help protect ICE facilities from “antifa” and what he characterized as domestic terrorists who are protesting ICE activity in the state.
(Trump made similar claims when sending troops to Los Angeles this summer against the wishes of California Governor Gavin Newsom, with the President later saying that his actions “saved” the city. Washington, DC, has seen a similar deployment against the wishes of its top elected officials.)
Rayfield told NPR: “We live in a country where you don’t mobilize the United States military against its own citizens, except under extreme conditions, like rebellion and insurrection. And those facts just aren’t manifesting themselves here on the ground. We all care about public safety – credibly important. But we have a local police – the Oregon State Police – and a district attorney that is upholding our laws.”
(NOTE: The Posse Comitatus Act, enacted in 1878, makes it illegal to use federal troops for domestic policing under normal circumstances.)
In the video below, Rayfield asserts that “a hallmark” of Trump is that “he just says things. He says absurd things. Things that aren’t based in reality.”
Noting Trump’s desire to transform Alcatraz, a national park, back into a prison, Rayfield says: “These are the type of absurd things that come out of his mouth. It’s just as absurd with ‘war-torn’ Portland.”
Rayfield says that if Trump were sincere, he’d take a different approach and “pick up the phone and work toward collaboration, finding out what resources a community actually needs.”
Oregon AG Rayfield: If you really wanted public safety, you wouldn’t threaten to send the United States military into any city.
What you’d do is pick up the phone and work toward collaboration—finding out what resources a community actually needs.
I know for a fact, from… pic.twitter.com/ndaJRlxP0g
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 28, 2025
Trump’s Oregon move was anticipated — in the Oval Office on September 19, Trump said: “Have you seen what’s going on in Portland? This has been going on for years. They’re just people out of control and crazy — we’re going to stop that very soon.”
Having had time to prepare, Kotek and Rayfield swiftly sued in response to stop the deployment, with the State of Oregon and the City of Portland as plaintiffs in filing for a temporary restraining order in the District Court of Oregon.
“The president is either purposefully ignoring the reality on the ground in Portland to score political points, or at best, is recklessly relying upon social media gossip,” Rayfield said, referring to suggestions that Trump is responding to right-wing rabble-rousers misleading him about Portland — and also credulously looking at old video featuring more contentious protests rather than at the current “reality on the ground.”
Noting that the Oregon National Guard is made up of citizen-soldiers, and “our friends and neighbors” and fellow Oregonians, Gov. Kotek said: “Putting our own military on our streets is an abuse of power and a disservice to our communities and our service members, regardless of who is directing their deployment.”