is a features editor who publishes award-winning stories about law, tech, and internet subcultures. A journalist trained as a lawyer, she has been writing about tech for 10 years.
The legal fight over whether the president can send troops into Portland, Oregon, depends on whether judges believe their own eyes or their smartphones.
Even before inception, the lawsuit has been dogged by a war on reality fueled by social media influencers, some of whom have direct lines to federal officials. At every turn, influencers and the imperatives of content creation have been an inextricable though not always visible part of the National Guard case. The influencers have broadcast their content directly to figures in the administration, they have shaped national policy around “domestic terrorism,” and they have seeped into the legal record itself.
A few weeks after President Donald Trump first began hinting he would send the National Guard into the midsize American metropolis, a Portland police sergeant wrote an irritated email about three counter-protesters at the ICE building in a southwest neighborhood of the city. The three, the police officer wrote, “continue to be a chronic source of police and medical calls at ICE. Despite repeated advice from officers to stay away from the ICE crowd, they constantly return and antagonize the protesters until they are assaulted or peppersprayed.” He complained that they “even engage in the same trespassing behavior on federal and trolley property as the main protesters.”
All three of the so-called counter-protesters were (and still are) extremely active on X, where the conflict had become their bread and butter, a perpetual content farm feeding their social media accounts. A visiting reporter for The Atlantic seemed struck by the ritualized performance on site, as protesters and counter-protesters alike whipped out their phones to film each other. “They all seem to know each other, like high-school sports rivals,” Isaac Stanley-Becker wrote. “Theirs is a social-media beef come to life.” But by the end of September, it was manifestly clear that their content had become fuel for the White House’s strange and expansive war against anti-fascism — Trump’s anti-anti-fascist agenda, if you will. On September 28th, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo mobilizing the National Guard into Portland. The city and the state sued immediately.
What was the National Guard supposed to do about internet posts?
From the get-go, the lawsuit has been marked by a struggle over what is real and what is Online. During oral arguments in State of Oregon v. Trump, District Court Judge Karin Immergut sided with what could mostly be considered actual reality. She was perplexed, for instance, when the attorney for the Justice Department argued that National Guard troops were justified in Portland because of the “doxing” of ICE officers and clashes between protesters and counter-protesters. The counter-protesters weren’t federal employees, she pointed out. And what was the National Guard supposed to do about internet posts?
The Ninth Circuit panel, which issued a decision staying the temporary restraining order by Immergut, seemed more fixated on Online. Its ruling brought back massive chunks of evidence that the lower court had deemed to be beside the point — incidents dating back to June, the “doxing” of ICE agents on the internet, and an incident involving a “journalist” (who is called a “counter protester” in Portland Police Bureau records, and whose activities consist mainly of posting for 11,000 followers on X and 1,900 on TikTok) being attacked by a “black blocker.”
Perhaps more alarmingly, the Ninth Circuit opinion is fixated on a period of time from June to July that coincides with the earliest No Kings protests, a time period that the lower court judge thought too far from Trump’s mobilization order to be worth considering.
The appeals court’s decision was published on October 20th, the Monday after nationwide No Kings protests that the organizers estimate drew 7 million people. Portland itself saw a turnout several times larger than the massive protests in June, with crowds full of people in inflatable costumes.
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