A Federal Judge Shows How the Courts Should Deal With Trump’s Lies

The administration replied that the president had “determined” that Portland met §12406’s criteria and that courts must defer to that determination. This was not a new strategy. In Newsom v. Trump, California Governor Gavin Newsom’s lawsuit against Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard, Judge Charles Breyer had considered the same issue and found Trump’s invocation of the statute legally defective. But the Ninth Circuit reversed him, declaring that presidential determinations under §12406 deserved a “highly deferential” standard of review—without explaining what that meant.

Immergut inherited that fuzzy command and met it with clarity, modesty, and backbone. Her opinion is a model of calm judicial courage.

First, she dismantled the factual predicate. The record, she wrote, showed that protests at the Portland ICE facility were “not significantly violent or disruptive.” They were small, scattered, and far from the “rebellion” Trump described. Oregon’s Tenth Amendment and statutory claims succeeded because, on any fair reading, Trump’s actions had no legal or factual foundation.