President Trump’s aggressive use of the National Guard in American cities is opening new legal battlegrounds over his push to deploy the military on U.S. soil.

The fight started in Los Angeles before shifting to Washington, D.C., where courts are still weighing Trump's National Guard deployments.

But in recent days, the president has called hundreds of troops in Illinois and Oregon into federal service and ordered them sent to the states’ largest cities, Chicago and Portland, over local leaders’ opposition. The president also sought to deploy California National Guard members to Portland and Texas guardsmen to both cities.

A federal judge in Oregon has already twice blocked Trump from deploying troops to Portland for now, and Illinois has asked a federal judge in to do the same in Chicago.

It’s pouring fuel on the already-smoldering legal fight over Trump's quest to expand presidential power, and at the same time, stands to redefine the military’s role.

Usually, it’s a governor’s job to control their state’s National Guard, a reserve military force which is typically called into action during natural disasters or civil unrest.

However, the president may also call up the National Guard into federal service under a provision of Title 10 that allows the president to deploy the troops to fend off an invasion, suppress a rebellion or pave the way for the president to execute the law.

It comes with a catch: Federal troops are subject to the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law generally barring their participation in civilian law enforcement. When troops are under a governor’s command, the centuries-old law does not apply.

Trump has relied on Title 10 to mobilize National Guard members in Oregon, Illinois and California, where a judge ruled last month troops ran afoul of the law when Trump sent them to Los Angeles. The Trump administration has appealed that decision.

He also relied on the statute in his attempt to send Texas and California troops to Chicago and Portland.

It’s a different tact than was used in Washington, D.C. Trump commands the city’s National Guard but Republican-led states offered up additional troops in Title 32 status, meaning they are under local authority but federally funded.

Critically, those troops are not subject to Posse Comitatus, though District officials claim in their own lawsuit that the Trump administration has federalized them in all but name.

Democratic leaders have still likened Trump’s moves to an “invasion.” The states that have sued claim the president is stepping on their sovereignty and the troops engaging in civilian law enforcement.

“The folks in the neighborhoods do not want armed troops marching in their streets when it comes to public safety,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said at a press conference Monday, suggesting Chicagoans would rather see jobs, after school programs and civilian law enforcement “when they need them.”

“They do not want Donald Trump to occupy their communities,” he continued.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who joined Oregon’s lawsuit when Trump mobilized hundreds of his state’s troops after a federal judge blocked the administration from federalizing Oregon’s own troops, urged that “states cannot invade one another.”

“This is so simple — so fundamental to America — I cannot believe I have to type those words,” he wrote on X, claiming the country is “on the brink of martial law.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has taken the opposite view.

“I fully authorized the President to call up 400 members of the Texas National Guard to ensure safety for federal officials,” Abbott wrote on X Sunday. “You can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it.”

On Monday, Pritzker urged the Texas governor to “stay the hell out of Illinois’s business.”

The Trump administration has argued in court that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities are under attack and that judges must give a “great level of deference” to the president’s determination to federalize the National Guard.

But Trump still holds a trump card.

He could invoke the Insurrection Act, an exception to Posse Comitatus that allows the president to send active-duty military into states that can’t quell a rebellion on their own or are defying federal law.

Trump said Monday he would invoke the rarely used power “if it was necessary.”

“So far, it hasn’t been necessary,” Trump said. “But we have an Insurrection Act for a reason."

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Back to SCOTUS

Opening Day? First day of school?

However you prefer to think of it, welcome to the start of the Supreme Court’s next annual term, OT 25.

The docket is still filling up, but it’s already set to be a big one from the future of the Voting Rights Act to transgender athletes to Trump’s tariffs.

The first high-profile case headed to arguments yesterday, when the justices took the bench to review Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy.

In the weeks leading up to each Supreme Court term, lawyers and nerds like us flock to panel discussions filled with predictions for the new term. Here’s a sampling of what we heard:

At Georgetown University:

• Obama-era solicitor general Don Verrilli predicted that “the shape of the electoral process and the way it's regulated, it's going look potentially different in June than it does now.”

• Roman Martinez, head of Latham & Watkins’s Supreme Court practice, said an interesting theme this term – and more generally with the Trump administration – is going to be “to see how this Supreme Court applies some of the doctrines that have been more skeptical of executive branch overreach in prior years.”

At the Federalist Society:

• Wiley Rein partner Megan Brown with an understatement: “John Sauer is a very busy man this term.”

• Jo-Ann Sagar, partner at Hogan Lovells, said it’s “super interesting to hear about the court doing more criminal conlaw. I feel like that's been really missing from the docket for a while.”

• Judicial Crisis Network president Carrie Severino has her eyes fixed on Justice Neil Gorsuch in cases involving LGBTQ rights: “Is he going to make some commentary in these cases? Is he going to continue to at least be silent and simply vote?”

At the American Constitution Society:

• Pamela Karlan, co-director of Stanford Law School’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, said the court is “gunning for getting rid of Humphrey’s Executor,” the 90-year precedent that has justified removal protections at independent agencies. “I think of the current court as Humphrey's executioner instead of the executor. And that will gut independent agencies.”

• Rutgers Law School professor Carlos Ball proposed that if the court is “going to say no to the administration on an important issue of policy, it is likely to be on the tariff question.”

• Alexis Hoag-Fordjour, co-director of Brooklyn Law School’s Center for Criminal Justice, predicted more dissents by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “She's really distinguished herself as an outspoken, critical and sharp dissenter.”

Other standouts:

• James Burnham, former DOGE general counsel and managing partner of King Street Legal, suggests Chief Justice John Roberts is “definitely not going to say...that that he will not say Title IX and Equal Protection requires that the boys be on the girls’ basketball team.”

• University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman predicts: “With the Trump cases that are already on the court's docket, it seems like the court is going to f*** around and find out with going further and further down the........
  

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