A federal judge on Thursday ruled that the monthslong deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. must end, finding the use of those forces unlawful. The decision is the latest legal challenge to President Trump’s use of military personnel in U.S. cities to respond to protests, address crime or protect federal sites and staff.
The ruling comes amid related actions elsewhere: a Tennessee judge temporarily blocked Guard mobilization in Memphis after the governor activated forces at the president’s request, and the Defense Department recently ordered hundreds of troops to leave Chicago and Portland as courts reviewed legal challenges to those deployments.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, sided with D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb. Schwalb argued the deployment infringed on the District’s self-governance, heightened public-safety risks by increasing tensions between residents and law enforcement, and damaged the local economy. In her opinion, Cobb found that the District’s exercise of sovereign powers within its jurisdiction was irreparably harmed by the defendants’ actions in deploying the Guards.
Cobb stayed her order until Dec. 11 to allow the Trump administration time to appeal. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the president acted within his authority and described the lawsuit as an effort to undermine what she called the president’s highly successful operations to stop violent crime in D.C.
The initial deployment began in early August, when Trump sent hundreds of Guard members to the capital without the mayor’s consent after declaring a so-called crime emergency, a characterization disputed by local Democratic leaders. Guard personnel were assigned to street patrols and to nonoperational tasks such as trash removal, spreading mulch and pruning. According to the U.S. Army, the deployment at one point included more than 2,100 Guard members from the District and several states, including Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia and Alabama.