California Governor Gavin Newsom filed an emergency motion to stop the Trump administration’s use of the National Guard and Marines to respond to violent riots in Los Angeles.
Accusing the federal government of intentionally provoking rioters and “turning the military against American citizens”, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, filed an emergency motion to stop President Donald Trump from further using the National Guard and Marines to quell the ongoing anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles.
Fiery riots and looting have overtaken much of Los Angeles over the last several days following a series of ICE operations in the city. Despite the riots, Newsom said that the federal government’s military response has been unnecessary and that the protests are “largely nonviolent.”
Newsom and California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta filed the motion in a federal court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday. The motion asks the court to grant the state a temporary restraining order keeping Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Department of Defense from the “use of the military and the federalized National Guard to patrol communities or otherwise engage in general law enforcement activities”, which they say “creates imminent harm to State Sovereignty, deprives the State of vital resources, escalates tensions and promotes (rather than quells) civil unrest.”
In a Tuesday statement, Newsom’s office said that the motion is charging the Trump administration with violations of the U.S. Constitution and Title 10 authority, “not only because the takeover occurred without the consent or input of the Governor, as federal law requires, but also because it was unwarranted.”
In the statement, Newsom’s office blamed the ICE agents for the riots, saying that their operations were carried out “without providing notification to law enforcement and engineered them to provoke community backlash.
