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(CN) — Control of the National Guard finally reverted back to California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday after the Ninth Circuit cleared the way for a preliminary injunction ordering Trump to withdraw the troops.
That order comes one day after the Trump administration finally relented following a six-month legal battle and withdrew a motion to continue the stay, pending an appeal. The capitulation means that National Guard will soon pull out of Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago.
“I’m glad President Trump has finally admitted defeat,” Newsom said in a statement. “The president deployed these brave men and women against their own communities and without regard for the Constitution and federal law. We welcome our California National Guard servicemembers back to state service, where they can continue to serve and protect the people of California — long delayed due to Trump’s political theater.”
In June, Trump ordered 700 Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops into LA in response to protests against raids undertaken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Similar deployments followed in Washington, D.C., Memphis, Chicago and New Orleans, in some cases to clamp down on unrest, in others to fight crime, at least ostensibly.
California quickly sued, calling the mobilization “unlawful” and “not authorized by law and without input from or consent of the governor contravenes core statutory and constitutional restrictions.”
“The authority to use the military domestically for civil law enforcement is reserved for dire, narrow circumstances, none of which is present here,” the state said in its complaint. “Defendants have overstepped the bounds of law and are intent on going as far as they can to use the military in unprecedented, unlawful ways.”
Following a three-day bench trial, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer deemed the deployment illegal. The Bill Clinton appointee and brother of former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that it amounted to the president “creating a national police force with the president as its chief.”
The order was stayed, pending appeal to the Ninth Circuit. But last week, the Supreme Court intervened, barring National Guard deployment in Chicago in a 6-3 vote.
“[B]efore the president can federalize the guard under [Title 10], he likely must have statutory or constitutional authority to execute the laws with the regular military and must be ‘unable’ with those forces to perform that function,” the justices wrote. “At this preliminary stage, the government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the high court’s ruling a “stinging rebuke” to Trump.
“For six months, California National Guard troops have been used as political pawns by a president desperate to be king,” Bonta said. “From the political display in MacArthur Park to their unlawful participation in indiscriminate immigration raids, the militaristic deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles streets has left lasting scars in Angeleno communities. There is a reason our founders decided military and civilian affairs must be kept separate; a reason that our military is, by design, apolitical.”
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