Federal Judge In SF Again Rules Against Trump's National Guard Deployment In LA, Says It Must End

"A federal judge has, for the third time, ruled against the Trump administration in its monthslong deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles, ordering the troops out of the city. Trump still hasn't gotten tired of ordering around the National Guard and deploying them in Democrat-led cities at his whim, under the guise of "protecting federal property" because that is the only legal basis for doing what he's been doing. And the same US District Court judge in San Francisco who has ruled against the administration twice in its effort to keep troops on the ground in Los Angeles has again ruled that the troops need to leave."

""The Founders designed our government to be a system of checks and balances," Judge Breyer writes in the opening of his ruling. "Defendants, however, make clear that the only check they want is a blank one." The decision recounts the saga of the troop deployment, which the administration has consistently defended based on extant law that allows the president both to use troops to protect federal property and federal agents. And after winning their argument over this at the Ninth Circuit where California and Portland, Oregon concerned, the administration has essentially declared all further deployments of troops "unreviewable" by the courts. As Breyer writes, this is "shocking" and goes against everything the country's founders intended in terms of preventing the existence of a standing domestic army."

Judge Charles Breyer issued a 35-page order requiring the remaining National Guard presence in Los Angeles to leave, marking the third judicial defeat for the administration over the deployment. The troops were sent after immigration-related unrest months earlier, and the administration defended the deployment under law permitting protection of federal property and agents. After a favorable Ninth Circuit outcome, the administration asserted that further deployments were immune from judicial review. Breyer rejected that position, invoked founders' checks-and-balances concerns, expressed alarm at a potentially permanent domestic force, and emphasized the public interest in relying on trained law enforcement rather than prolonged troop presence.

Read at sfist.com