BREAKING: Clinton-appointed Judge Charles Breyer has ordered Trump to return control of the National Guard back to California.
Gov. Newsom said “the National Guard will come back under my authority by noon tomorrow” and says they will go back to border security and fentanyl interdiction.
He also said they will go back to vegetation and forest management for wildfire prevention.
A federal appeals court late Thursday paused a ruling that required President Donald Trump to return control of members of California’s National Guard to the state.
Senior US District Judge Charles Breyer had ruled that Trump unlawfully federalized thousands of members of California’s National Guard and must return control of the troops to the state by mid-day Friday. But the order from the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals puts that on pause.
Breyer’s ruling, nevertheless, is a significant win for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who sued Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this week after the president called the troops into federal service in the wake of protests in the Los Angeles area over Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
“His actions were illegal – both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith,” the judge wrote in his 36-page ruling.
Breyer, of the federal district court in San Francisco, said Trump had not satisfied any of the requirements that must be met in order to call up members of a state’s National Guard and that the president had not complied with a procedural aspect of federal law that requires presidents to issue an order “through the governor” when they want to federalize state troops.
“Regardless of whether Defendants gave Governor Newsom an opportunity to consult with them or consent to the federalization of California’s National Guard, they did not issue their orders through him, and thus failed to comply with” federal law, he wrote.
The panel of three judges from the 9th Circuit – two Trump appointees and an appointee of former President Joe Biden – said it will hold a hearing Tuesday on the issue.
