President Donald Trump expressed gratitude to an appeals court for its decision allowing him to maintain the deployment of the California National Guard in Los Angeles.
“The Appeals Court ruled last night that I can use the National Guard to keep our cities, in this case Los Angeles, safe,” Trump posted on his Truth Social page. “If I didn’t send the Military into Los Angeles, that city would be burning to the ground right now. We saved L.A. Thank you for the Decision!!!”
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted the Trump administration’s motion to stay a ruling by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, according to The Washington Post.
Earlier Thursday, Breyer claimed Trump had acted unconstitutionally in federalizing elements of the California National Guard to help protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as well as federal property, citing the 10th Amendment.
By dispatching the Guard, Breyer ruled, Trump had acted improperly, “both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” He further ordered the Guard returned to Governor Gavin Newsom.
The judge temporarily delayed his order until noon Friday, but the Trump administration promptly filed a notice of appeal. The court swiftly granted the request for a stay and scheduled a hearing for Tuesday.
Breyer issued his ruling after California filed a lawsuit against Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and the Department of Defense. The suit sought to limit the role of the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles to the protection of federal facilities and personnel, barring them from other operations.
It also challenged Trump’s authority to deploy those forces in California without the consultation or approval of the state’s governor.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used references to fictional provisions of the Constitution in a tirade against Trump after he took control of California Guard troops.
“I hope the president would read Article 10 of the Constitution, and I urge all of you to do that, as well,” Pelosi said Thursday at a press conference as Democratic lawmakers behind her all nodded in agreement. “Because section 12046 of Article 10 says that the National Guard cannot be called up by the president without the consent of the governor.”
Only, there is no “Article 10” in the Constitution; there are only seven, and they lay out the duties and responsibilities of each branch of government: Executive, Judicial, Legislative.
Pelosi was likely attempting to reference Title 10 of the United States Code, which contains the provisions for use of the “National Guard in Federal service.”
Having said that, however, Pelosi was also wrong in claiming that presidents don’t have the authority to federalize National Guard troops. One of the Democratic Party’s icons, civil rights-era President Lyndon B. Johnson, invoked Title 10 to federalize Alabama National Guard troops to protect civil rights protesters, per the Washington Examiner.
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“The statute explicitly states that the president may call the Guard into federal service and that orders ‘shall be issued through the governors,’ which is an administrative process, and not a requirement of consent,” Matt Margolis wrote Wednesday at PJ Media.
“Federal law has long acknowledged the president’s right to federalize the National Guard, and the Supreme Court has affirmed the president’s right to federalize the National Guard without gubernatorial consent multiple times,” he added.
Pelosi was also caught in another falsehood. During the same tirade, she claimed that she, as then-House Speaker, “we begged the president of the United States [Trump] to send in the National Guard” ahead of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol Building.
But then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund corrected the record, writing on the X platform that he was prevented from using the DC Guard.