A federal judge ruled Thursday that Trump’s Defense Department illegally overstepped its authority in deploying 2,000 local and out-of-state National Guard to Washington D.C., part of President Trump’s crackdown on blue cities.
While Trump has gotten mixed results elsewhere — a win at the appellate level in California, a loss in Illinois, a still-pending ruling from the Supreme Court — conventional wisdom has held that stateless D.C.’s was the weakest case.
But Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, found that while Trump may have powers akin to a governor’s over her state’s National Guard, those powers are not absolute. She also dismissed the administration’s claim that the broad sweep of presidential power covers whatever holes might otherwise be poked in his authority over the district.
“The Court finds that the President has no free-floating Article II power to deploy the [D.C. National Guard] for the deterrence of crime,” she wrote.
She added that the presence of around 1,000 Guard from other states compounds the injury to D.C. The Guard has for months been stationed in high-visibility, low-crime parts of the city (including the National Mall).
“Any incursion on the District’s exercise of its sovereign power would cause Article III injury, but the Court observes that the scope of the infringement here is no small matter,” she wrote.
“The deployments at issue entail the day-to-day presence of more than 2,000 National Guard troops, about two-thirds the size of the MPD, on the streets of the District. And there is also the risk that this incursion may become permanent, or at least enduring, given the creation of a DCNG unit specifically established to conduct law enforcement in the District.”
Cobb put her order on pause until December 11 to let the Trump administration appeal it.
Elsewhere in the country, states’ lawsuits against Trump’s deployments are in limbo as the Supreme Court mulls an appeal of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals’ order blocking the deployment of troops into Chicago.
The administration’s position in that case seemed to get weaker on Thursday as federal prosecutors moved to dismiss charges against two drivers they had accused of attempting to harm federal officers doing immigration enforcement — a key tenant of the administration’s claim that it needs National Guard backup.
Read the judge’s ruling here:
Trump and his fascists will just kick it up to the corrupt SCOTUS and get their desired outcome.
Even a wannabe banana republic needs to have troops in the streets.
Why in the hell do judges keep deciding against Cock-holster’s cos-playing only to let the lawlessness continue?
tenet?
Thank you, Joe Biden! Seriously.
Thanks for Judge Cobb.