Updated September 2, 2025 at 8:22 PM EDT
Hours after a federal court in California ruled against how President Trump used the National Guard in Los Angeles this summer, Trump touted his use of the National Guard in Washington D.C. and said he would soon send the troops into Chicago, though he did not say when.
"We're going in," Trump said about sending the National Guard to Chicago. The comment came today during a press conference in Oval Office to announce the new headquarters of the U.S. Space Force. "I'm so very proud of Washington. It serves as the template."
Speaking at his own press conference later, Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said the National Guard was not needed or wanted in the city. But he said federal agents were already massing in a nearby military base and predicted they would soon start conducting immigration raids in Latino communities in order to spark demonstrations. "We know, before anything has happened here, that the Trump plan is to use any excuse to deploy armed military personnel to Chicago."
Trump deployed some 4,000 guard troops to Los Angeles in June to confront protestors against ICE operations in the city. Only about 300 are still on duty there. Since then, Trump has deployed National Guard troops to Washington D.C. to assist police, though violent crime rates there were down from recent years, according to justice department figures.
Earlier Tuesday a federal judge in San Francisco ruled for the second time that Trump's deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles violated the law, stating the guard performed law enforcement duties that are prohibited for the military. District Judge Charles R. Breyer delayed the implementation of his ruling until Sept. 12, in which time the Trump administration could appeal.
Today's ruling - even if it holds up on appeal - would not impact on the use of the guard in other places because it was based on the specific circumstances of what kind of duties the guard has performed in L.A. and whether it was overstepping its powers over civilians.
"We would have to wait to see what happens because this ruling doesn't say you can never federalize the National Guard," said Jessica Levinson, law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "This ruling says that once the National Guard was on the ground, that they basically they did too much."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom celebrated the ruling Tuesday. "Today, the court sided with democracy and the Constitution. No president is a king — not even Trump — and no president can trample a state's power to protect its people," Newsom said in a statement. "As the court today ruled, Trump is breaking the law by 'creating a national police force with the President as its chief.'
Trump said today that had he not sent the National Guard to L.A. he'd have to be announcing now that they could not hold the 2028 Olympics there, as are planned.
In his ruling today, Breyer said the guard deployment violated the "Posse Comitatus Act," which for nearly 140 years has been in place to keep the military out of civilian law enforcement.
The judge took evidence from witnesses in a trial last month about the actions of the guard stationed in L.A., part of a unit called Task Force 51. Attorneys for the state argued with administration attorneys over whether the troops exceeded restrictions on the longstanding ban against U.S. military carrying out law enforcement on civilians.
"The record is replete with evidence that Task Force 51 executed domestic law in these prohibited ways," Breyer wrote in a 52-page ruling. He said the troops had gone raids of marijuana farms with federal agents and elsewhere had set up traffic blockades to aid federal agents they were mixed in with. "Bystanders at multiple locations and even federal officials at trial were unable to distinguish Task Force 51 troops from federal law enforcement agents."
He cited as another example of law enforcement when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered guard troops to patrol MacArthur Park as a show of force for the federal presence.
This is the second time Breyer has ruled against the deployment. He ruled in June that the guard deployment was illegal because there was no rebellion in the city, as Trump had claimed. But a California appeals court ruled on June 19 that there had been incidents of violence against federal agents that justified the guard's deployment and allowed Trump to maintain control of the troops. Breyer's new ruling could be appealed to that court again.
Laura Fitzgerald of CapRadio in Sacramento contributed to this story.
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