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The legal fight over control of the National Guard in California goes back to court in San Francisco Friday after a federal appeals court ruled President Trump can stay in command of the troops.
The judge on Friday has to decide whether to issue a more detailed order restricting what the president can do with the troops in LA. That’s around 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 active duty Marines.
The decision from the appeals court Thursday halts a ruling from a lower court judge who found Trump acted illegally when he activated the soldiers over opposition from California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The deployment was the first by a president of a state National Guard without the governor’s permission since 1965.
In its decision, a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously concluded it was likely Trump lawfully exercised his authority in federalizing control of the guard.
It said that while presidents don’t have unfettered power to seize control of a state’s guard, the Trump administration had presented enough evidence to show it had a defensible rationale for doing so, citing violent acts by protesters.
« The undisputed facts demonstrate that before the deployment of the National Guard, protesters ‘pinned down’ several federal officers and threw ‘concrete chunks, bottles of liquid, and other objects’ at the officers. Protesters also damaged federal buildings and caused the closure of at least one federal building. And a federal van was attacked by protesters who smashed in the van’s windows », the court wrote. « The federal government’s interest in preventing incidents like these is significant.
