President Trump deployed military forces in two major U.S. cities and largely prevailed when those actions faced legal challenges. The District of Columbia is constitutionally unique because the president has unilateral authority over the D.C. National Guard, unlike governors who control Guard units in their states. The president activated the D.C. Guard in early August and the District attorney general did not contest presidential authority in the resulting lawsuit. In California, the president invoked the Insurrection Act to call out the National Guard amid protests related to deportation policy. Planned moves into cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, and New York will encounter a different set of legal obstacles and are unlikely to proceed as smoothly.
President Donald Trump has already deployed the military in two major American cities, and when challenged in court, he has (mostly) prevailed. It's no surprise that a man so easily emboldened now vows to flex his executive power in major urban centers across the country. Leading Democrats have voiced concern that the president's recent moves in Washington, D.C., and California are merely test cases presaging inevitable attempts to bigfoot other cities.
Earlier in August, Trump activated the National Guard in Washington, D.C., but the nation's capital is constitutionally unique. While governors control National Guard troops in their own states (with narrow exceptions that we'll consider shortly), the president holds unilateral power over the National Guard in D.C.; as the Guard explains on its website, "The D.C. National Guard is the only National Guard unit, out of all of the 54 states and territories, which reports only to the President."
Trump relied on different, but also quite narrow, legal authority to call out the National Guard in California. As protests spread in Los Angeles and elsewhere over the administration's deportation policies and tactics, he invoked the Insurrection Act to activate the California National Guard. Under that law - which was last utilized over 30 yea
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