What did Donald Trump do today?

He got called "simply untethered to facts" by a federal judge he appointed.

It's not actually clear what, if anything, Donald Trump did today. He has, for the second month in a row, disappeared from all view of the public and press for five straight days—although the White House pool reporter believed she saw him once sitting inside another vehicle in his motorcade, in which case he is at least well enough to travel to and from his Virginia golf resort.

One thing that happened to him is that a federal judge, Karin Immergut, issued a ruling in which she granted city and state officials in Portland, Oregon a restraining order against his attempts to federalize the Oregon National Guard and deploy them against Americans inside that city. She wrote that even though presidents are entitled to enormous latitude where military matters are concerned, the law forbids them from this kind of domestic deployment except in cases of invasion or rebellion.

Immergut then examined Trump's various public statements calling Portland "war ravaged" and saying that "nobody's ever seen anything like" what is happening there, which in Trump's mind includes "crazy people" who "just burn the place down […] every night." None of this has actually happened. What is happening there is sporadic protest against one ICE facility, prominently featuring a man in a chicken suit. She concluded that Trump's assessment was "simply untethered to facts," no matter how generously interpreted, and so his planned invasion is unlawful.

The ruling sets a precedent that may hamper Trump's attempts to take over the Illinois National Guard and deploy it against Chicagoans, which he (or people using his authority) threatened to do this morning. Gov. J.B. Pritzker told reporters today about having received an ultimatum from Trump's Defense Department this morning.

Trump, or the people governing for him, are increasingly hostile towards the idea that courts should have any say whatsoever in holding him to the law. Before Immergut's ruling, Trump's deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller attacked the judicial system on social media, blaming "left-wing terrorism… shielded by far-left Democrat prosecutors, judges, and attorneys general." After the ruling, Miller attacked Immergut directly as party to an "organized terrorist attack" and retweeted a post saying she was "openly rebelling" against Trump's authority.

Immergut is a Trump appointee.

Why does this matter?

• There's a word for heads of state who don't have to be bound by the law or judiciary and it's not "president." 

• Presidents should not be so "untethered to the facts" that politically sympathetic judges have to call them out publicly for it. 

• Americans are not the enemy the American military fights, no matter how much Trump wants them to.