A federal appeals court late Thursday night blocked a U.S. district court judge’s ruling that President Donald Trump’s move to put the National Guard in Los Angeles was “illegal” — allowing Trump to keep control of the deployment for now.
A three-judge panel granted the government’s request to stay Judge Charles Breyer’s order and set a hearing for next week, meaning Trump will be able to direct the National Guard at least until then.
Hours earlier, Breyer ordered the Trump administration to return control over the California National Guard to state authorities after the president unilaterally deployed them to Los Angeles in response to immigration protests there.
Breyer wrote that President Donald Trump’s “actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
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“The citizens of Los Angeles face a greater harm from the continued unlawful militarization of their city, which not only inflames tensions with protesters, threatening increased hostilities and loss of life, but deprives the state for two months of its own use of thousands of National Guard members to fight fires, combat the fentanyl trade, and perform other critical functions,” he added. “Defendants’ actions also threaten to chill legitimate First Amendment expression.”
During a hearing Thursday afternoon, Breyer seemed skeptical of the administration’s arguments, and repeatedly brought up the fact that the U.S. is not ruled by a king.
“How is that different than what a monarchist does?” Breyer said at one point of Trump’s decision to bypass state authorities. “He says certain things, he finds certain things, he does certain things. That’s not where we live.”
Breyer’s ruling came after California Gov. Gavin Newsom sued the Trump administration earlier this week over the president’s decision to deploy 2,000 National Guard troops following mass protests in Los Angeles against the administration’s immigration raids and deportations.
Part of Newsom’s legal arguments hinge on Trump authorizing and deploying the Guard without consulting him, the state’s governor and commander of the force. Newsom argues that makes it illegal and alleges he received no “official notice.”
The administration claims it carried out its order “through” Newsom without actually notifying him of it, arguing that the governor is a “conduit” and not someone who plays a role in decision-making.
Breyer was also skeptical of that argument during Thursday’s hearing, saying: “I’m trying to figure out how something is ‘through’ somebody if in fact you didn’t give it to him.”
“It would be the first time I’ve ever seen something going through somebody if it never went to them directly,” he added.
Newsom also filed another emergency order Tuesday, asking the court to block the administration from sending the Guard and additionally mobilized Marines to LA. The “unlawful deployments” of the National Guard and Marine units, the emergency legal filing states, “have already proven to be a deeply inflammatory and unnecessary provocation.”
In a filing Wednesday opposing Newsom’s request for a temporary restraining order, the Trump administration argued that “the president has every right under the Constitution and by statute to call forth the National Guard and Marines to quell lawless violence directed against enforcement of federal law.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demurred when asked Thursday whether he would obey a district court order to turn over control of the troops to Newsom — although he does not have to worry about that yet thanks to the court of appeals.
“What I can say is we should not have local judges determining foreign policy or national security policy for the country,” Hegseth said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.
He added that the administration would respect a Supreme Court order.
“We’re not here to defy a Supreme Court ruling,” he said.
This story has been updated with the appeals court ruling granting the government request to stay Breyer’s order.
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Brett Bachman is a senior editor for breaking news at NOTUS.
Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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