Appeals court lets Trump keep control of National Guard troops deployed to LA

An appeals court issued a ruling on Thursday evening allowing President Donald Trump to retain control of National Guard troops he sent to Los Angeles in response to protests over immigration raids.

The decision halts a ruling from a lower court judge who found Trump acted illegally when he activated the soldiers over opposition from California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Trump earlier this month federalized the California National Guard, deploying more than 4,000 troops to Los Angeles to respond to large-scale demonstrations over immigration enforcement efforts.

The administration made those moves without the consent or request of Newsom; the Democratic governor later sued, requesting a temporary restraining order to halt the National Guard troops from being used to enforce immigration or civil laws in the state.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer granted a restraining order last week, putting Newsom back in control of the Guard and calling Trump’s actions “illegal.”

But lawyers for the Trump administration appealed, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked Breyer’s ruling.

During Tuesday’s hearing before the three-judge panel, Brett Shumate, an attorney for the Trump administration, told the judges that the National Guard is needed to protect federal buildings and agents in Los Angeles amid “ongoing violence.”

Without the Guard, Shumate argued, properties and people would be at risk.

Shumate also argued that the courts do not have a role in reviewing Trump’s order federalizing the National Guard.

Meanwhile, Samuel Harbourt, who represented California, said a further pause of Breyer’s ruling would “profoundly injure the state of California and our nation more generally (because) it would allow defendents to continue diverting thousands of guardsmen away from critical work at the state level, including wildfire prevention and drug interdiction.”

He also argued that continued federalization of the National Guard escalates tensions and risks violence in Los Angeles.

“The president has not even attempted, defendants have made no attempt whatsoever, to provide argument or evidence that they even contemplated more modest measures to the extreme response of calling in the National Guard and militarizing the situation,” Harbourt, a supervising deputy solicitor general for the California Department of Justice, said.

The National Guard hasn’t been activated without a governor’s permission since 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Tuesday’s appeals hearing was remote and lasted for just over an hour. Two of the judges on the panel were appointed by Trump; the third by former President Joe Biden.

The deployment was the first by a president of a state National Guard without the governor’s permission since 1965.

The court case could have wider implications on the president’s power to deploy soldiers within the United States after Trump directed immigration officials to prioritize deportations from other Democratic-run cities.