Tag Archives: Judge Charles Breyer

Daily Beast: Trump Goon Spills Bonkers Plan to Deploy 82nd Airborne to Blue City

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A senior White House aide’s messages were shared with a newspaper after he used Signal in a crowded public place.

A senior White House official accidentally disclosed that the Trump administration was considering deploying an elite army strike force into Portland by using Signal in a public place.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reported Friday that Anthony Salisbury, one of Stephen Miller’s top deputies, was observed discussing the plans via Signal in view of members of the public while traveling in Minnesota. The newspaper was then contacted by one member of the public who was troubled to see sensitive military plans discussed so openly.

In the messages, senior White House officials discussed the potential deployment of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, an elite unit that specializes in parachuting into hostile territory. The division has been deployed in both world wars, including the Battle of the Bulge, as well as Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Across several conversations, the Star Tribune reports, Salisbury spoke about a range of matters with Pete Hegseth adviser Patrick Weaver as well as other officials.

In one of the messages, Weaver revealed that Hegseth wanted Trump to explicitly instruct him to send soldiers to Portland.

“Between you and I, I think Pete just wants the top cover from the boss if anything goes sideways with the troops there,” Weaver reportedly said.

Noting the potentially disastrous optics around sending an elite division into an American city, Weaver told Salisbury, “82nd is like our top tier [quick reaction force] for abroad. So it will cause a lot of headlines. Probably why he wants potus to tell him to do it.”

Ultimately, Trump opted to send 200 National Guard soldiers into Portland, following a similar playbook used in other Democrat-controlled cities like Los Angeles and Washington D.C. Both the state of Oregon and the city of Portland have sued to stop the deployment.

Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House, told the Daily Beast, “Tony recently traveled to Minnesota to serve as a pallbearer in his uncle’s funeral who passed away from cancer. Despite dealing with grief from the loss of a family member, Tony continued his important work on behalf of the American people.“

“Nothing in these private conversations, that are shamefully being reported on by morally bankrupt reporters, is new or classified information,” Jackson continued. “Frankly, this story just shows the entire Trump Administration is working around the clock—and even through funerals—to make America safe again.”

The incident marks the second time in six months that the Trump administration has experienced issues as a result of insecure lines of communication.

Earlier this year, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to a Signal chat where several high-ranking government officials discussed the logistics of a strike on Yemen’s Houthis.

The fiasco was quickly dubbed “Signalgate” and ultimately led to national security adviser Mike Waltz, who was responsible for adding Goldberg to the chat, leaving his role at the National Security Council. President Trump later appointed him Ambassador to the United Nations.

Trump has consistently asserted that sending soldiers into cities is the only way to address rampant crime. Meanwhile, the White House has admitted to “reconfiguring” crime statistics to suit Trump’s agenda after claiming that other official statistics are “phony.”

The president’s crime crackdown, which has been concentrated entirely on blue cities, is proving more and more unpopular with the American public. After looking at recent polling on Monday, CNN data guru Harry Enten told viewers, “If Donald Trump thinks that potentially sending in the National Guard into cities like Portland is a winning political issue, the polling says you’re wrong, Mr. President!”

Trump also faced a significant blow after a federal judge ruled that his deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles was illegal, with Judge Charles Breyer finding that the president had violated the Posse Comitatus Act by requiring armed soldiers to carry out domestic law enforcement activities.

Trump Goon Spills Bonkers Plan to Deploy 82nd Airborne to Blue City
A senior White House aide’s messages were shared with a newspaper after he used Signal in a crowded public place.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-goon-spills-bonkers-plan-to-deploy-82nd-airborne-to-blue-city

Associated Press: Judge pauses California’s request to bar Trump administration’s ongoing use of National Guard troops

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A federal judge who ruled last week that the Trump administration broke federal law by sending National Guard troops to the Los Angeles area said Tuesday he will not immediately consider a request to bar the ongoing use of 300 Guard troops.

In a court order, Senior District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco said he was not sure he had the authority to consider California’s motion for a preliminary injunction blocking the administration’s further deployment of state National Guard troops. That’s because the case is on appeal before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the judge said.

Breyer indefinitely paused all proceedings related to the state’s motion, though he suggested California officials could file the request with the 9th Circuit.

An email to the California attorney general’s office late Tuesday was not immediately returned.

Breyer’s Sept. 2 ruling took on heightened importance amid President Donald Trump’s talk of National Guard deployments to other Democratic-led cities like Chicago, Baltimore and New York. Trump has already deployed the Guard as part of his unprecedented law enforcement takeover targeting crime, immigration and homelessness in Washington, where he has direct legal control over the District of Columbia National Guard.

The Trump administration sent troops to the Los Angeles area in early June after days of protests over immigration raids.

Breyer ruled the administration “willfully” broke federal law, saying the government knew “they were ordering troops to execute domestic law beyond their usual authority” while using “armed soldiers ( whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles.”

He did not require the 300 remaining soldiers to leave but pointed out that they received improper training and ordered the administration to stop using them “to execute the laws.” The order that applies only to California was supposed to take effect Sept. 12, but the 9th Circuit has put it on hold for now.

California later sought a preliminary injunction blocking an Aug. 5 order from the administration extending the deployment of the 300 troops for another 90 days.

The further deployment “would ensure that California’s residents will remain under a form of military occupation until early November,” including while voting on Nov. 4 on whether to adopt new congressional maps — “an election with national attention and significance,” state officials said in a court filing.

Judge pauses California’s request to bar Trump administration’s ongoing use of National Guard troops
A federal judge who ruled last week that the Trump administration broke federal law by sending National Guard troops to the Los Angeles area says he will not immediately consider a request to bar the ongoing use of 300 Guard troops.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-california-national-guard-troops-08f8a71ca5834b8f32ce4c3ee944abca

CNN: Trump claims he can do anything he wants with the military. Here’s what the law says

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Having rebranded the Department of Defense as the Department of War, the president is going on offense with the US military.

Donald Trump has foisted National Guard troops on Washington, DC, and Los Angeles. Other cities are on edge, particularly after he posted an apparently artificially generated image of himself dressed up like Robert Duvall’s surfing cavalry commander in “Apocalypse Now,” a meme that seemed to suggest he was threatening war on the city of Chicago.

Trump later clarified that the US would not go to war on Chicago, but he’s clearly comfortable joking about it. And he’s of the opinion his authority over the military is absolute.

“Not that I don’t have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States,” he said at a Cabinet meeting in August, when he was asked about the prospect of Chicagoans engaging in nonviolent resistance against the US military.

He’s reorienting the US military to focus on drug traffickers as terrorists and told Congress to expect more military strikes after the US destroyed a boat in the Caribbean last week.

All of this projects the kind of strongman decisiveness Trump admires.

A lot of it might also be illegal.

A ‘violation of the Posse Comitatus Act’

US District Judge Charles Breyer ruled this month that Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth committed a “a serious violation of the Posse Comitatus Act” when they deployed federalized troops to Los Angeles over the objections of the state’s governor and mayor.

The Posse Comitatus Act was passed by Congress in 1878 as Southern states worked to oust federal troops and end Reconstruction. Questions over how and whether troops can be used to enforce laws goes back to the pre-Civil War period, when federal marshals sought help from citizens and militiamen in recovering fugitive slaves and putting down the protests of abolitionists, according to the Congressional Research Service.

It is not clear why Trump has not yet, as he has promised, called up the National Guard to patrol in Chicago, but he may be waiting for the Supreme Court, which has been extremely deferential to his claims of authority, to weigh in on a preliminary basis.

Trump has more authority to deploy the military inside Washington, DC, which the Constitution says Congress controls. But Congress has ceded some authority to locally elected officials in recent decades. DC’s Attorney General Brian Schwalb has sued the Trump administration over the deployment.

Testing the War Powers Act

Trump’s strike on a boat in the Caribbean is also on murky legal ground.

After Vietnam, Congress overrode Richard Nixon’s veto to pass another law, the War Powers Act of 1973, which requires presidents to notify Congress within 48 hours of a military strike. And Trump did do that, at least his third such notification since taking office in January. Trump also sent notifications to Congress about his strike against an Iranian nuclear facility and Houthi rebels who were attacking shipping routes.

The Reiss Center at New York University maintains a database of War Powers Act notifications going back to the 1970s.

Cartels as terrorist organizations

In the notification about the Caribbean strike, Trump’s administration argued that it has declared drug cartels are terrorist organizations and that he operated within his constitutional authority to protect the country when he ordered the strike.

Strikes against terrorists have been authorized under the catchall vote that authorized the use of military force against Islamic terrorists after the 9/11 terror attacks.

But Congress, which the Constitution puts in charge of declaring war, has not authorized the use of military force against Venezuelan drug cartels.

Lack of explanation from the White House

Over the weekend, CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen reported that the Pentagon abruptly canceled classified briefings to key House and Senate committees with oversight of the military, which means lawmaker have been unable to get the legal justification for the strike.

Many Americans might celebrate the idea of a military strike to take out drug dealers, and the administration is clearly primed to lean on the idea that the cartels are terrorists.

Here’s a key quote from CNN’s report:

“The strike was the obvious result of designating them a terrorist organization,” said one person familiar with the Pentagon’s thinking. “If there was a boat full of al Qaeda fighters smuggling explosives towards the US, would anyone even ask this question?”

Few details

It’s not yet clear which military unit was responsible for the strike, what intelligence suggested there were drugs onboard, who was on the boat or what the boat was carrying.

“The attack on the smuggling vessel in the Caribbean was so extraordinary because there was no reported attempt to stop the boat or detain its crew,” wrote Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal advisor now at International Crisis Group for the website Just Security. “Instead, the use of lethal force was used in the first resort.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US could have interdicted the boat and made a legal case against those onboard, but it decided instead to blow up the boat. The notice to Congress makes clear the administration will continue with other strikes.

War crime? Vance doesn’t ‘give a sh*t’

“The decision to blow up the boat and kill everyone onboard when interdiction and detention was a clearly available option is manifestly illegal and immoral,” Oona Hathaway, a law professor and director of the Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School, told me in an email.

The view of the administration could be best summarized by Vice President JD Vance stating that using the military to go after cartels is “the highest and best use of our military.”

When a user on X replied that the extrajudicial killing of civilians without presenting evidence is, by definition, a war crime, Vance, himself a Yale-educated lawyer, said this:

“I don’t give a sh*t what you call it.”

That’s not an acceptable response even for some Republicans.

“Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?” wrote Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky in his own post on X. “Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation?? What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”

Congress has power it likely won’t use

Congress has the power to stop Trump’s campaign against boats in the Caribbean. The War Powers Act allows lawmakers in the House and Senate to demand the president seek approval before continuing a campaign longer than 60 days. But that seems unlikely to occur at the moment.

After the strike against Iran earlier this year, Paul was the only Republican senator to side with Democrats and demand Trump seek approval for any future Iran strikes.

During his first term, seven Republicans voted with Senate Democrats to hem in Trump’s ability to strike against Iran after he ordered the killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. But there were not enough votes to overcome Trump’s veto that year.

Trump’s authority to use military force without congressional approval of the Caribbean operation technically expires after 60 days after he reports on the use of force, although he can extend it by an additional 30 days, although he could also declare a new operation is underway.

The use of these kinds of tactics has likely been in the works for some time.

In February, Trump designated drug cartels, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, as foreign terror organizations. In April, CNN reported the CIA was reviewing whether it had authority to use lethal force against drug cartels.

But the military strike against the alleged cartel boat happened as part of a broader campaign against Venezuela, including positioning US ships, aircraft and a submarine in the Caribbean, according to a CNN report.

Trump may have campaigned as a president who would end wars, but he’s governing like a president who is very comfortable using his military.

Analysis: Trump claims he can do anything he wants with the military. Here’s what the law says | CNN Politics
Having rebranded the Department of Defense as the Department of War, the president is going on offense with the US military.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/10/politics/venezuela-trump-military-strike-war-powers-explainer

CNBC: Trump can’t use National Guard in California to enforce laws, make arrests, judge rules

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Major smackdown for our Grifter-in-Chief!

  • A federal judge Tuesday barred President Donald Trump from deploying National Guard troops in California to execute law-enforcement actions there, including making arrests, searching locations, and crowd control.
  • The ruling came in connection with a lawsuit by the state of California challenging Trump’s deployment of the Guard to deal with protests in Los Angeles over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies.
  • Judge Charles Breyer said that Trump’s deployment of the troops violated the federal Posse Comitatus Act.

A federal judge on Tuesday barred President Donald Trump from deploying National Guard troops in California to execute law-enforcement actions there, including making arrests, searching locations, and crowd control.

The ruling came in connection with a lawsuit by the state of California challenging Trump’s and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s deployment of the Guard to deal with protests in Los Angeles over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies.

Judge Charles Breyer said that Trump’s deployment of the troops violated the federal Posse Comitatus Act, which bars U.S. Military forces from enforcing the law domestically.

Breyer’s ruling in U.S. District Court in San Francisco is limited to California.

But it comes as Trump has considered deploying National Guard troops to other U.S. cities to deal with crime.

“Congress spoke clearly in 1878 when it passed the Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the use of the U.S. military to execute domestic law,” Breyer wrote.

“Nearly 140 years later, Defendants — President Trump, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, and the Department of Defense — deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced,” the judge wrote.

“There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence,” Breyer wrote.

“Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.”

Trump can’t use National Guard in California to enforce laws, make arrests, judge rules
The ruling in San Francisco federal court comes as Trump has considered deploying National Guard troops to cities outside California to deal with crime.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/trump-national-guard-california-newsom.html

Raleigh News & Observer: Judge Invokes ‘King George’ in Blow to Trump

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A federal judge has questioned President Donald Trump’s legal grounds for deploying 4,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles amid Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lawsuit. California won the lawsuit, but an appeals court blocked the removal of troops. The judge expressed skepticism of Trump’s claim that unrest in the city justified the federalization. U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer noted key legal issues surrounding the deployment.

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Prior to the appeals court temporary block, Breyer said, “That’s the difference between a Constitutional government and King George. It’s not that a leader can simply say something and it becomes it.”

…

Newsom wrote, “The court just confirmed what we all know — the military belongs on the battlefield, not on our city streets.”

Judge Invokes ‘King George’ in Blow to Trump
More for You

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/judge-invokes-king-george-in-blow-to-trump/ss-AA1H2YIV

Law & Crime: ‘Different in kind’: 4-star generals, admirals serving from JFK to Obama say Los Angeles ICE protests don’t warrant deployment of National Guard to California

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4-star admirals, generals serving from JFK to Obama warn Trump’s deployment of National Guard poses ‘potentially grave risk’

Ahead of a Zoom hearing scheduled for Tuesday at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a group of retired four-star generals and admirals who served under presidents ranging from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama filed court documents warning that President Donald Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard and deployment of U.S. Marines poses “potentially grave risk of irreparable harm.”

Seeking the appellate court’s leave to file a brief and enter the case as amici curiae — Latin for “friends of the court” — the retired generals, admirals, and former U.S. Army and Navy secretaries did not explicitly take Gov. Gavin Newsom’s side in the case. They did suggest Sunday, however, that the Trump administration’s bid for an emergency stay of a lower-court ruling and continued push to quell “violent riots” in Los Angeles amid nationwide “No Kings” protests over ICE raids may not pass legal muster when compared to historical precedents.

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Again, although the retired admirals and generals did not support either party to the case, they implicitly warmed to Breyer’s ruling that the definition of “rebellion” has not been met and that, in the proposed amici’s words, the “recent and ongoing situation” in Los Angeles “appears to be different in kind” from the “extreme circumstances” of the 1992 Rodney King riots and the times when state governors “openly” and defiantly stood against the end of racial segregation during the Civil Rights era.

…

The brief concluded that Trump’s injection of the military into “domestic political controversies” — “undermining its ability to achieve its core mission of protecting the nation” — is a case in point as to why troops “should be kept out of domestic law enforcement whenever possible.”

Retired four-star generals sound alarm at 9th Circuit on Trump’s National Guard deployment
Retired four-star generals and admirals warn that Trump’s federalization of the National Guard and deployment of U.S. Marines poses “potentially grave risk.”
‘Different in kind’: 4-star generals, admirals serving from JFK to Obama say Los Angeles ICE protests don’t warrant deployment of National Guard to California

Deadline: Trump Regains Control Of Troops In L.A. From Newsom Thanks To Appeals Court; Governor Was To Take Command Of National Guard On Friday – Updated

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Gavin Newsom’s renewed control of the California National Guard didn’t last more than a few hours thanks to a federal appeals court.

“The request for an administrative stay is GRANTED,” the court wrote in a short order tonight after the White House and DOJ came up short this afternoon in their bid to maintain a hold on the unrequested and widely seen as unnecassary troop deployment. “The district court’s June 12 temporary restraining order is temporarily stayed pending further order,” a three-judge panel of two Trump appointees and one Joe Biden appointee said.

All of which has put the brakes on returning control of the Guard that Trump federalized on June 7 to Gov. Newsom at noon on June 13. It gives Trump at least one more hot weekend to inflame the situation on the ground in L.A. with more immigration enforcement raids. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals trio has now set a June 17 Zoom hearing on the matter.

Newsom Beats Trump As Court Curtails POTUS’ “Illegal” Use Of Troops In L.A.
POTUS just took a hit in his battle with the Governor of California for the streets of LA & troops being there

https://deadline.com/2025/06/trump-court-ruling-troops-la-newsom-1236432420

Politico: Hegseth won’t commit to obeying courts on Marines in Los Angeles

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The Defense secretary said he’d comply with a Supreme Court order blocking Trump’s domestic deployment, but did not commit to the other courts.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that he would obey a Supreme Court order to remove troops from Los Angeles but declined to show similar deference to other courts considering the issue.

The Pentagon chief initially deflected when asked at a House Armed Services Committee hearing whether he would abide by a court’s decision if it determined President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and Marines was unlawful.

“What I can say is we should not have local judges determining foreign policy or national security policy for the country,” Hegseth said.

But the Defense secretary later clarified that he would obey a decision from the high court.

“We’re not here to defy a Supreme Court ruling,” he said.

The comments mirror other officials who have criticized court rulings that go against the Trump administration, often directing withering criticism at lower-court judges while vowing deference to the justices.

The troops and their commanders might need a reminder that their oath is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not the ego of a drunk O-3 wife-beater. Soldiers can be prosecuted for following illegal orders, i.e. being ordered to ignore a legitimate decision of a circuit or appellate court. Any arrests and charges by the troops under such circumstances should be null & void.

Hegseth won’t commit to obeying courts on Marines in Los Angeles
The Defense secretary said he’d comply with a Supreme Court order blocking Trump’s domestic deployment, but did not commit to the other courts.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/12/hegseth-marines-los-angeles-00402794

Newsom Beats Trump As Court Curtails POTUS’ “Illegal” Use Of Troops In L.A.

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Donald Trump has just been ordered by a federal judge to “return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith.”

In an order handed down Thursday just a couple of hours after a pitched hearing in San Francisco between Department of Justice lawyers and Golden State attorneys, Judge Charles Breyer awarded Gavin Newsom the temporary restraining order he sought over Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard on June 7 after protests over ICE raids of undocumented immigrants in and around L.A.

“At this early stage of the proceedings, the Court must determine whether the President followed the congressionally mandated procedure for his actions,” the judge wrote in a 36-page order this evening. “He did not.” The Bill Clinton appointed judge added: “His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

Newsom and the state Attorney General first filed suit against Trump, Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth and others in the administration on June 9. The gist of their argument was that the president overstepped his authority when he dispatched National Guard troops to the region to respond to protests of ICE immigration raids late last week. The governor said the president violated the law by not consulting with him first before the deployment.

On June 11, Newsom upped the ante and demanded a TRO to halt the troop movement and Trump’s brazen authoritarian tactics ASAP

Having already warned on “a monarchy” in the hearing earlier today, Breyer worried that “Defendants’ actions also threaten to chill legitimate First Amendment expression.” To that, and with the overriding Constitutional and jurisdictional issues at play, he laid out exactly what’s next for Newsom and Trump with this halting of military deployment to America’s second-largest city:

For the foregoing reasons, the Court GRANTS Plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary restraining order:
Defendants are temporarily ENJOINED from deploying members of the California National Guard in Los Angeles.

Defendants are DIRECTED to return control of the California National Guard to Governor Newsom. 
The Court further STAYS this order until noon on June 13, 2025.

Plaintiffs are ORDERED to post a nominal bond of $100 within 24 hours. The bond shall be filed in the Clerk’s Office and be deposited into the registry of the Court. If said bond is not posted by the aforementioned date and time, this Order shall be dissolved.

Defendants are further ORDERED TO SHOW CAUSE why a preliminary injunction should not issue. A hearing on this order to show cause will be held on June 20, 2025 at 10 a.m. Plaintiffs’ moving papers shall be filed no later than June 16, 2025; Defendants’ opposition shall be due no later than June 18, 2025, and Plaintiffs’ reply shall be due on June 19, 2025.

Whether or not this White House complies with Breyer’s order is another matter.

Newsom Beats Trump As Court Curtails POTUS’ “Illegal” Use Of Troops In L.A.
POTUS just took a hit in his battle with the Governor of California for the streets of LA & troops being there

https://deadline.com/2025/06/trump-court-ruling-troops-la-newsom-1236432420