California Governor Gavin Newsom has said that United States President Donald Trump is sending 300 California National Guard members to Oregon, after a judge temporarily blocked his administration from deploying that state’s guard to Portland, Oregon.

Newsom, a Democrat, called the deployment on Sunday “a breathtaking abuse of the law and power” and pledged to fight the move in court.

He said these troops were “federalised” and put under the president’s control months ago over his objections, in response to unrest in Los Angeles.

“The commander-in-chief is using the US military as a political weapon against American citizens,” Newsom said in the statement. “We will take this fight to court, but the public cannot stay silent in the face of such reckless and authoritarian conduct by the president of the United States.”

There was no official announcement from Washington, just as was the case when the governor of Illinois made a similar announcement on Saturday about troops in his state being activated.

Oregon’s Attorney General Dan Rayfield announced later on Sunday that the states of Oregon and California, together with the city of Portland, were launching a new joint legal challenge to what he called “the unlawful deployment of California National Guard troops to Oregon”.

The new legal action comes after a Trump-appointed federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plan to deploy the Oregon National Guard in Portland to protect federal property amid protests on Saturday, after Trump called the city “war-ravaged”.

US District Judge Karin Immergut, who was appointed by Trump during the president’s first term, said the relatively small protests the city has seen did not justify the use of federalised forces and that allowing the deployment could harm Oregon’s state sovereignty.

“This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” Immergut wrote. She later said: “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law.”

Growing federal intervention

The deployment of national guards to Portland, Oregon, would mark the latest escalation of Trump’s use of federal intervention in Democrat-led cities, which he describes as being rife with crime.

Since the start of his second term, Trump has sent or discussed sending troops to 10 cities, including Baltimore, Maryland; Memphis, Tennessee; the District of Columbia; New Orleans, Louisiana; and the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Trump deployed guard soldiers and active-duty Marines in Los Angeles during the summer over the objections of Newsom, who sued and won a temporary block after a federal judge found the president’s use of the guard was likely unlawful.

National Guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington, DC, in August started carrying firearms and were authorised to use force “as a last resort”.

On Saturday, Trump authorised the deployment of 300 Illinois National Guard troops to protect federal officers and assets in Chicago.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed the president authorised the use of the Illinois National Guard members, citing what she called “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” that local leaders have not quelled.

Trump has characterised both Portland and Chicago as cities rife with crime and unrest, calling Portland a “war zone” and suggesting apocalyptic force was needed to quell problems in Chicago.

Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday also described Chicago as “a war zone” as she defended the decision to send troops into the nation’s third-largest city on Fox News.

But Illinois Governor JB Pritzker told CNN’s State of the Union show on Sunday that the Trump administration was aiming to sow “mayhem on the ground”.

“They want to create the war zone so that they can send in even more troops,” he said. “They need to get the heck out.”

Despite the Trump administration’s claims, crime in some of the biggest US cities has actually decreased recently, with New Orleans seeing a particularly steep drop in 2025 that has it on pace for the lowest number of killings in over five decades.