Supreme Court is set to rule on Trump using troops in U.S. cities
WASHINGTON- The Supreme Court is expected to rule for the first time on whether the president has the authority to deploy troops to U.S. cities over the objections of local and state officials.
A decision could come at any time.
And even a one-line order siding with President Trump would send the message that he is free to use the military to carry out his orders — and especially in cities and states controlled by Democrats.
Trump administration lawyers filed an emergency appeal last week asking the court to overturn Chicago judges who blocked the National Guard’s deployment there.
The Chicago-based judges said Trump exaggerated the threat facing federal immigration agents and equated “the protests with riots.”
Trump administration lawyers, however, said those judges had no authority to second-guess the president. The authority to deploy the National Guard “is vested in its sole discretion by law,” they asserted in their appeal in Trump v. Illinois.
This broad claim to executive power could win favor with the Court’s conservatives.
Administration lawyers told the court that the National Guard would “defend federal personnel, assets, and functions in the face of continued violence” in response to aggressive immigration enforcement measures, but would not provide ordinary policing.
Yet Trump has repeatedly threatened to send U.S. troops to San Francisco and other Democratic-led cities to maintain ordinary law and order.
When he sent 4,000 Guard members and 700 Marines to Los Angeles in June, their mission was to protect federal buildings from protesters. But state officials said the troops went further and were used to put on a show in force at MacArthur Park in July.
Newsom and Bonta warn of dangers
That’s why legal experts and Democratic officials are sounding the alarm.
“Trump v. Illinois is a watershed moment for this court,” said Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck, a frequent critic of the court’s pro-Trump emergency orders. “If the Supreme Court issued a ruling authorizing the president to send troops into our cities based on artificial (or even government-induced) facts…that would be a terrible precedent that the court would set, not only for what it would allow President Trump to do now, but for even more grossly tyrannical conduct.”
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a brief in the Chicago case warning of the danger ahead.
“On June 7, for the first time in the history of our country, the president invoked [the Militia Act of 1903] federalizing a state’s National Guard over the objections of the state’s governor. Since then, it has become clear that the federal government’s actions in Southern California earlier this summer were only the opening salvo in an effort to transform the military’s role in American society,” the document states.
“At no time in our history has the president used the military in this way: as his own personal police force, to be deployed for whatever law enforcement missions he deems appropriate. … What the federal government seeks is a standing army, drawn from state militias, deployed at the direction of the president on a national basis, for civilian law enforcement purposes, for an indefinite period of time.”
Conservatives cite civil rights examples
Conservatives counter that Trump seeks to enforce federal law despite strong resistance and sometimes a lack of cooperation from local officials.
“Portland and Chicago have seen violent protests outside federal buildings, attacks on ICE and DHS agents, and organized efforts to block immigration enforcement,” said John Yoo, a law professor at UC Berkeley. “Although local officials have cried federal “occupation” and “dictatorship,” the Constitution imposes a duty on the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
He noted that in the past, presidents “used these same authorities to desegregate Southern schools in the 1950s after Brown v. Board of Education and to protect civil rights protesters in the 1960s. Those who applaud these interventions cannot now deny the same constitutional authority when exercised by a president they oppose,” he said.
The legal battle so far has skirted Trump’s broader claims of unchecked power, but instead focused on whether he is acting in accordance with laws passed by Congress.
The Constitution gives Congress the power “to provide for the calling out of the militia to execute the laws of the Union, to suppress insurrections, and to repel invasions.”
Beginning in 1903, Congress declared that “the President may call out members of the Federal service and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he deems necessary” if he faces “danger of invasion by a foreign nation…danger of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States or if the President is unable to execute the laws of the United States.” »
While Trump administration lawyers say he is facing a “rebellion,” the legal dispute centers on whether he is “unable to execute the laws.”
Lower courts blocked deployments
Federal district judges in Portland and Chicago blocked Trump’s deployments after ruling that protesters did not prevent U.S. immigration agents from doing their jobs.
Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, described the administration’s description of “war-ravaged” Portland as “irrelevant to the facts.”
In Chicago, Biden-appointed Judge April Perry said “political opposition is not rebellion.”
But the two appeals courts – the 9th Circuit in San Francisco and the 7th Circuit in Chicago – issued opposing decisions.
A 9th Circuit panel said judges must defer to the president’s assessment of the danger faced by immigration agents. Applying that standard, the appeals court ruled, by a 2-1 vote, that the National Guard deployment to Portland could proceed.
But a 7th Circuit panel in Chicago agreed with Perry.
“The facts do not justify the President’s actions in Illinois, even granting great deference to his assertions,” they said last week in a 3-0 ruling. “Federal facilities, including the Broadview processing facility, have remained open despite regular protests against the administration’s immigration policies. And although federal agents encountered sporadic disruptions, they were quickly contained by local, state, and federal authorities.”
Lawyers for Illinois and Chicago agreed and urged the court to reject Trump’s appeal.
“There is no basis to claim that the President is ‘unable’ to ‘execute’ federal law in Illinois,” they said. “Federal facilities in Illinois remain open, individuals who violated the law by attacking federal authorities have been arrested, and immigration enforcement in Illinois has only intensified in recent weeks.”
U.S. Attorney General D. John Sauer, introduced at his confirmation hearing in February, said federal judges in Chicago had no legal or factual basis to block the Trump administration’s troop deployment.
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Trump’s Attorney General, D. John Sauer, presented a starkly different narrative in his appeal.
“On October 4, the President determined that the situation in Chicago had become unbearably dangerous for federal agents, who are now risking their lives to perform basic law enforcement functions,” he wrote. “The President has deployed the Federalized Guardsmen to Illinois to protect federal agents and federal property.”
He disputed the notion that officers were only confronted with peaceful protests.
“On several occasions, federal agents were also punched and kicked by protesters at the Broadview facility. The physical altercations became larger and the confrontations more violent as the crowds grew throughout September,” Sauer wrote. “The rioters targeted federal agents with fireworks and threw bottles, rocks and tear gas at them. [DHS] police officers were injured during assaults on federal law enforcement at the Broadview facility alone, leading to multiple hospitalizations.
He said the Chicago judges had no legal or factual basis to block the deployment, and he urged the court to overturn their decisions.
