Trial starts over Trump's deployment of National Guard to Los Angeles during protests
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Major General Scott Sherman said military tapped to help with domestic operations can protect federal property and federal agents in their mission of carrying out federal operations.
He said they could take certain police actions, such as setting up a security perimeter outside federal facilities, if a commander on the ground felt unsafe.
Sherman testified at the start of a three-day trial over whether US President
Donald Trump's administration violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act when it deployed National Guard soldiers and US Marines to Los Angeles following June protests over immigration raids.
On Monday, Trump said he was
deploying the National Guard across Washington and taking over the city's police department in the hopes of reducing crime, even as the mayor has noted that crime is falling in the nation's capital.
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The trial in San Francisco could set a precedent for how Trump can deploy the guard in the future in California or other states.
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AllAfrica
a minute ago
- AllAfrica
Trump-Putin summit: This isn't how wars are ended
A hastily arranged summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is set for August 15, 2025, in Alaska, where the two leaders will discuss a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will not attend, barring a last-minute change. Longtime diplomat Donald Heflin, now teaching at Tufts University's Fletcher School, shares his perspective on the unconventional meeting and why it's likely to produce, as he says, a photograph and a statement, but not a peace deal. Wars end for three reasons. One is that both sides get exhausted and decide to make peace. The second, which is more common: One side gets exhausted and raises its hand and says, 'Yeah, we're ready to come to the peace table.' And then the third is – we've seen this happen in the Mideast – outside forces like the US or Europe come in and say, 'That's enough. We're imposing our will from the outside. You guys stop this.' What we've seen in the Russia-Ukraine situation is that neither side has shown a real willingness to go to the conference table and give up territory. So the fighting continues. And the role that Trump and his administration are playing right now is that third possibility, an outside power comes in and says, 'Enough.' Now you have to look at Russia. Russia is maybe a former superpower, but a power, and it's got nuclear arms and it's got a big army. This is not some small, Middle Eastern country that the United States can completely dominate. They're nearly a peer. So can you really impose your will on them and get them to come to the conference table in seriousness if they don't want to? I kind of doubt it. Residents of Kramatorsk, Ukraine, step out of their car amid residential buildings bombed by Russian forces on Aug. 10, 2025. Photo: Pierre Crom / Getty Images via The Conversation The analogy a lot of people are using is the Munich Conference in 1938, where Great Britain met with Hitler's Germany. I don't like to make comparisons to Nazism or Hitler's Germany. Those guys started World War II and perpetrated the Holocaust and killed 30 or 40 million people. It's hard to compare anything to that. But in diplomatic terms, we go back to 1938. Germany said, 'Listen, we have all these German citizens living in this new country of Czechoslovakia. They're not being treated right. We want them to become part of Germany.' And they were poised to invade. The prime minister of Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain, went and met with Hitler in Munich and came up with an agreement by which the German parts of Czechoslovakia would become part of Germany. And that would be it. That would be all that Germany would ask for, and the West gave some kind of light security guarantees. Czechoslovakia wasn't there. This was a peace imposed on them. And sure enough, you know, within a year or two, Germany was saying, 'No, we want all of Czechoslovakia. And, P.S., we want Poland.' And thus World War II started. German dictator Adolf Hitler, right, shakes hands with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain during their meeting at Godesberg, Germany, on Sept. 23, 1938. Photo: New York Times Co. / Getty Images via The Conversation Czechoslovakia wasn't at the table. Ukraine's not at the table. Again, I'm not sure I want to compare Putin to Hitler, but he is a strongman authoritarian president with a big military. Security guarantees were given to Czechoslovakia and not honored. The West gave Ukraine security guarantees when that country gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994. We told them, 'If you're going to be brave and give up your nuclear weapons, we'll make sure you're never invaded.' And they've been invaded twice since then, in 2014 and 2022. The West didn't step up. So history would tell us that the possibilities for a lasting peace coming out of this summit are pretty low. Here's what usually happens in most countries that have a big foreign policy or national security establishment, and even in some smaller countries. The political leaders come up with their policy goal, what they want to achieve. And then they tell the career civil servants and foreign service officers and military people, 'This is what we want to get at the negotiating table. How do we do that?' And then the experts say, 'Oh, we do this and we do that, and we'll assign staff to work it out. We'll work with our Russian counterparts and try to narrow the issues down, and we'll come up with numbers and maps.' With all the replacement of personnel since the inauguration, the US not only has a new group of political appointees – including some, like Marco Rubio, who, generally speaking, know what they're doing in terms of national security – but also many who don't know what they're doing. They've also fired the senior level of civil servants and foreign service officers, and a lot of the mid-levels are leaving, so that expertise isn't there. That's a real problem. The US national security establishment is increasingly being run by the B team – at best. You have two leaders of two big countries like this, they usually don't meet on a few days' notice. It would have to be a real crisis. This meeting could happen two or three weeks from now as easily as it could this week. And if that happened, you would have a chance to prepare. You'd have a chance to get all kinds of documents in front of the American participants. You would meet with your Russian counterparts. You'd meet with Ukrainian counterparts, maybe some of the Western European countries. And when the two sides sat down at the table, it would be very professional. They would have very similar briefing papers in front of them. The issues would be narrowed down. None of that's going to happen in Alaska. It's going to be two political leaders meeting and deciding things, often driven by political considerations, but without any real idea of whether they can really be implemented or how they could be implemented. Again, the situation is kind of haunted by the West never enforcing security guarantees promised in 1994. So I'm not sure how well this could be enforced. Historically, Russia and Ukraine were always linked up, and that's the problem. What's Putin's bottom line? Would he give up Crimea? No. Would he give up the part of eastern Ukraine that de facto had been taken over by Russia before this war even started? Probably not. Would he give up what they've gained since then? OK, maybe. Then let's put ourselves in Ukraine's shoes. Will they want to give up Crimea? They say, 'No.' Do they want to give up any of the eastern part of the country? They say, 'No.' People who understand the process of diplomacy think that this is very amateurish and is unlikely to yield real results that are enforceable. It will yield some kind of statement and a photo of Trump and Putin shaking hands. There will be people who believe that this will solve the problem. It won't. Donald Heflin is executive director of the Edward R Murrow Center and Senior Fellow of Diplomatic Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
South China Morning Post
3 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Trump says both sides in Ukraine war will need to cede territory
US President Donald Trump said on Monday that Kyiv and Moscow will both have to cede land to end the war in Ukraine and talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week will instantly show whether the Kremlin leader is willing to make a deal. European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky plan to speak to Trump ahead of his summit with Putin in Alaska on Friday, amid fears Washington may dictate unfavourable peace terms to Ukraine. Trump also said he will call Zelensky and European leaders 'right after the meeting' with Putin. Trump has hardened his stance towards Moscow by agreeing to allow additional US weapons to reach Ukraine and threatening tariffs against buyers of Russian oil, but fears have persisted in Europe that he might agree to a deal that forces big concessions from Kyiv. 'We hope that the upcoming high-level meeting will give an impulse to the normalisation of bilateral relations,' Russia's TASS news agency cited Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying. European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Monday that 'transatlantic unity, support to Ukraine and pressure on Russia' were needed to end the war and 'prevent future Russian aggression in Europe'.
South China Morning Post
4 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
What's behind North Korea's ‘unusual' reaction to US-South Korea drills?
North Korea has issued a notably restrained response to next week's annual US–South Korean military exercises, signalling an effort by both sides to cool tensions on the Korean peninsula. A week before the Ulchi Freedom Shield drills are set to begin, Pyongyang's defence minister No Kwang-chol on Monday denounced the exercises as 'provocative' and warned of 'negative consequences'. Yet analysts say his statement was stripped of the fiery invective that has long characterised the North's reaction to such manoeuvres. 'We strongly denounce the US and the ROK [South Korea] for their provocative moves' aimed at confrontation, No said, accusing the allies of undermining regional security. He pledged a 'resolute counteraction posture' should any 'provocation go beyond the boundary line', invoking the North's right to self-defence. This was an unusual tone for North Korea to adopt, according to Hong Min, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification think tank. 'Pyongyang is putting out a plainly worded statement as it can't just leave it ahead of the coming joint drills,' he told This Week in Asia. 'It was carefully calibrated to avoid aggressive, hostile expressions' – even though the response came from a higher-ranking official compared with last year. South Korean protesters rally on Monday outside the presidential office in Seoul against this year's Ulchi Freedom Shield joint military exercise. Photo: AP This year's Ulchi Freedom Shield will be partly scaled back, with around 20 field drills postponed to September due to an ongoing heatwave.
