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Judge asks if troops in Los Angeles are violating the Posse Comitatus Act
Law Firm News |
2025/06/20 05:45
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California’s challenge of the Trump administration’s military deployment in Los Angeles returned to a federal courtroom in San Francisco on Friday for a brief hearing after an appeals court handed President Donald Trump a key procedural win.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer put off issuing any additional rulings and instead asked for briefings from both sides by noon Monday on whether the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits troops from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil, is being violated in Los Angeles.
The hearing happened the day after the 9th Circuit appellate panel allowed the president to keep control of National Guard troops he deployed in response to protests over immigration raids.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in his complaint that “violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is imminent, if not already underway” but Breyer last week postponed considering that allegation.
Vice President JD Vance, a Marine veteran, traveled to Los Angeles on Friday and met with troops, including U.S. Marines who have been deployed to protect federal buildings.
According to Vance, the court determined Trump’s determination to send in federal troops “was legitimate” and he will do it again if necessary.
“The president has a very simple proposal to everybody in every city, every community, every town whether big or small, if you enforce your own laws and if you protect federal law enforcement, we’re not going to send in the National Guard because it’s unnecessary,” Vance told journalists after touring a federal complex in Los Angeles.
Vance’s tour of a multiagency Federal Joint Operations Center and a mobile command center came as demonstrations have calmed after sometimes-violent clashes between protesters and police and outbreaks of vandalism and break-ins that followed immigration raids across Southern California earlier this month. Tens of thousands have also marched peacefully in Los Angeles since June 8.
National Guard troops have been accompanying federal agents on some immigration raids, and Marines briefly detained a man on the first day they deployed to protect a federal building. The marked the first time federal troops detained a civilian since deploying to the nation’s second-largest city.
Breyer found Trump acted illegally when, over opposition from California’s governor, the president activated the soldiers. However, the appellate decision halted the judge’s temporary restraining order. Breyer asked the lawyers on Friday to address whether he or the appellate court retains primary jurisdiction to grant an injunction under the Posse Comitatus Act.
California has sought a preliminary injunction giving Newsom back control of the troops in Los Angeles, where protests have calmed down in recent days.
Trump, a Republican, argued that the troops have been necessary to restore order. Newsom, a Democrat, said their presence on the streets of a U.S. city inflamed tensions, usurped local authority and wasted resources.
The demonstrations appear to be winding down, although dozens of protesters showed up Thursday at Dodger Stadium, where a group of federal agents gathered at a parking lot with their faces covered, traveling in SUVs and cargo vans. The Los Angeles Dodgers organization asked them to leave, and they did.
On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass lifted a downtown curfew that was first imposed in response to vandalism and clashes with police after crowds gathered in opposition to agents taking migrants into detention.
Trump federalized members of the California National Guard under an authority known as Title 10.
Title 10 allows the president to call the National Guard into federal service when the country “is invaded,” when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government,” or when the president is otherwise unable “to execute the laws of the United States.”
Breyer found that Trump had overstepped his legal authority, which he said allows presidents to control state National Guard troops only during times of “rebellion or danger of a rebellion.”
“The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of ‘rebellion,’ ” wrote Breyer, a Watergate prosecutor who was appointed by President Bill Clinton and is the brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
The Trump administration argued that courts can’t second-guess the president’s decisions. The appellate panel ruled otherwise, saying presidents don’t have unfettered power to seize control of a state’s guard, but the panel said that by citing violent acts by protesters in this case, the Trump administration had presented enough evidence to show it had a defensible rationale for federalizing the troops.
For now, the California National Guard will stay in federal hands as the lawsuit proceeds. It is the first deployment by a president of a state National Guard without the governor’s permission since troops were sent to protect Civil Rights Movement marchers in 1965.
Trump celebrated the appellate ruling in a social media post, calling it a “BIG WIN” and hinting at more potential deployments.
Newsom, for his part, has also warned that California won’t be the last state to see troops in the streets if Trump gets his way.
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Trump formally asks Congress to claw back approved spending targeted by DOGE
Law Firm News |
2025/06/02 11:53
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The White House on Tuesday officially asked Congress to claw back $9.4 billion in already approved spending, taking funding away from programs targeted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
It’s a process known as “rescission,” which requires President Donald Trump to get approval from Congress to return money that had previously been appropriated. Trump’s aides say the funding cuts target programs that promote liberal ideologies.
The request, if it passes the House and Senate, would formally enshrine many of the spending cuts and freezes sought by DOGE. It comes at a time when Musk is extremely unhappy with the tax cut and spending plan making its way through Congress, calling it on Tuesday a “disgusting abomination” for increasing the federal deficit.
White House budget director Russ Vought said more rescission packages and other efforts to cut spending could follow if the current effort succeeds.
“We are certainly willing and able to send up additional packages if the congressional will is there,” Vought told reporters.
Here’s what to know about the rescissions request:
Will the rescissions make a dent in the national debt?
The request to Congress is unlikely to meaningfully change the troublesome increase in the U.S. national debt. Tax revenues have been insufficient to cover the growing costs of Social Security, Medicare and other programs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the government is on track to spend roughly $7 trillion this year, with the rescission request equaling just 0.1% of that total.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing that Vought — a “well-respected fiscal hawk,” she called him — would continue to cut spending, hinting that there could be additional efforts to return funds.
“He has tools at his disposal to produce even more savings,” Leavitt said.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus, among the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers, said they would like to see additional rescission packages from the administration.
“We will support as many more rescissions packages the White House can send us in the coming weeks and months,” the group said in a press release. “Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda.”
Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, gave the package a less optimistic greeting.
“Despite this fast track, the Senate Appropriations Committee will carefully review the rescissions package and examine the potential consequences of these rescissions on global health, national security, emergency communications in rural communities, and public radio and television stations,” the Maine lawmaker said in a statement.
Vought said he can send up additional rescissions at the end of the fiscal year in September “and if Congress does not act on it, that funding expires.”
“It’s one of the reasons why we are not putting all of our expectations in a typical rescissions process,” he added.
What programs are targeted by the rescissions?
A spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview some of the items that would lose funding, said that $8.3 billion was being cut from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. NPR and PBS would also lose federal funding, as would the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR.
The spokesperson listed specific programs that the Trump administration considered wasteful, including $750,000 to reduce xenophobia in Venezuela, $67,000 for feeding insect powder to children in Madagascar and $3 million for circumcision, vasectomies and condoms in Zambia.
Is the rescissions package likely to get passed?
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., complimented the planned cuts and pledged to pass them.
“This rescissions package reflects many of DOGE’s findings and is one of the many legislative tools Republicans are using to restore fiscal sanity,” Johnson said. “Congress will continue working closely with the White House to codify these recommendations, and the House will bring the package to the floor as quickly as possible.”
Members of the House Freedom Caucus, among the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers, said they would like to see additional rescission packages from the administration.
“We will support as many more rescissions packages the White House can send us in the coming weeks and months,” the group said in a press release. “Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda.”
Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, gave the package a less optimistic greeting.
“Despite this fast track, the Senate Appropriations Committee will carefully review the rescissions package and examine the potential consequences of these rescissions on global health, national security, emergency communications in rural communities, and public radio and television stations,” the Maine lawmaker said in a statement.
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Supreme Court could block Trump’s birthright citizenship order
Law Firm News |
2025/05/15 11:59
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The Supreme Court seemed intent Thursday on keeping a block on President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship while looking for a way to scale back nationwide court orders.
It was unclear what such a decision might look like, but a majority of the court expressed concerns about would happen if the Trump administration were allowed, even temporarily, to deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally.
The justices heard arguments in the Trump administration’s emergency appeals over lower court orders that have kept the citizenship restrictions on hold across the country. Nationwide, or universal, injunctions have emerged as an important check on Trump’s efforts to remake the government and a mounting frustration to the Republican president and his allies.
Judges have issued 40 nationwide injunctions since Trump began his second term in January, Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court at the start of more than two hours of arguments.
Birthright citizenship is among several issues, many related to immigration, that the administration has asked the court to address on an emergency basis.
The justices are also considering the Trump administration’s pleas to end humanitarian parole for more than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela and to strip other temporary legal protections from another 350,000 Venezuelans. The administration remains locked in legal battles over its efforts to swiftly deport people accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador under an 18th century wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act.
Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term that would deny citizenship to children who are born to people who are in the country illegally or temporarily.
The order conflicts with a Supreme Court decision from 1898 that held that the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment made citizens of all children born on U.S. with narrow exceptions that are not at issue in this case.
States, immigrants and rights group sued almost immediately, and lower courts quickly barred enforcement of the order while the lawsuits proceed. The court’s liberal justices seemed firmly in support of the lower court rulings that found the changes to citizenship that Trump wants to make would upset the settled understanding of birthright citizenship that has existed for more than 125 years.
Birthright citizenship is an odd case to use to scale back nationwide injunctions, Justice Elena Kagan said. “Every court has ruled against you,” she told Sauer.
But if the government wins on today’s arguments, it could still enforce the order against people who haven’t sued, Kagan said. “All of those individuals are going to win. And the ones who can’t afford to go to court, they’re the ones who are going to lose,” she said
Several conservative justices who might be open to limiting nationwide injunctions also wanted to know the practical effects of such a decision as well as how quickly the court could reach a final decision on the Trump executive order. |
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Trump administration says South African ambassador has to leave the US
Law Firm News |
2025/03/16 06:45
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The State Department says South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, who was declared “persona non grata” last week, has until Friday to leave the country.
After Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined that Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was no longer welcome in the U.S. and posted his decision Friday on social media, South African embassy staff were summoned to the State Department and given a formal diplomatic note explaining the decision, department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.
She said Rasool’s diplomatic privileges and immunities expired Monday and that he would be required to leave the United States by Friday.
South African Foreign Ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri said in a television interview on Monday that Rasool was still in the U.S. but would be leaving as soon as possible.
Rubio announced his decision in a post on X as he was flying back to the United States from a Group of 7 foreign ministers meeting in Canada. In it, he accused Rasool of being a “race-baiting politician” who hates President Donald Trump. His post linked to a story by the conservative Breitbart news site about a talk Rasool gave earlier Friday in Johannesburg as part of a South African think tank’s webinar. Rasool, speaking by videoconference, talked about actions taken by the Trump administration in the context of a United States where white people soon would no longer be in the majority.
It is highly unusual for the U.S. to expel a foreign ambassador, although lower-ranking diplomats are more frequently targeted with persona non grata status.
Rubio’s decision was the latest Trump administration move targeting South Africa. Trump signed an executive order last month halting funding to the country. It criticized the Black-led South African government on multiple fronts, saying it is pursuing anti-white policies at home and supporting “bad actors” in the world like the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told reporters on Monday that Rasool would give him a report when he returned home.
Ramaphosa said his government has “noted the displeasure that has been expressed by the United States,” and particularly about Rasool’s remarks, but stressed that he believed South Africa was in the process of rebuilding its relationship with the U.S.
“This is a hiccup, a hiccup we are working on straightening out,” he said.
“We will engage with the United States of America in a formal way,” Ramaphosa said. “We will do so with deep respect for them and for President Trump as well. Our relationship with the United States is going to be put on an even keel, so I would like the people of South Africa not to have sleepless nights.”
Bruce said the United States expects a certain level of respect.
“We’ve had a decent level of diplomacy with South Africa. There are some challenges, but you want people in each embassy who can actually facilitate a relationship,” she told reporters on Monday. “And these remarks were unacceptable to the United States, not just to the president, but to every American.”
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Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody will fill Marco Rubio’s Senate seat
Law Firm News |
2025/01/18 09:50
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Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody will take Marco Rubio ’s seat in the U.S. Senate, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday, making Moody only the second woman to represent Florida in the chamber.
Elected as the state’s top law enforcement officer in 2018, Moody campaigned on a pledge to voters that she’d be a prosecutor, not a politician. But along with DeSantis, she boosted her political profile during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, calling on the federal government to “hold China responsible” for the outbreak.
In elevating her to the post, DeSantis praised Moody as a key player in his political battles, a law and order prosecutor who’s prepared to help President-elect Donald Trump “secure and shut the border,” rein in inflation, and overhaul what he described as a federal bureaucracy “run amok.”
“I’m ready to show up and fight for this nation and fight for President Trump to deliver the America First agenda on Day 1,” Moody said during Thursday’s announcement at a hotel in Orlando.
“The only way to return this country to the people, the people who govern it, is to make sure we have a strong Congress doing its job, passing laws and actually approving the regulations that these unelected bureaucrats are trying to cram down on the American people,” she added.
Before running for statewide office, Moody worked as a federal prosecutor. In 2006, she was elected to the post of circuit judge in Hillsborough County, home to Tampa. A fifth generation native of Plant City, Florida, Moody was once named queen of the city’s famed strawberry festival. She’s a three-time graduate of the University of Florida and she and her husband, a law enforcement officer, have two sons.
As the state’s attorney general, Moody has been instrumental in defending DeSantis’ conservative agenda in court and has joined other Republican-led states in challenging the Biden administration’s policies, suing over changes to immigration enforcement, student loan forgiveness and vaccine mandates for federal contractors.
“I’m happy to say we’ve had an Attorney General that is somebody that has acted time and time again to support the values that we all share,” DeSantis said. “We in Florida established our state as a beachhead of liberty, as the free state of Florida. And she was with us every step of the way.”
Moody isn’t the state’s only AG to use the office as a stepping stone to a national post. Her predecessor, Pam Bondi, is Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department and is testifying Thursday in the Senate.
Moody will be the second woman to represent the state in the Senate, and the first in nearly 40 years; Republican Paula Hawkins served in the chamber from 1981-1987.
With the appointment announced, Moody is poised to take office once the vacancy occurs. Rubio is expected to have broad support from Republicans as well as Democrats, and his confirmation vote could come as soon as Monday evening.
Under Florida law, it was up to the Republican governor to choose Rubio’s replacement after Trump picked the three-term senator to be his next secretary of state. Moody will serve in the Senate until the next general election in 2026, when the seat will be back on the ballot.
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