When US President Donald Trump’s plan to deploy National Guard troops to Portland hit a major snag at the weekend, it did so at the hands of one of his own judicial nominees.

“This is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law,” Judge Karin Immergut, 64, wrote in an order on Saturday in rejecting the administration’s claims that it needed military support to protect federal property and enforce immigration law, what she called an “extraordinary measure”.

Arguments made by Trump’s Justice Department, she continued, “risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power – to the detriment of this nation”.

Hours earlier, after a Friday hearing before Immergut, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who is the architect of Trump’s push to deploy United States soldi

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