Pentagon calls up 200 NG troops after Trump Portland announcement

 

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday ordered 200 Oregon National Guard troops to be deployed under federal authority while the state filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump's move to send military forces into the Democratic-run city of Portland.

The Republican president on Saturday announced plans to send troops into Portland, saying they would be used to protect federal immigration facilities against "domestic terrorists" and that he was authorizing them to use "full force, if necessary."

Trump's deployments of military forces into other municipalities led by Democrats, including Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., have spurred legal challenges and protests.

Oregon's suit was filed against Trump, Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in federal court in Portland on Sunday by Democratic Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield. The suit accused Trump of exceeding his powers.

"Citing nothing more than baseless, wildly hyperbolic pretext - the President says Portland is a 'War ravaged' city 'under siege' from 'domestic terrorists.' Defendants have thus infringed on Oregon's sovereign power to manage its own law enforcement activity and National Guard resource," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit stated that protests against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in Portland have been small and relatively contained since June.

Trump's planned deployment caught many at the Pentagon by surprise, six U.S. officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. On Sunday, Hegseth signed a memo ordering 200 Oregon National Guard troops deployed under federal authority. The memo was made public as an attachment to Oregon's lawsuit.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"Sending in 200 National Guard troops to guard a single building is not normal," Rayfield said in a statement, apparently referring to an ICE facility.

Violent crime in Portland has dropped in the first six months of 2025, according to preliminary data released by the Major Cities Chiefs Association in its Midyear Violent Crime Report. Homicides fell by 51% compared to the same period a year earlier, according to these statistics.

Since returning to the presidency in January, Trump has made crime a major focus of his administration even as violent crime rates have fallen in many U.S. cities.

In 2020, protests erupted in downtown Portland, the Pacific Northwest enclave with a reputation as a liberal city, following the killing in Minneapolis of a Black man named George Floyd by a white police officer. The protests dragged on for months, and some civic leaders at the time said they were spurred rather than quelled by Trump's deployment of federal troops.

It was unclear whether Trump's warning that U.S. troops could use "full force" on the streets of Portland meant he was somehow authorizing lethal force and, if so, under what conditions. U.S. troops are able to use force in self-defense on domestic U.S. deployments.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, like other Oregon officials, learned of Trump's order from social media on Saturday.

Many in Trump's own Pentagon were caught off guard.

"It was a bolt from the blue," one of the U.S. officials said, adding that the military was previously focused on carrying out prudent planning for potential deployments of troops by Trump into cities such as Chicago and Memphis.

There have been growing tensions in major U.S. cities over Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown days after a shooting targeting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas left one detainee dead and two others seriously wounded.

Hungary's Orban says Ukraine is 'not sovereign' as drone row deepens

Hungary's Viktor Orban said on Monday that Ukraine was not a sovereign country, as he hit back at accusations that Hungarian reconnaissance drones violated its airspace - the latest salvo in an increasingly bitter row between Kyiv and Budapest.

"Ukraine is not at war with Hungary; it is at war with Russia. It should be concerned with the drones on its eastern border," the Hungarian prime minister said during an interview on a right-wing podcast popular with his supporters.

"I believe my ministers, but let's say it would have actually flown a few metres there, so what? Ukraine is not an independent country. Ukraine is not a sovereign country, Ukraine is financed by us, the West gives it funds, weapons," Orban said.

In contrast to most NATO and European Union leaders, Orban has maintained cordial relations with Russia while questioning the logic of Western military aid for Kyiv, a stance which has frequently put him at loggerheads with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

On Friday, Zelenskiy said that reconnaissance drones that violated Ukraine's airspace could have flown from Hungary to check the industrial potential of western border areas.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto rejected the accusation, saying that Zelenskiy was "losing his mind".

In a further sign of deepening tensions between the countries, Hungary said on Monday it was blocking access to 12 Ukrainian news sites after a similar move by Kyiv.

Earlier this month, Ukraine blocked various websites deemed to contain pro-Russian views at the request of the security services. They included eight Hungarian-language portals, among them a popular pro-government news site origo.hu.

There was no immediate comment on Monday from Ukraine.

 

Authorities on Monday were working to determine why an ex-Marine drove his pickup truck into a Michigan church during a Sunday service, opened fire and set the building ablaze, killing at least four people before he died in a shootout with police.

Hundreds of worshippers were inside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan, when the suspect rammed his pickup truck into the front doors on Sunday morning, officials said. Two victims were shot to death, and two other bodies were discovered hours later in the rubble of the church, which officials said was deliberately set on fire.

Officials warned late on Sunday that some people remained unaccounted for, and that more bodies could yet be found as investigators sifted through the burned-out ruins of the building. At least eight people were wounded.

NO MOTIVE OFFERED BY AUTHORITIES

On Monday, a man drove a car through a barricade that had been set up near the church, CNN reported. The driver was taken into custody, and his identity and intent were not immediately clear, the network said.

The suspect in the shooting was identified as Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, from the nearby town of Burton. U.S. military records show Sanford was an Iraq War veteran who served in the Marine Corps from 2004 to 2008.

Authorities did not offer a possible motive, saying they would search the suspect's home and phone. Grand Blanc Township, a suburb of Flint with a population around 40,000, is about 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Detroit.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" program that she spoke with FBI Director Kash Patel on Monday about the attack.

"All they know right now is this was an individual who hated people of the Mormon faith, and they are trying to understand more about this, how premeditated it was, how much planning went into it, whether he left a note," she said, using a common term for the church.

Leavitt said the shooter's family was cooperating with the FBI.

A city council candidate in nearby Burton told the Detroit Free Press that he had spoken with Sanford about a week ago, and that the suspect described members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as "the antichrist."

The candidate, Kris Johns, told the newspaper that the two men did not discuss politics, but that he saw a campaign sign for President Donald Trump on the suspect's fence. An image from Google Maps also shows a Trump sign at an address listed online as the suspect's residence.

SPATE OF MASS SHOOTINGS

The Michigan violence came a month after a gunman fired through the stained-glass windows of a Catholic church in Minneapolis, killing two children and wounding 17 other people.

Sunday's assault marked the 324th mass shooting in the U.S. in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks shootings in which four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.

Coincidentally, another 40-year-old Marine veteran who served in Iraq is a suspect in a North Carolina shooting that killed three people and wounded five others less than 14 hours before the Michigan incident.

Police in Southport, North Carolina, accused Nigel Max Edge of firing on a waterfront bar from a boat on Saturday night. Edge has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder, police said.

A federal lawsuit that Edge had filed against the U.S. government and others described him as a decorated Marine who suffered severe wounds, including traumatic brain injury, in Iraq. The lawsuit, which was dismissed, showed Edge was previously known as Sean William DeBevoise before changing his name.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based in Utah, follows the teachings of Jesus but also the prophecies of Joseph Smith, a 19th-century American. It is informally known as the Mormon Church, a term that its leadership discourages.

"Places of worship are meant to be sanctuaries of peacemaking, prayer and connection," Doug Andersen, a church spokesman, said in a statement. "We pray for peace and healing for all involved."