PORTLAND, OR — U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut was forced to once again explain to President Donald Trump that the Constitution is not actually a suggestion box, blocking his attempt to deploy the National Guard to Portland over what he called a "rebellion" but what most observers identified as "some protests outside a building."
Judge Immergut, whom Trump himself appointed in 2019—presumably during a brief period when he accidentally hired someone who had read the Constitution—granted a temporary restraining order on Saturday, effectively putting the deployment on timeout until October 17th, when she'll be forced to use her outdoor voice again.
"This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs," Immergut wrote in her ruling, which sources confirm she considered typing in Comic Sans to see if that would help it stick this time.
The Trump administration had argued that protests outside an ICE facility constituted a "rebellion," a legal threshold typically reserved for actual armed insurrections and not "people holding signs we don't like." Legal experts noted that if this logic held, every Black Friday at Walmart would require martial law.
The judge patiently noted that Portland's police force of 812 officers—all trained in crowd management and that pesky First Amendment thing—might be capable of handling the situation without resorting to deploying military forces like Portland is Fallujah and these protesters are armed with anything more dangerous than oat milk lattes and Patagonia vests.
Trump, displaying the gracious temperament of a toddler whose iPad was taken away, criticized the judge on Sunday morning—his own appointee, no less—apparently forgetting that he picked her specifically because she was supposed to be on his team.
At press time, White House aides were reportedly considering purchasing the president a laminated pocket Constitution, though sources indicate he would likely use it as a coaster.
