Newsom v. Trump: Federal trial to begin over National Guard deployment during Los Angeles ICE riots

A high-stakes legal showdown kicks off Monday as California challenges President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops over California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s objections.

The dispute centers around Trump’s June 7 memo mobilizing the National Guard to quell “violence and disorder” at riots in Los Angeles over ICE raids in southern California. The memo resulted in 4,000 National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines being deployed, which Newsom called an “assault” on democracy.

The trial was scheduled to begin in the case Monday before U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California. It sets up a clash between federal and state powers, and could set a precedent for when an executive can use military forces domestically, as Newsweek reported.

The legal battle reflects a broader national shift in immigration policy, as Trump is targeting sanctuary cities and is seeking “negative net migration.

California’s lawsuit calls Trump and the Defense Department’s deployment of the California National Guard illegal, arguing the Constitution “grants the States – not the federal Executive – the authority to conduct ordinary law enforcement activities and to determine how their own state laws should be Enforced.”

The lawsuit accuses Trump of invoking emergency powers that “exceed the bounds of lawful authority” and making an “unprecedented power grab” at the cost of California’s “sovereignty.”

“Reflecting the Founders’ distrust of military rule, the U.S. Constitution and the laws of our Nation strictly limit the domestic use of the military, including the federalized National Guard,” the lawsuit reads, noting that the Posse Comitatus Act codified those rules.

“The authority to use the military domestically for civil law enforcement is reserved for dire, narrow circumstances, none of which is present here.”

The Trump administration has maintained federal action was needed to protect Los Angeles from violent rioters. Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office in June, referred to video of protesters with “big heavy hammers” who were pounding off pieces of concrete and throwing them at people. 

They were “going up on bridges and dropping it into the roof of a car, they were throwing it at police, they were throwing it at our soldiers,” he said. “If we didn’t get involved, right now Los Angeles would be burning. “Los Angeles right now would be on fire.”

The Department of Homeland Security at the time called out what it said were more than 1,000 rioters who “surrounded a federal law enforcement building and assaulted ICE law enforcement officers, slashed tires, defaced buildings, and taxpayer funded property.”

ICE agents in early June faced a “413% increase in assaults against them” and their families were being “doxed and targeted” as well, the department noted.

Ahead of the trial – and two months since the deployment of the National Guard – “4,700 soldiers have demobilized or begun demobilizing,” according to Newsom’s office, with 300 National Guard troops remaining. 

Newsom’s office, as well as the White House, did not return a request for comment. A Department of Defense official, when reached by The Heartlander, said “As a matter of policy, the Department does not comment on ongoing litigation.”