Judges challenge arguments against deploying troops in Portland, Oregon

Concrete barricades and security fencing surrounds the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago on Wednesday morning, Oct. 8, 2025. National Guard troops from Texas and Illinois are expected to be deployed in the Chicago area on Wednesday over the fierce objections of state and local officials, who have gone to court to fight the moves. (Jamie Kelter Davis/The New York Times)

By ANNA GRIFFIN, MITCH SMITH, MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ and SOUMYA KARLAMANGLA

Lawyers for two states trying to stop President Donald Trump from deploying National Guard units within their borders argued in federal court Thursday that the president shouldn’t be allowed to send in the troops based on claims that they described as untethered from reality.

“There is no rebellion in Illinois,” said Christopher Wells, a lawyer for the state, countering the Trump administration’s arguments that demonstrations against federal immigration enforcement in Chicago amounted to insurrection. In that case and one from Oregon, Trump lawyers cited examples of what they called violent attacks on federal agents, with Eric McArthur, a deputy attorney general, claiming that Portland protesters were “violent people.”

The arguments came in high-stakes legal hearings over troop deployments that played out simultaneously in Chicago and on the West Coast, with the Trump administration lawyers asserting that protests against immigration enforcement had grown violent enough to warrant the president’s actions — which they said couldn’t be blocked by the courts anyway.

In the Oregon case, two Trump-appointed judges on an appeals court panel pushed back against state arguments that the protests outside of a federal immigration facility in Portland had remained mostly peaceful, pointing back to tense confrontations in June. A judge in the Chicago case questioned whether troops there would be limited in their mission, or if its scope would broaden beyond protecting federal agents and facilities, as local officials fear.

The cases have far-ranging implications for the use of military power on U.S. soil. It’s not clear when either the three-judge appellate panel or the federal judge in Chicago will rule.

Here’s what else to know:

— Oklahoma governor speaks out: Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican and the chair of the National Governors Association, criticized the deployment of Texas National Guard troops to Illinois as a violation of his beliefs in federalism and “states’ rights.” It was the first time a Republican governor has questioned the interstate deployment of National Guard troops over a governor’s objections.

— By the numbers: About 300 Illinois National Guard troops and 200 Texas troops have been activated for federal duty in Illinois. A spokesperson for U.S. Northern Command said that some of the Texas troops had started “actively protecting federal personnel and property,” without specifying where.

— Asleep in Chicago: Officials in Broadview said about 45 members of the Texas National Guard slept in vans outside of the center last night, when they were reported to have been deployed. “We let them sleep undisturbed,” Broadview officials said in a statement. “We hope that they will extend the same courtesy in the coming days to Broadview residents.”