WHAT a fantastic Christmas for America and a HUGE smackdown to the political neo-nazi fascist right wing who are intent on replacing our democratic Republic with project 2025's authoritarian theocratic oligarchy! THIS doesn't mean the threat is over. Even when NOT MY pres drumpf / trump and his fascist administration is out of the White House and the gop / greed over people-republican party no longer controls congress we will still have to remain vigilant for un-democratic threats to our nation. Remember, democracy is not a spectator sport! So celebrate this win and work to build on it! From the ACLU and the New York Times
Major news: The Supreme Court just upheld a block on President Trump's attempt to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago. Although the legal fight isn't over, this is a huge win for our liberties. Turning troops on civilians is an intolerable threat to our communities. The ACLU of Illinois already went to court and successfully blocked the Trump administration from indiscriminately using tear gas and other chemical weapons against the press, protestors, and people just trying to go about their daily lives. This new Supreme Court decision upholds lower court rulings that blocked troop deployments to Chicago. The ACLU and its partners filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Supreme Court, explaining that the founders of this country feared and rejected the military's use as a tool of oppression and would have viewed President Trump's claims of unreviewable authority to deploy troops in response to political protest as an intolerable threat to liberty. The ACLU has been sounding the alarm about these dangerous deployments from the very beginning. Since the Trump administration first deployed National Guard troops and active-duty Marines to intimidate and silence Los Angeles protestors in June, our community has sent over 400,000 messages to Congress condemning these deployments. The people have sent a clear message: If President Trump wants to send troops and armed federal agents into our communities to suppress our rights, he'll have to answer to us. Today's ruling provides a necessary block on this blatant abuse of power. We'll keep you updated as the state of Illinois – and other states and cities across the country – continue the work to keep troops off our streets. Thanks for all you do, Hina Shamsi |
Supreme Court Refuses to Allow National Guard Deployment in Chicago The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to allow President Trump to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops in the Chicago area over the objection of Illinois officials, casting doubt on the viability of similar deployments in other American cities. The justices’ order is preliminary, but it blocks the Trump administration for now from ordering the state-based military force to the Chicago area, where an immigration crackdown led to thousands of arrests and confrontations between residents and federal agents. In its three-page unsigned ruling against the administration, the court refused to grant the president broad discretion to deploy the military in U.S. cities, citing an 1878 law, which bans the use of the military for domestic policing. It represented a rare departure from recent cases, in which the conservative majority has overwhelmingly sided with Mr. Trump in preliminary tests of presidential power. At this stage in the litigation, the court said the Trump administration had not shown that the statute at issue “permits the president to federalize the Guard in the exercise of inherent authority to protect federal personnel and property in Illinois.” Three conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — noted their objections in lengthy dissents, with Justice Alito writing that “the protection of federal officers from potentially lethal attacks should not be thwarted.” In response to the ruling, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the president had promised to “work tirelessly to enforce our immigration laws and protect federal personnel from violent rioters.” She added: “He activated the National Guard to protect federal law enforcement officers, and to ensure rioters did not destroy federal buildings and property. Nothing in today’s ruling detracts from that core agenda.” Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois called the ruling a victory for democracy. “This is an important step in curbing the Trump administration’s consistent abuse of power and slowing Trump’s march toward authoritarianism,” Mr. Pritzker, a Democrat, said in a statement. “The brave men and women of our National Guard should never be used for political theater and deserve to be with their families and communities, especially during the holidays.” Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago said he hoped the Supreme Court’s ruling would shield other cities from unwanted National Guard deployments. Mr. Trump had also in recent months ordered the National Guard to Portland, Ore.; Los Angeles; and Washington, D.C., also over the objections of state and local leaders. The president’s efforts to use troops for domestic policing prompted legal challenges accusing the Trump administration of exceeding its authority and infringing on traditional state powers over policing. The state-based troops are typically deployed at the request of governors to respond to emergencies in their own states such as natural disasters. Federal law allows the president to federalize members of the National Guard without the permission of state officials in certain circumstances, notably when there is a “rebellion or danger of a rebellion” against the government or when law enforcement is overwhelmed and cannot execute U.S. law. Federal courts around the country have generally said the conditions do not exist to allow Mr. Trump to federalize Guard troops. Judges overseeing cases from Los Angeles and Portland halted troop mobilizations. With legal uncertainty hanging over the deployments, the Pentagon decided in November to withdraw hundreds of out-of-state soldiers from Illinois and Oregon, while keeping hundreds of other local troops activated. An appeals court in Washington has separately allowed troops to remain in the nation’s capital while litigation continues, citing the city’s unique status as a federal district. The court battles came amid street protests against the Guard and violence in Washington, where a targeted attack on two National Guard members on Nov. 26 left one dead and another seriously injured. At issue in the case in Chicago and a similar matter in Portland are competing accounts of the protests set off by the enforcement sweeps, which the administration characterized as violent and coordinated and which local officials — and some lower court judges — said did not amount to a rebellion. The court took more than two months to rule on the emergency application. Before issuing its order, the justices took the unusual step in October of asking the parties to address the meaning of a specific key section of the statute. To federalize the National Guard, the president must determine that he is “unable with the regular forces” to execute U.S. laws. The justices asked whether “regular forces” meant the military or civilian law enforcement. The Trump administration responded that “regular forces” referred to civilian law enforcement such as federal immigration agents. As a result, the administration said it should be permitted to unilaterally deploy the National Guard because federal agents were overwhelmed. The office of Attorney General Kwame Raoul of Illinois, a Democrat, countered that the term referred to the full-time professional military and said the justices should deny the president’s request on that basis, because he had not tried to use the standing military, nor could he under the law. In its order on Tuesday, the majority agreed with Illinois officials that the term “regular forces” most likely referred to the U.S. military. To call in the Guard, the president must first determine that he is “unable” with the help of the military to execute U.S. laws — and for that reason, the court said he could likely take such a step only in the rare situations where he would be legally allowed to call in the military in the first place to execute the law. “Such circumstances are exceptional,” the majority said, because of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which makes it illegal to use federal troops for domestic policing under normal circumstances. “At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the majority wrote in the unsigned order. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote separately to say he agreed with the majority’s decision to deny the administration’s request, but on narrower grounds. The majority, he wrote, was too quick to cut off options for the president by suggesting that he could not federalize the National Guard even if he found he was struggling to protect federal personnel and property. In a 16-page dissent, Justice Alito criticized his colleagues for resolving an issue the parties had not initially explored in their filings. “There is no basis for rejecting the president’s determination that he was unable to execute the federal immigration laws,” Justice Alito wrote, joined by Justice Thomas. Justice Gorsuch wrote a separate dissent saying he that would have sided with the administration based on the statements from federal law enforcement officials and that such “weighty questions” deserved a full airing and should not be decided on an emergency basis. The administration sought to station National Guard troops from Texas and Illinois outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Broadview, Ill., a Chicago suburb where protesters have gathered. A district court judge and an ideologically diverse appeals court panel in the Chicago litigation blocked the deployment, finding insufficient evidence that the demonstrations had significantly impeded the ability of federal officers to execute immigration laws. They noted that federal facilities had remained open and that immigration arrests and deportations had continued at a rapid clip. The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court and asserted that its decision to federalize and deploy the Guard was not subject to court review. Even if it were, Justice Department lawyers said, the “prolonged, coordinated, violent resistance” by protesters interfered with law enforcement’s ability to do its job and justified the deployment. D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, told the justices in a court filing that agents could engage in even greater enforcement of immigration laws were they not operating under threat and that the protests posed “unacceptable risks” to their safety. Lawyers for Illinois told the justices in their brief that an “unnecessary deployment” of troops would “escalate tensions and undermine the ordinary law enforcement activities of state and local entities.” “No protest activity in Illinois has rendered the president unable to execute federal law,” Mr. Raoul and lawyers for the City of Chicago said in their filing. They noted that the crackdown on immigration has continued with nearly 3,000 people arrested since the end of October. State and local officials were bolstered by a bipartisan group of more than two dozen former governors and a group of former high-ranking U.S. military leaders, who expressed deep concerns in separate filings to the justices about the president’s actions. Ernesto Londoño and Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting. The Supreme Court deliberated for weeks over the Trump administration’s claim that National Guard troops were necessary to protect federal immigration agents from demonstrators in the Chicago area because of weak support from local law enforcement. On Tuesday, the court refused to allow President Trump to deploy the troops. In November, The Times investigated the underlying facts described by the government’s filing and found that the administration had mischaracterized the responsiveness of local police and the actions of protesters in the aftermath of a car crash and a shooting on Oct. 4 in Chicago that involved Border Patrol agents. National Guard troops are set to arrive in New Orleans within days.About 350 National Guard troops will arrive in New Orleans before New Year’s Eve, Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana said on Tuesday, and they will stay through at least February. Mr. Landry confirmed the deployment both in an appearance on Fox News Channel and on social media. Following Washington and Memphis, New Orleans would be the latest Democratic-led city to receive Guard troops after President Trump criticized it for high rates of crime. “We know how to make cities safe, and the National Guard complements cities that are having high crime problems,” Mr. Landry said, speaking on Fox News. Sharing a clip of the appearance on social media, he added that the troops would be there to “ensure safety during the busiest season in the city.” The announcement came just minutes after the Supreme Court refused to allow President Trump to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops in the Chicago area over the objection of Illinois officials. The president has been similarly blocked from deploying federalized Guard troops to Portland, Ore. In the case of New Orleans, the deployment of National Guard troops was embraced by the Louisiana governor, and the Tuesday announcement came months after Mr. Landry, a Republican, first wrote to Mr. Trump asking him to sign off on sending them to the city. While Mr. Landry can dispatch the Guard without presidential input, authorization from the administration allows the federal government to help cover the expenses. Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed in a statement that Mr. Hegseth had authorized the deployment through Feb. 28. Mr. Landry will retain control. The troops will join Border Patrol agents who have already been in the city since early December as part of a federal crackdown on undocumented immigration. And their scheduled arrival before New Year’s Eve means they are set to be there for the one-year anniversary of the New Year’s Day terrorist attack on Bourbon Street, where a man drove a truck into a crowd and killed 14 people, and remain through the annual Carnival parades that mark the celebration of Mardi Gras. New Orleans has long been on Mr. Trump’s radar; he floated the possibility of sending in the National Guard in early September. Mr. Landry has also suggested sending troops to other cities, including Baton Rouge, the state capital, or Shreveport, in the northwestern corner of the state, but focused only on New Orleans in his announcement Tuesday. “Like in past years, including last year, we appreciate the support provided by our federal and state public safety partners to increase the visibility of security assets during major events,” said Helena Moreno, the mayor-elect of New Orleans, in a statement. She added that she had been assured that the deployment “comes at no cost to the City and plays an important role in strengthening public safety. The deployment of both the National Guard and Border Patrol in New Orleans highlights how deeply the administration and Republicans have tied their concerns about crime with broader complaints about illegal immigration, particularly in Democratic-led cities. But data shows that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. Trump administration officials have said that their focus is on arresting people who have violent criminal records or are accused of more serious offenses, especially if they are undocumented. Some conservatives have argued strict immigration enforcement could have prevented crimes committed by someone in the country illegally. But in cities across the country, there have also been reports of arrests for more minor offenses and of U.S. citizens or people in the country legally being detained. In New Orleans, the existing Border Patrol agents will most likely continue to execute the brunt of law enforcement actions, for which they have faced criticism for their aggressive tactics. Federalized National Guard troops elsewhere in the country have not had the ability to arrest people or execute warrants, playing more of a supporting role to federal immigration agents. But the optics of Guard members in fatigues patrolling near downtown landmarks and tourist areas has prompted some alarm, and litigation. (Some residents and tourists have welcomed their presence, as well as the broader federal investment.) As in other cities, including in Memphis and Los Angeles, the National Guard deployments have been framed as a way to counter high crime. In New Orleans, crime spiked in New Orleans around the coronavirus pandemic and remains high compared with other cities. But in 2024, local police reported a decrease in crime to prepandemic levels. National Guard troops have also been dispatched to New Orleans to provide security for other reasons this year. That includes after the New Year’s Day terrorist attack and around the Super Bowl and other major events.  Los Angeles bureau chief California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, celebrated the Supreme Court’s rejection of a National Guard deployment in Chicago, noting that his own state, the nation’s most populous, had “argued for months against the Trump administration’s sweeping militarized vision of America.” “Today, Americans can breathe a huge sigh of relief,” Bonta said in a statement. “While this is not necessarily the end of the road, it is a significant, deeply gratifying step in the right direction. We plan to ask the lower courts to reach the same result in our cases — and we are hopeful they will do quickly.”  Reporting from Portland, Ore. Oregon’s attorney general, Dan Rayfield, said the Supreme Court’s decision against the federalized National Guard deployment in Illinois meant that Trump’s attempt to use the National Guard in his own state was illegal. The decision, he said, “reinforces a basic principle — no one, including the president, is above the law.” Rayfield, a Democrat, filed a lawsuit this fall against the planned deployment in Portland, Ore. A district court judge blocked that deployment, and the federal government has appealed. |
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