Trump must end National Guard deployment in LA, judge rules

Joseph Serna and Sonja Sharp, Los Angeles Times on Dec 10, 2025

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LOS ANGELES — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration must immediately end the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles, the latest legal blow to the president’s embattled efforts to police American streets with armed soldiers.

Senior U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer said in his ruling that command of the remaining 300 federalized National Guardsmen must return to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who sued the administration in June after it commandeered thousands of troops to quell protests over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.

Breyer ruled that deployment was illegal — a decision that was challenged and ultimately reversed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court said the esoteric law Donald Trump invoked to wrest command of the Guard from the governor afforded him “a great level of deference” to determine whether a rebellion was underway in Los Angeles, as the Justice Department claimed at the time.

The same sequence repeated this autumn in Oregon, where 200 California Guardsmen were sent to help quash demonstrations outside an ICE facility. But unlike in California, the Oregon decision was subsequently vacated, and is now under review by the appellate court, with one of the original judges appearing to contradict his earlier order in lengthy filing Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is weighing an almost identical challenge to the deployment Illinois.

Department of Justice lawyers have argued that, once federalized, state Guard troops would remain under the president’s command in perpetuity, a position Breyer called “contrary to law” in his ruling Wednesday.

“Adopting Defendants’ interpretation ... would permit a president to create a perpetual police force comprised of state troops, so long as they were first federalized lawfully,” Breyer wrote. “Defendants’ argument for a president to hold unchecked power to control state troops would wholly upend the federalism that is at the heart of our system of government.”

California leaders cheered the ruling as a turning of the tide in what until now has been an uphill legal battle to constrain the president’s use of state troops.

“The President deployed these brave men and women against their own communities, removing them from essential public safety operations,” Newsom said in a statement Wednesday morning. “We look forward to all National Guard service members being returned to state service.”

Attorney General Rob Bonta called it “a good day for our democracy and the strength of the rule of law.”

The order was set to take effect on Monday, though it was all but certain to be appealed to the 9th Circuit.