Washington — A federal appeals court on Thursday extended its block of a judge’s order that directed President Trump to return control of California’s National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The unanimous order from a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is a victory for the president and allows for the continued deployment of roughly 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles, where they have been protecting federal property and U.S. immigration agents during enforcement operations.
Mr. Trump invoked a law known as Title 10 to call the Guard into federal service earlier this month in response to demonstrations against immigration raids conducted across Los Angeles. Since then, a total of roughly 4,100 National Guard troops and 700 active-duty U.S. Marines have deployed to Los Angeles.
Newsom, a Democrat, objects to the use of troops in California’s largest city and sued the president over his decision to federalize the California Guard. A federal judge, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, concluded last week that Mr. Trump’s actions were illegal and exceeded the scope of his authority.
The judge blocked the administration from deploying members of the California National Guard in Los Angeles and directed the president to return control of the troops to Newsom. His decision applied only to Mr. Trump’s deployment of the National Guard, and not the Marines.
The Trump administration swiftly appealed the decision and won a temporary stay of Breyer’s order from the 9th Circuit. It held a hearing Tuesday to consider a Justice Department request to halt the judge’s decision while the case proceeds.
The Justice Department argued that Mr. Trump properly invoked the authorities laid out in Title 10 when he federalized National Guard troops in response to the protests in Los Angeles. The law gives the president the power to call the Guard into federal service whenever “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion,” or when the president is unable to “execute the laws” of the U.S.
In his June 7 memorandum deploying members of the National Guard, Mr. Trump said the protests constituted a “form of rebellion” against the U.S.
The Justice Department further argued that courts had no role to play in reviewing the president’s directive, as the law leaves decisions of whether to call forth the National Guard to the president’s discretion. Courts, administration lawyers said, should not second-guess the commander-in-chief’s military judgments.
During arguments before the 9th Circuit, Brett Shumate, a Justice Department lawyer, warned that Breyer’s order, if left intact, risked putting federal judges “on a collision course with the commander in chief” and would put “lives and property at risk.”
But California officials argued that the Trump administration should have considered more “modest measures” to quell the demonstrations in Los Angeles before taking the “extraordinary step” of deploying the National Guard.
Sam Harbourt, a deputy solicitor general for the state, warned that the continued presence of troops on California streets would only escalate tensions and the risk of violence. Plus, he said Mr. Trump failed to adhere to the requirements of Title 10 by not consulting with Newsom before calling forth members of the California National Guard.
In his memo, Mr. Trump had directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to effectuate the federalization of the Guard. The secretary then issued memoranda to the adjutant general of the California National Guard to transfer authority over the Guard from the state to the federal government.
It had been 60 years since a president last sent in the National Guard without a request from a state’s government, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. President Lyndon B. Johnson deployed the guard to Alabama in 1965 to protect a voting rights march.
Mr. Trump said in his memo that the protests in Los Angeles threatened the security of a federal immigration detention facility in the city, as well as other government property. The demonstrations broke out earlier this month in response to the immigration raids across Los Angeles, conducted as part of Mr. Trump’s promise of mass deportations of people in the country illegally. Protests against the president’s immigration crackdown have spread to other cities.
Mr. Trump has continued to step up immigration enforcement and announced Sunday on social media that federal immigration authorities should “do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest mass deportation program in history.”
He said operations aimed at detailing and deporting migrants in the country unlawfully will expand to major cities like Chicago and New York, which are led by Democrats.
This is a breaking story; it will be updated.
