[ad_1]
California officials filed a federal lawsuit Monday over mobilizing the state’s National Guard during a weekend immigration protest in Los Angeles, accusing President Trump of overstepping federal authorities and violating the U.S. Constitution.
As thousands of people gathered on the streets for U.S. immigrants and customs enforcement attacks and arrests, Trump mobilized nearly 2,000 members of the State Guard over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Atty, California. General Rob Bonta said the decision by President Trump and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses violated the 10th amendment to the US Constitution. Bonta said the state is seeking an order to curb the National Guard’s “illegal and unprecedented” deployment, and in a 22-page lawsuit he argued that the U.S. Marines’ imminent deployment was “also illegal.”
“Trump and Heggs ignored law enforcement expertise and guidance and trampled on the state’s sovereignty of California,” Bonta said at a press conference.
Experts and state officials say Trump’s actions and subsequent lawsuits have pushed the United States into unknown legal territories. Bonta said there were not many court rulings on questions in the play, as Trump said he was “rarely used for good reasons.”
Laura A. Dickinson, professor at George Washington University Law School, said:
Dickinson said whether Trump’s actions were illegal was “really not tested.”
Trump and the White House say that military mobilization is legal under section 12406 of Title 10 of the US Act on the Armed Forces. The law gives the president the power to federate the National Guard if there is “a risk of rebellion or rebellion against the authority of the US government,” but says security guards must be called through an order from the governor.
The founders have a distrust of military control, and the constitution allows the president to deploy troops for civil law enforcement only in “disastrous, narrow circumstances,” Bonta’s complaints alleges. However, the lawsuit shows that the Trump administration appears to be using the statute “as a mechanism to circumvent these old-fashioned constitutional restrictions.”
Trump said mobilization was “necessary to deal with violent and incited riots,” and that without the National Guard, “Los Angeles would have completely disappeared.”
The days of protest after the ice attacks included several violent clashes, including protesters, local police and federal officials, and some vandalism and robbery. Local officials condemned these actions, but defended the right to peacefully demonstrate Angelenos’ rights.
“It was heading in the wrong direction,” Trump said at the White House. “We’re heading in the right direction now, and Gavin wants Gavin’s support as he’s a big beneficiary, as he straightens his problem. So his condition is confusing.”
Under some of the laws that “it’ll be difficult for the Trump administration to explain,” an order calling the National Guard “will be issued through a governor that’s clearly not happening here,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Freedom and National Security Program.
There is little black and white, she said, “if the president attempts to exercise the powers stipulated by that law to federate the National Guard and the governor refuses to issue an order.”
As governor, Newsom is the commander of the chief of the California National Guard. On Saturday night, Hegses sent a note to the head of the California Guard, mobilizing nearly 2,000 members. National Guard leaders subsequently sent the memo to Newsom’s office, the complaint said. Neither Newsom nor his office agreed to mobilize, the lawsuit states.
Newsom wrote to Hegses on Sunday, asking him to withdraw his military deployment. The letter stated that mobilization is “a serious violation of national sovereignty that appears to be intentionally designed to inflame the situation, and simultaneously deprives them of preventing these staff and resources from being deployed where they are truly needed.”
Hegseth issued another memo Monday night, deploying another 2,000 National Guard members, the lawsuit says.
Newsom warns that the executive orders signed by Trump will apply to other states and California, which “allows him to go to any state and do the same.”
Legal experts said the law that the White House used to justify the mobilization of the National Guard would normally be called in conjunction with the Rebellion Act of 1807.
Goitein said the president generally invoked rebellion laws and then used the laws Trump cited as “call authorities” to actually mobilize the army. How the law stands, she said, “it’s one of the legal issues that has never happened before in court.”
The Rebellion Act has been called 30 times in the country’s history, and Trump has not evoked it in Los Angeles. He was last called in 1992 on a gov at the time. Pete Wilson asked President George HW Bush to federate the National Guard following the Rodney King’s verdict.
The last time the president sent the National Guard without the governor’s request was 60 years ago, when President Lyndon B. Johnson mobilized Alabama troops to defend civil rights demonstrators in 1965 and enforced a federal court order.
Bonta’s office said certain laws Trump is using were called only once before when President Nixon delivered mail to mobilize the National Guard during a 1970 US Postal Service strike.
The argument that Trump violated the 10th Amendment is a clever subversion of the line of thought that has traditionally been supported by conservative judges, said UC Berkeley Law Dean Irwin Kemerinski.
The 10th Amendment states that the federal government only possesses the powers specifically assigned by the Constitution, while other powers are governed by the state.
“The deployment of more than 4,000 federal troops to suppress protests and prevent future protests, despite the lack of evidence that local law enforcement claims control and that public safety cannot be ensured during such protests represents the exact invasion of state power at the heart of the 10th Amendment,” the state lawyer argued in the lawsuit.
“There’s a strong argument in the nation that Trump is in command of the nation by nationalizing the state security forces,” Kemelinsky said.
He said the Supreme Court has only ruled a few times over the 10th Amendment in recent decades, including that Congress cannot require federal mandate related to sports betting, gun background checks and radioactive waste disposal.
Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
[ad_2]Source link
