California sues Trump over National Guard deployment amid L.A. immigration protests
Suit harkens back to Alabama’s Civil Rights-era clashes
California Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Monday that the State will sue the Trump administration. The lawsuit challenges President Trump’s decision to federalize the California National Guard and deploy troops to Los Angeles to respond to immigration–related protests — a move they say is unconstitutional.
President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum on Saturday, June 7, federalizing 2,000 National Guardsmen and directing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to use them “to temporarily protect ICE and other United States Government personnel who are performing Federal functions, including the enforcement of Federal law, and to protect Federal property, at locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations.” The Memorandum also states that “the Secretary of Defense may employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.”
Tensions boiled over in Los Angeles this weekend after ICE initiated large-scale workplace raids starting Friday. Thousands took to the streets by Sunday. Protesters blocked a freeway, set multiple self-driving Waymo cars ablaze, and clashed with law enforcement. Police and National Guard units used tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash–bangs to disperse crowds and declare the gatherings an unlawful assembly.
In a Monday post on X, Newsom wrote:
“He flamed the fires and illegally acted to federalize the National Guard. The order he signed doesn’t just apply to CA. It will allow him to go into ANY STATE and do the same thing. We’re suing him.”
He previously teased the lawsuit during an MSNBC interview Sunday, calling the move “illegal and immoral.”
The planned legal action will argue that the deployment violates both the Insurrection Act and the Posse Comitatus Act, and that federal authorities failed to coordinate with the State as required — marking the first such action in roughly 60 years.
Early Monday, Trump called for broader military intervention on Truth Social, posting:
“Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!”
The President later posted:
“If they spit, we will hit.” This is a statement from the President of the United States concerning the catastrophic Gavin Newscum inspired Riots going on in Los Angeles. The Insurrectionists have a tendency to spit in the face of the National Guardsmen/women, and others. These Patriots are told to accept this, it’s just the way life runs. But not in the Trump Administration. IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT, and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before. Such disrespect will not be tolerated!”
The clash between President Trump and Governor Newsom harkens back to one that unfolded in Alabama more than 60 years ago. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard after Governor George C. Wallace attempted to block two Black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from enrolling at the University of Alabama. The “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door,” became a defining episode in the Civil Rights Era.
Again in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized the Alabama Guard to protect Civil Rights marchers during the Selma to Montgomery marches. State troopers and local law enforcement had brutally attacked demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in what became known as “Bloody Sunday.” Johnson’s action allowed the march to proceed peacefully under the watch of federal troops.
On Sunday, Trump spent the day at Camp David. He will return to the White House at lunchtime Monday, ahead of an afternoon roundtable on “Investing in America.”
