California will sue Trump over 'unlawful, unprecedented' National Guard deployment
California officials on Monday said they would file a federal lawsuit over the mobilization of the state's National Guard during the weekend's immigration protests in Los Angeles, accusing President Trump of overstepping his federal authority and violating the U.S. Constitution.
As thousands of people gathered in the streets to protest raids and arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Trump mobilized nearly 2,000 members of the National Guard over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said Trump was sowing chaos in the streets for political purposes.
Read more: The legal issues raised by Trump sending the National Guard to L.A.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the lawsuit will accuse Trump and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of violating the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which spells out the limits of federal power.
Bonta and Newsom will ask a federal judge to set aside the "unlawful, unpredecented" deployment of the National Guard.
"Federalizing the California National Guard is an abuse of the President's authority under the law, and not one we take lightly," Bonta said in a statement.
The California lawsuit follows days of protests and some violent clashes between protesters, local police and federal officials following the ICE raids. Local officials have decried vandalism and burglaries during the protests, but have defended the right of Angelenos to peacefully demonstrate against the Trump administration's immigration enforcement.
Trump officials said the military mobilization is legal under Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services, which gives the president the authority to call up the National Guard if there is "a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States."
Such a move is exceedingly rare. The last time the White House sent the National Guard into a state without a request from the governor was six decades ago, when President Lyndon B. Johnson mobilized troops in Alabama to defend civil rights demonstrators in 1965.
Bonta's office said the last time that Title 10 was invoked was 1970, when President Nixon mobilized the National Guard to deliver the mail during a U.S. Postal Service strike.
Trump has said that the mobilization was "a great decision" necessary to "deal with the violent, instigated riots in California," and that if he hadn't mobilized the forces, "Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated."
Tom Homan, the Trump administration's "border czar," said the action was "about enforcing the law" amid assaults on federal authorities.
"We're not going to apologize for doing it," Homan said. "We're stepping up."
On Saturday, Newsom's office sent a formal letter to the Trump administration asking it to rescind its deployment of troops. The letter described the mobilization as "a serious breach of state sovereignty that seems intentionally designed to inflame the situation, while simultaneously depriving the state from deploying these personnel and resources where they are truly required."
In interviews and social media posts, Newsom put a finer point on it, saying the escalating tensions that followed the National Guard mobilization was "exactly what Donald Trump wanted."
Newsom has warned that the executive order that Trump signed applies to other states as well as to California, which will "allow him to go into any state and do the same thing."
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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