For weeks, the Trump administration hung its embattled effort to deploy the military to Portland on a particular federal law. The statute, Title 10, Section 12406 of the U.S. Code, sets conditions under which the president may take command of a state’s National Guard—conditions which have been satisfied, according to the feds, by ongoing demonstrations outside the city’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.

In a significant ruling Friday evening, a federal judge flatly disagreed.

After a series of temporary interventions that for more than a month now have blocked the deployment and kept the federalized troops holed up on bases outside Portland, the latest order marks a final judgment in State of Oregon v. Trump , a case that hinged on the president’s power to use militar

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