Supreme Court bars Trump’s military use in Chicago

National Guard troops stationed outside Chicago during blocked deployment — (Image credit: Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

What happened

The Supreme Court yesterday blocked President Donald Trump from deploying the National Guard in the Chicago area to bolster his mass deportation push. “At this preliminary stage, the government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the court said in an unsigned emergency docket opinion. Three conservative justices — Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — publicly dissented.

Who said what

The ruling was a “rare setback” for Trump before a conservative Supreme Court that has “frequently backed his broad assertions of presidential authority,” Reuters said. This was the “first time the justices have weighed in on Trump’s efforts to dispatch the military to American cities,” The Wall Street Journal said, and their “preliminary” ruling suggests they are “unwilling to rubber-stamp Trump’s assertions of broad authority to use the National Guard to manage protests and violent crime.”

Yesterday’s ruling “hinged on the definition of ‘regular forces,’” the Journal said. Lower courts had blocked Trump’s deployment after determining that anti-ICE protests aren’t a brewing “rebellion,” but the justices found that Trump had failed to meet the other condition needed to nationalize the Guard over the objections of state officials: showing he was “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” The court’s majority agreed with Illinois that “regular forces” likely meant the U.S. military, not federal agents. They also noted that presidents can only use the regular military for domestic law enforcement under “exceptional” circumstances because of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) welcomed the ruling as “an important step in curbing the Trump administration’s consistent abuse of power and slowing Trump’s march toward authoritarianism.” The White House said the ruling doesn’t detract from Trump’s “core agenda” of immigration enforcement and protecting federal personnel from “violent rioters.”

What next?

The decision was “not a final ruling,” but it could affect pending legal challenges to Trump’s “attempts to deploy the military in other Democratic-led cities,” The Associated Press said. Lower courts have blocked Trump’s deployments in Oregon and California. But some Republican governors have welcomed National Guard missions in their Democratic-run cities, and minutes after yesterday’s ruling, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) announced that about 350 Guard troops will join immigration agents in New Orleans before New Year’s Eve.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.