Late Thursday night, a federal appeals court briefly overturned a judge’s decision that had stopped the Trump administration from sending California National Guard members to Los Angeles. The court told President Trump to give control back to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The National Guard can be sent to Los Angeles while the Trump administration’s appeal is being looked at by the court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said late Thursday.
A hearing on the case was set for June 17 before a group of three judges from the Ninth Circuit Court.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said that California officials have a good chance of winning their case against the president’s decision to federalize members of the National Guard in response to protests in Los Angeles. He also agreed to their request to stop the president from using the National Guard to help immigration agents during raids.
Breyer said in a 36-page ruling about Mr. Trump that what he did was wrong because it went beyond what the law allowed and violated the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution. “He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith.”
The judge said that when Mr. Trump called the California National Guard into federal service, he didn’t follow the steps set out by Congress because he got around Newsom. He put off making his choice until Friday at noon. The Justice Department quickly told the court that it was going to appeal the order. It did this later Thursday night by asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to step in.
Because the government made an emergency move, the appeals court agreed to an administrative stay.
At a news meeting in San Francisco Thursday evening, Newsom told reporters, “The National Guard will come back under my control by noon tomorrow.” This was after Breyer’s decision but before the appeals court’s decision. “The National Guard will be redeployed to what they were doing before Donald Trump commandeered them.”
Newsom said, “We’re pleased.” “The Constitution of the United States and our democracy have a big day today.” And I hope this is the start of a new day in this country where we stand up to overreach and the authoritarian habits of a president who has pushed the limits and boundaries but can’t move this state anymore.
Yesterday, Breyer made his decision hours after a hearing in San Francisco. The hearing was the first test of Mr. Trump’s decision to send 700 active-duty Marines to Los Angeles to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents while they arrest people for immigration violations and to put more than 4,000 members of the California National Guard under federal control.
When the Trump administration cracked down on immigration, there were protests in California’s biggest city. In a memorandum dated June 7, the president said that the protests were “a form of rebellion against” the U.S., which meant that he could call up the National Guard under Title 10. Since the president sent the National Guard to Los Angeles, there have been protests in Austin, Boston, and New York City, among other places.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass put a curfew in place at 8 p.m. The Los Angeles Police Department said that since Saturday, at least 400 people have been arrested in downtown Los Angeles because of protests and other crimes.
Breyer’s order only applied to members of the National Guard, and he said during the hearing that worries about what the Marines sent to Los Angeles might do are still just that—worries.
During the hearing, Breyer seemed uneasy at times when Justice Department lawyer Brett Shumate said that courts can’t look into whether Mr. Trump’s choice to call in the National Guard is legal under Title 10.
“It’s not that a leader can simply say something and it becomes it,” said he. “How is that any different than what a monarchist does?”
The judge went on: “This country was founded in response to a monarchy and the Constitution is a document of limitations … and an enunciation of rights.”
There are three times that Title 10 says the National Guard can be called into federal service: when the U.S. is invaded or at risk of being invaded by a foreign country; when there is a rebellion or threat of a rebellion against U.S. authority; or when the president can’t enforce the law with the regular forces.
The measure states that the president “may call into federal service members and units of the National Guard of any state in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion or execute those laws.” What it means is that orders “shall be issued through” the governor.
Breyer said that the structure of the law doesn’t support the Justice Department’s claim that Title 10 gives the president full power and lets him go around Newsom, who is in charge of the state’s National Guard.
“My point is if it were read the way the government has urged me to read it, it would’ve been rewritten entirely differently,” he added.
Shumate, on the other hand, said that the president is the only commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces and that states must follow his orders. He called Newsom a “conduit” who can’t go against what the president says.
The judge said in his ruling that the protests in Los Angeles “fall far short” of rebellion, which is what Mr. Trump said in his memorandum using Title 10. Breyer said that the administration did not find a “violent, armed, organized, open, and avowed uprising against the government as a whole.”
Breyer wrote, “The definition of rebellion is not met.” “Moreover, the court is troubled by the implication inherent in defendants’ argument that protest against the federal government, a core civil liberty protected by the First Amendment, can justify a finding of rebellion.”
Newsom said on Thursday, “Clearly there’s no invasion, there’s no rebellion, it’s absurd.”
President Trump has said that the troops had to be sent to Los Angeles to protect government property and ICE agents doing their jobs. However, the move has made things worse with Newsom, a Democrat, who said that having the military in the city streets could make things less stable and cause things to get worse.
Newsom’s court case
Newsom sued the Trump administration over the president’s action and asked Breyer, who is in charge of the case, to step in early on Tuesday.
When President Trump called up the National Guard without the governor’s approval, the governor said that Mr. Trump “illegally bypassed” him. He also said that Title 10 of the federal law that Mr. Trump used to send the troops to fight doesn’t give him the power to do so right now.
Newsom had asked Breyer, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, to temporarily limit the role of troops to protecting immigration detention centers and other federal buildings or protecting government workers who are in danger of being hurt. Officials in California want the judge to stop the military from helping with police work like arrests, searches, checkpoints, and carrying out orders.
In a filing, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, “These unlawful deployments have already proven to be a deeply inflammatory and unnecessary provocation, anathema to our laws limiting the use [of] federal forces for law enforcement. rather than a means of restoring calm.” Soldiers in the streets have already caused real and irreversible damage to the city of Los Angeles, the people who live there, and the State of California by making the federal government angry. They need to be stopped right away.
Breyer didn’t give California officials relief right away; instead, he set a hearing for Thursday afternoon to talk about the request.
Nicholas Green, a lawyer for the state of California, said that Mr. Trump’s decision to send the National Guard to Los Angeles is a “expansive and dangerous conception of federal executive power.” He said that within the next 24 hours, 140 Marines will replace and relieve National Guard troops in Los Angeles. This information came from the governor’s office.
The Trump administration told the court that Newsom’s request for help was a “crass political stunt endangering American lives.”
“There is no rioters’ right to stop federal law from being enforced.” Lawyers for the Justice Department wrote, “The president has every right under the Constitution and by law to call out the National Guard and Marines to stop lawless violence against federal law enforcement.”
Congress asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth if he would follow the judge’s ruling on the president’s use of military forces in Los Angeles in response to the protests. He said that he would. Hegseth wouldn’t say for sure, so he criticized federal courts instead.
“We’ve always looked at the decisions of the court,” he said, and “we should not have local judges determining foreign policy or national security policy for the country.”
It has been said by military leaders that the Marines in Los Angeles do not have the power to arrest people and are only there to protect government property and staff. U.S. law says that active-duty military can’t be used to police domestic law unless the president uses the Insurrection Act.
This week, Mr. Trump said that he would use the law, which was made in 1792, “if there’s an insurrection.”
U.S. Northern Command says that as of Wednesday, Task Force 51 was in charge of about 2,800 National Guard and Marines who had been taught in de-escalation, crowd control, and the rules for when to use force. The Defense Department says that an extra 2,000 National Guardsmen who have not yet been named are under federal command.
According to U.S. Northern Command, the task force’s job is to protect government workers and property in the greater Los Angeles area. Members have gone on missions with ICE. It said that the forces don’t do civilian law enforcement work, but they can temporarily detain someone in “specific circumstances,” like to stop an assault or keep federal workers from doing their jobs.
In a statement on Wednesday, it said, “They protect; they don’t take part.”
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters in Los Angeles that immigration officials have “tens of thousands of targets,” but she wouldn’t say how many migrants have been caught. Two Department of Homeland Security sources told CBS News on Wednesday that since Friday, 330 illegal immigrants have been arrested in Los Angeles, and 113 of them had previous convictions.
