###

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

###

President Donald Trump is deploying 300 California National Guard troops to Portland, Ore. after a federal judge temporarily denied Trump the ability to federalize the Oregon National Guard, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday. The governor said he will sue the federal government to halt the deployment.“The commander-in-chief is using the U.S. military as a political weapon against American citizens. 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,” said Newsom in a press release.Spokespeople for Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta did not immediately reply to emailed questions about when the suit would be filed or what it would argue.

The dynamic is highly unusual, in no small part because Trump is essentially pulling troops from one state that has opposed his use of the National Guard to another state where political leaders also reject Trump’s moves.

Trump claims he needs to deploy federalized troops because the city of Portland is under siege by protesters opposing the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement actions, but Karin Immergut, a federal judge in Oregon, wrote in her ruling Saturday that protests there are “not significantly violent or disruptive” to justify Trump’s use of Oregon’s National Guard. Immergut, a Trump appointee, issued her decision as part of a temporary restraining order against the federal government after the state of Oregon and city of Portland sued the Trump administration last week.

Protesters there set up “a makeshift guillotine to intimidate federal officials” while other protesters flashed bright lights into the eyes of federal officials driving, Immegut summarized. “These incidents are inexcusable, but they are nowhere near the type of incidents that cannot be handled by regular law enforcement forces,” Immergut wrote.The Trump administration on Sunday appealed that decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.California sued Trump in June after the president ultimately federalized 4,000 of the state’s National Guard troops to protect federal property and provide support for federal immigration law enforcement officers after protests across Los Angeles County erupted over immigration sweeps.

A district judge, appointed by a Democrat, sided with Newsom by issuing a temporary restraining order against Trump’s use of the National Guard in June. But a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked that decision, giving Trump control of the federal troops again.

Trump has characterized Portland and other Democratic-run cities as dangerous, high-crime zones and last week told a gathering of U.S. generals that the military should “use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”