A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to halt its National Guard deployment to Washington while a lawsuit over the matter plays out in court, siding with D.C.’s Office of the Attorney General and writing that the administration has “exceeded the bounds of [its] statutory authority” in requesting National Guard assistance from other states.
However, the order will not take effect immediately; the judge opted to pause it from going into effect for 21 days to give a higher court the chance to rule on a Trump administration appeal.
The deployment, U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb wrote in an opinion issued Thursday, has caused D.C. “irreparable harm to its sovereign powers under the Home Rule Act, which are being usurped by Defendants’ unlawful actions.”
While the order does not represent the final ruling in the case, Cobb’s opinion grants a significant legal victory for D.C. in its fight against what the city’s top officials universally see as an incursion on the District’s limited autonomy.
“From the beginning, we made clear that the U.S. military should not be policing American citizens on American soil,” D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a statement Thursday. “It is long past time to let the National Guard go home — to their everyday lives, their regular jobs, their families, and their children.”
President Donald Trump deployed the D.C. National Guard on Aug. 11 as part of a crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital, in which he also declared an emergency, seized control of the D.C. police department and surged hundreds of federal agents onto city streets. He soon requested support from hundreds more Guard troops from other states, and the ranks in D.C. swelled to roughly 2,500.
While Trump’s 30-day emergency expired in September, the National Guard has maintained a presence — often seen milling at Metro stations, picking up trash at national parks or strolling along busy nightlife corridors. The Washington Post reported last month that the Trump administration had extended the Guard mission in D.C. through the end of February.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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