Federal Judge Rejects Newsom Demand To Block Deployment of Troops at Los Angeles
‘Only under the most exigent of circumstances can the President, over the objections of a State, call the National Guard into federal service,” California says.
A federal judge has declined, for now, to block President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to the streets of Los Angeles. Governor Newsom’s lawsuit against Mr. Trump alleges that the president overstepped his constitutional and legal authority in sending the military into America’s third-largest city without the governor’s consent.
Judge Charles Breyer — a senior federal district court judge appointed by President Clinton — says he will hear arguments in the case on Thursday afternoon. Judge Breyer is also the younger brother of a former member of the U.S. Supreme Court, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer.
Mr. Newsom and his state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, had asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order blocking Mr. Trump’s deployment of soldiers, arguing that “only under the most exigent of circumstances can the President, over the objections of a State, call the National Guard into federal service.”
Attorneys for the federal government asked for a 24-hour period to submit a response to Mr. Newsom’s lawsuit, during which the president’s order would remain in effect. Judge Breyer granted that request, and told the state of California that it was permitted to file its own response by Thursday morning.
He is due to hear arguments from both sides in his chambers on Thursday at 1:30 p.m.
Messrs. Newsom and Bonta’s argument hinges on the president’s use of emergency powers under a certain statute in the United States Code — not the Insurrection Act of 1807, which grants the president broad authority in calling up states’ national guard units even over the objections of state officials in certain circumstances.
“Defendants did not notify Governor Newsom of the orders or attempt to obtain his consent,” Mr. Bonta writes for the state government. “This circumvention deprived the Governor of the opportunity that compliance with the terms of the statute would have afforded him — at a minimum, consultation with the President or other federal officials … as to whether the California National Guard should be called into federal service at all.”
Mr. Trump himself hinted on Tuesday that he may invoke the Insurrection Act to take control of the National Guard over Mr. Newsom’s objections. That law also allows the president to deploy active-duty service members within the borders of the United States, something he has already done by moving 700 Marines from their stations to Los Angeles and assigning them to provide force protection for ICE officers conducting immigration raids around the city.
“We’ll see,” the president said Tuesday at the White House after being asked if he could invoke the Insurrection Act. “I can tell you, last night was terrible. The night before that was terrible.”
“I could tell you, there were certain areas of Los Angeles last night — you could’ve called it an insurrection. It was terrible,” the president added. “These are paid insurrectionists. These are paid troublemakers. … They hurt some people very badly.”
Speaking later that day to an audience of service members at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Mr. Trump called Los Angeles “a trash heap.” He claimed that there are “entire neighborhoods under control of transnational gangs and criminal networks.”
“We will liberate Los Angeles and make it free, clean, and safe again,” the president said from the stage.
