After months of watching Antifa – who has been coddled for years by the city of Portland, Oregon – besiege an ICE facility, the Trump administration has had enough.

On Saturday, the president announced on his Truth Social account that he was directing Secretary Pete Hegseth, at the request of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, to authorize troops to go to Portland in order to protect “any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” Naturally, that set off all the Democrats at the city and state level. Governor Tina Kotek, who is just the next in a long line of Democrat governors in the state (Oregon has had a Democrat governor since 1987), insisted that there was no need for federal troops to come to Portland – while at the same time begging Antifa to not do anything to prove her wrong.

Ah yes the situation is under control which is why you're having to beg terrorists not to attack the lawful authority being present https://t.co/48ea6elYcY

— Sunny (@sunnyright) September 27, 2025

Well, to no one’s surprise, the administration doesn’t believe Kotek. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth formally announced that he was authorizing 200 members of the National Guard to be on the ground for 60 days in Portland. Of course, the Oregon Attorney General announced that the state would be suing to stop that deployment, but since the Trump administration already has an ongoing court battle about the use of the National Guard in Los Angeles, with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals currently considering the case, there is nothing to lose for the administration here. Anything that Oregon files in court would eventually work its way up to the Ninth Circuit as well, so they might as well put both cases in front of the court.

Governor Kotek isn’t exactly acting like she is supremely confident in her constituents. She calls what the Trump administration is doing “an abuse of power,” but then tries to remind everyone that the National Guard are Oregon “citizen soldiers” so please be nice to them.

But before the National Guard even showed up, Kotek was out leading a protest in Portland.
https://twitter.com/nickshirleyy/status/1972448126150771110
Notice that this protest happened during the day on Sunday. By the time the evening hours approached and the sun set, the mood by the ICE facility that has been targeted for months changed as Antifa began their planned “direct action” that had been announced earlier. The governor was nowhere to be found – and neither were the snobby media, or any other elected official insisting that Portland is totally okay. Who was on the ground at night? Jounalists like Katie Daviscourt and Brandi Kruse, and Antifa, in masks, ready to pick a fight and prove the president’s point.

The real test here in Portland will come after the sun goes down. About 30 minutes from now. The only confrontations with DHS so far today have come when @ICEgov is trying to get vehicles in and out of the building. pic.twitter.com/OHdBymmajg

— Brandi Kruse (@BrandiKruse) September 29, 2025

Portland police had showed up earlier in the day, but were promptly chased off by the mob. The National Guard was not on the scene at all. As of the time of writing this post, there had been one arrest by the Portland Police Department after a fight between protesters broke out, and one arrest by federal law enforcement.
https://twitter.com/KatieDaviscourt/status/1972499465601982471
The irony of all of this hoopla over the National Guard being deployed is that the LAST time that Oregon needed the National Guard to deal with Antifa, it was former governor Kate Brown who sent them out. Why? Because it was the 2020 election, Antifa was running amok, and Brown needed to get the optics under control.

Now, of course, Governor Kotek and Mayor Keith Wilson want to be resistance heroes, so they don’t want the National Guard showing up to protect the ICE facility. Never mind that locals have asked for relief from Antifa in Portland for months. Never mind that Antifa has been wholly enabled in Portland for years. What does the safety of the city matter, when the local elected Democrats could potentially get the street cred of “owning” Trump?

The saving of Portland (if it even can be saved) is not going to be just with the arrival of the National Guard. The police are completely cowed and/or hamstrung by local officials. The court system does not charge and prosecute small crimes effectively. The state and local leaders are busy pandering to their far left base, and so long as everything looks mostly okay in the daytime, who cares what happens when the sun sets?

Sixty days won’t be enough to save Portland, but that’s likely all they will get. If Portland’s citizens, and Oregon at large, are actually sick of this, then they will have to work on saving themselves by voting in sane people who will work to protect citizens from threats like Antifa.

Featured image via coffee on Pixabay, cropped and modified, Pixabay license