California National Guard members stand guard at an entrance to the Wilshire Federal Building on June 13, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Vice President J.D. Vance took a victory lap to Los Angeles Friday, following a federal appeals court’s ruling that the administration could retain control of the California National Guard troops responding to protests earlier this month over immigration raids in the city.
“BIG WIN in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the President’s core power to call in the National Guard!” President Donald Trump wrote on social media following the decision.
Vance was scheduled to visit an FBI building being used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, meet with law enforcement leadership and U.S. Marines and deliver remarks, according to a White House release Friday morning.
The trip was announced about 12 hours after the administration’s win at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that Trump could keep control of the 4,000 National Guard troops he’d ordered to Los Angeles.
Three judges on the appeals court issued a unanimous opinion Thursday evening that courts had to afford the president wide discretion to decide when a state National Guard can be federalized, leaving command in Trump’s hands while California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lawsuit challenging the deployment is ongoing. The case has been closely watched by leaders of states around the country.
The order overturns a lower court’s ruling that Trump return control of the troops to Newsom, a Democrat who opposed sending the National Guard to Los Angeles. Newsom has said the Guard troops’ presence has only inflamed tensions between anti-ICE protesters and law enforcement.
The president has the authority to deploy troops to a state with or without the governor’s consent, the panel of appeals judges said Thursday.
The state’s “concerns have more bearing on the question of whether the President should have federalized the California National Guard, not whether he had the authority to do so,” the panel, made up of two judges appointed by Trump and one by former Democratic President Joe Biden, wrote.
They opted to revoke the district court’s temporary restraining order, reasoning that the federal government stood a good chance of ultimately prevailing on the case.
Quelling rebellion, enforcing laws
Attorneys for the state had argued in federal court that Trump’s order was invalid because he did not show the conditions that the statute Trump cited, Section 12406 of U.S. Code Title X, required for federalization of a National Guard had been met and because the order was sent to the California National Guard adjutant general, not to Newsom himself.
The 9th Circuit panel rejected both arguments.
Based on the language of the statute alone, the judges might have required greater support for the federal government’s position, which may have helped California’s case, the order said.
But under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the president only must meet a low standard to show that deployment is warranted to enforce laws or quell a rebellion, the judges wrote in language that resembled what Judge Jennifer Sung, the Biden appointee, said during oral arguments Tuesday.
“We are not writing on a blank slate,” they wrote. “The history of Congress’s statutory delegations of its calling forth power, and a line of cases … interpreting those delegations, strongly suggest that our review of the President’s determinations in this context is especially deferential.”
The federal government’s evidence that protesters had thrown rocks and other objects at ICE officers, vandalized federal property and attacked vans used by ICE was enough to satisfy that standard, the judges wrote.
Trump quickly took to social media. “The Judges obviously realized that Gavin Newscum is incompetent and ill prepared, but this is much bigger than Gavin, because all over the United States, if our Cities, and our people, need protection, we are the ones to give it to them should State and Local Police be unable, for whatever reason, to get the job done,” Trump wrote.
In amicus briefs in the case, Democratic state leaders have said they see Trump’s use of the National Guard as a threat to their ability to use their Guards for state-level functions, including drug interdiction and natural disaster relief.
Some reviewability
The opinion did, however, reject the U.S. Justice Department’s argument that a president’s federalization order could never be questioned in court.
In a statement, Newsom praised that aspect of the ruling and pledged to “press forward” with the case.
“The court rightly rejected Trump’s claim that he can do whatever he wants with the National Guard and not have to explain himself to a court,” Newsom said. “The President is not a king and is not above the law.”
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer canceled oral arguments at a previously scheduled Friday morning hearing in the trial court, after the 9th Circuit order.
Breyer anticipated that the state may pursue a challenge based on a potential violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement, and asked each side to file a brief by noon Pacific time on June 23 arguing whether the trial court or appeals court should first hear that issue.
This post was originally authored and published by Jacob Fischler from via RSS Feed. to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
