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national guard
'Unlawful and Un-American': Trump Claims He Can Send 'Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines' Into US Cities
“Our military exists to defend the nation and protect our freedoms, not to be weaponized against American cities," said critics.
Oct 29, 2025
President Donald Trump alarmed many critics this week when he once again mused about deploying the military on the streets of US cities.
As reported by The New York Times, Trump told a group of American troops stationed in Japan on Tuesday that he could send the military into US cities under the pretense of fighting crime.
"We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled," Trump said. "And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities."
Trump has deployed the National Guard to cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis, and Portland in recent months, but local and state officials have opposed the deployment in most cases and have filed legal challenges. Most recently, a federal appeals court voted on Tuesday to rehear the administration's case pushing to send the National Guard to Portland—vacating an earlier decision that allowed Trump to federalize Oregon's troops.
On Wednesday, Trump was asked by a New York Times reporter to specify what he meant when he said he could send "more than the National Guard" into American cities, and he replied that he could send any branch of the military he wanted without any oversight from courts or from Congress.
"If I want to enact a certain act, I'm allowed to do it," Trump said. "I'd be allowed to do whatever I want. The courts wouldn't get involved. Nobody would get involved. And I could send the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines—I could send anybody I wanted."
Q: What did you mean last night when you said you were prepared to send 'more than the National Guard' into American cities?
TRUMP: Sure, I'd do that. As you know I'm allowed to do that
Q: Do you mean other branches of the military you'd send in?
TRUMP: If it were -- who are… pic.twitter.com/5O733Mas5V
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 29, 2025
The president threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act earlier this month, falsely claiming the law gives him "unquestioned power." The Insurrection Act allows presidents to deploy federal troops to enforce US laws in cases of extreme emergency, such as violent rebellions—but local officials in the cities Trump has targeted so far have categorically denied that anti-Trump protests there meet the high threshold for invoking the law.
The co-chairs of the Not Above the Law Coalition—Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen; Praveen Fernandes, vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center; Kelsey Herbert, campaign director at MoveOn; and Brett Edkins, managing director for policy and political affairs at Stand Up America—condemned Trump's threats on Tuesday as "unlawful and un-American."
"Our military exists to defend the nation and protect our freedoms, not to be weaponized against American cities," they said. "In his remarks today, Trump claimed that he and his administration cronies 'can do as we want to do.' That is as dangerous as it is unlawful and un-American."
Trump's use of the American military for domestic law enforcement purposes was also condemned by Ret. Maj. Gen. Randy Manner, a former top official at the National Guard.
Writing in the Home of the Brave newsletter, Manner condemned Trump's National Guard deployments to US cities as "un-American and wrong."
Manner noted that the National Guard has traditionally existed to augment US forces overseas during times of war, and also to serve at the request of state governors during times of emergencies. Using the National Guard to do standard police work, Manner added, is simply unprecedented.
"Our military is not trained in law enforcement," he argued. "There are absolutely zero situations where our National Guard should be on the streets of America as a status quo measure, absent some acute short-term crisis. We would never send our sheriff’s deputies to Afghanistan for a special operation; it’s just as illogical to send highly trained combat soldiers and put them into civilian law enforcement roles."
Trump first began musing about deploying the US military on American soil during the 2024 election campaign, when he said he could use it to take down a group of US citizens whom he described as "the enemy from within." Trump ratcheted up his threats last month when he told a group of assembled US generals that "we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military."
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With Troop Deployments in US Cities, Trump Has Picked a Fight With the Constitution
He wants the US Supreme Court to legitimatize these unlawful deployments. Heaven help us all if they do.
Oct 24, 2025
President Donald Trump’s ICE raids in American cities are not simply efforts to deport undocumented immigrants or battle crime. In addition to creating fear and desensitizing law-abiding citizens to a military presence on American streets, Trump wanted to pick a fight.
And he has.
Specifically, Trump wanted a legal fight that he could take to the conservative majority on the US Supreme Court. If it accepts his justification for “federalizing” the National Guard over a state governor’s objections, he’ll have unrestrained power to deploy the military on American soil any time, any place, and for any reason.
The implications are staggering. Fear has gripped neighborhoods where armed troops patrol the streets as something akin to an occupying force. During the 2026 midterm elections, deployments would be a powerful voter suppression tool.
Trump’s Legal Argument
In the cases challenging Trump’s National Guard deployments in Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago, his lawyers have argued that the courts have no power to review the President’s decisions. His claimed factual basis is not subject to challenge. His decision is final. His authority is absolute.
Trump bases his argument on language in an 1827 case involving Jacob Mott, a state militiaman. Mott refused to report for duty when President James Madison called up the New York militia during the War of 1812. The Supreme Court ruled that Mott had no right to dispute the president’s judgment.
Trump has appealed to the Supreme Court, where the conservative majority has a track record of giving Trump anything he wants.
Extrapolating the language of that case involving a subordinate militiaman during a time of war to foreclose all judicial review of the factual basis for Trump’s deployments is a stretch. But one appellate court judge in the ongoing ICE cases has embraced Trump’s position.
In June, Trump mobilized the National Guard over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif). The president invoked the statute authorizing him to “federalize” the Guard, which permits such action only if:
(1) theUnited States, or any of the Commonwealths or possessions, is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation;
(2) there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States; or
(3) the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” (10 U.S.C. Sec. 12406)
Trump claimed that the factual circumstances entitled him to invoke subsections (2) and (3).
The trial court granted Newsom’s request for a temporary restraining order, and the Trump administration appealed. Trump’s primary argument was that he had unrestrained discretion to make the required statutory determinations (i.e., whether there was a rebellion, danger or rebellion, or inability with regular forces to execute federal law). Whatever he decided should be the beginning and the end of the inquiry. Actual facts contradicting his claims were out of bounds. Judges couldn’t scrutinize his justifications. No one could.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (including two Trump appointees on the three-judge panel) rejected Trump’s argument. The court ruled that the president’s power is not absolute, but he is entitled to “a great level of deference” in making the required factual determinations.
Portland
When Trump deployed troops in Portland, Oregon, the city and the state sued to block him, and he made the same argument. Federal District Court Judge Karin Immergut—a Trump appointee—followed the appellate court’s earlier California decision and rejected it.
Judge Immergut’s 31-page opinion set forth her factual findings and legal conclusions. She outlined the evidence that rebutted Trump’s claimed “facts.” The court acknowledged that “the President is certainly entitled ‘a great level of deference’... But ‘a great level of deference’ is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground… The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”
Judge Immergut granted the motion to prevent the deployment.
Reversed on Appeal
Under well-settled law, Judge Immergut’s ruling could be reversed on appeal only if it was an “abuse of discretion”—which it wasn’t. The appellate court had to accept her factual findings as true, unless they were “clearly erroneous”—which they weren’t.
But in a two-to-one vote, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Immergut’s ruling. Rather than respect the trial court’s detailed factual findings, the Trump-appointed majority discarded them in favor of its own characterization of the record.
Ironically, the court concluded, “[T]he district court erred by placing too much weight on statements the President made on social media.”
Judge Ryan Nelson—one of two judges comprising the majority that reversed Judge Immergut—accepted Trump’s primary argument. In his concurring opinion Judge Nelson wrote that “the President’s decision in this area is absolute.”
Facts and evidence don’t matter. Everyone has to take Trump at his word—a remarkable empowerment of a serial liar.
The dissenting opinion of Judge Susan Graber, a Clinton appointee, returned to the facts:
Given Portland protesters’ well-known penchant for wearing chicken suits, inflatable frog costumes, or nothing at all when expressing their disagreement with the methods employed by ICE, observers may be tempted to view the majority’s ruling, which accepts the government’s characterization of Portland as a war zone, as merely absurd. But today’s decision is not merely absurd. It erodes core constitutional principles, including sovereign States’ control over their States’ militias and the people’s First Amendment rights to assemble and to object to the government’s policies and actions.
Judge Graber pleaded for additional scrutiny of the majority’s errant decision:
By design of the Founders, the judicial branch stands apart. We rule on facts, not on supposition or conjecture, and certainly not on fabrication or propaganda. I urge my colleagues on this court to act swiftly to vacate the majority’s order before the illegal deployment of troops under false pretenses can occur.
That process—a request for en banc review by 11 randomly-selected judges in the Ninth Circuit—is underway.
Chicago
Meanwhile, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed unanimously a trial judge’s order blocking Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Chicago. As in Los Angeles and Portland, Trump argued that the courts had no role in reviewing his factual determinations. The court—including a George H. W. Bush appointee, a George W. Bush appointee, and an Obama appointee—rejected Trump’s argument.
Unlike the majority in the Portland appeal, the court accepted the lower court’s factual findings and applied them:
Political opposition is not rebellion. A protest does not become a rebellion merely because the protestors advocate for myriad legal or policy changes, are well organized, call for significant changes to the structure of the US government, use civil disobedience as a form of protest, or exercise their Second Amendment right to carry firearms as the law currently allows.
Nor did the activity surrounding the ICE facility render federal officers incapable of executing the laws of the United States.
Trump has appealed to the Supreme Court, where the conservative majority has a track record of giving Trump anything he wants. As of September 22, he had won 21 cases on the Court’s “shadow docket” where little or no reasoning accompanied quick decisions granted on a “preliminary” basis (even though the impact often was profound and enduring). His administration had lost only two, with two others pending. Two were withdrawn and was one dismissed.
In asking the Supreme Court to intervene, Trump’s lawyers called the Seventh Circuit’s ruling part of a “disturbing and recurring pattern” that “improperly impinges on the President’s authority and needlessly endangers federal personnel and property.”
None of that is true. The only “disturbing and recurring pattern” is Trump’s false assertions to justify deploying the military on American soil. And now he wants to prevent anyone challenging him—ever.
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At Request of Billionaire ‘Friends,’ Trump Pulls Plug on Troop Deployment to San Francisco
"Maybe other cities should try to convince a wealthy tech CEO or two to keep the president from siccing his agents on them," quipped one writer.
Oct 23, 2025
After threatening for days to deploy troops to San Francisco, President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he would pull back for the moment, apparently after some of his billionaire "friends" in the city called him and asked him not to.
"The Federal Government was preparing to 'surge' San Francisco, California, on Saturday," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "But friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge in that the Mayor, Daniel Lurie, was making substantial progress."
Trump said he "spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around. I told [Lurie], I think he is making a mistake, because we can do it much faster, and remove the criminals that the Law does not permit him to remove. I told him, 'It's an easier process if we do it, faster, stronger, and safer but, let's see how you do?'"
In a separate post, Lurie affirmed that he had spoken with Trump. He said he told the president that "San Francisco is on the rise," and that a military occupation would "hinder our recovery."
Although Trump is walking back his troop threat, for now, US Customs and Border Protection agents still arrived in the Bay Area on Thursday as part of the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants.
The Associated Press reported that "police used at least one flash-bang grenade to clear a handful of demonstrators from the entrance" of Coast Guard Island in Alameda, where the CBP agents will be based.
In addition to threatening San Francisco in recent days, Trump has sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles, California; Washington, DC; Portland, Oregon; and Chicago, Illinois—where a judge has halted the deployment.
Like virtually all of the cities where Trump has either surged or threatened to surge federalized troops, San Francisco has no crime wave to "turn around." In fact, crime has been falling precipitously in the city. Homicides dropped by 35% during 2024 and hit a 60-year low this year, contradicting Trump's assertions that the city is a "mess" and that people there lived in constant fear of being "mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted, or shot."
Lurie said he agreed to help Trump go to war on this imaginary crime wave, and said he would welcome "would welcome continued partnerships with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and US attorney."
Trump said he was persuaded to hold off on the surge of troops after he was called by two Silicon Valley billionaires, Marc Benioff and Jensen Huang, whom he called "great people."
Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, was a longtime Democrat who quickly morphed into an outspoken Trump supporter after his victory in 2024. He was also an initial champion of Trump's proposal to send troops to San Francisco, but later backed off and even apologized after facing criticism from local officials and former political allies.
Huang, the CEO of the computer tech company Nvidia, meanwhile, cut an unprecedented deal with Trump in August that allowed the company to sell computer chips in China if it handed 15% of the revenue from those sales to the federal government, which was described as a "shakedown" by one financial columnist.
Trump said that these two and some unspecified "others" called him, "saying that the future of San Francisco is great" and that "they want to give [Lurie's efforts] a 'shot.'"
"Therefore," Trump said, "we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday."
Hafiz Rashid, a writer for the New Republic, quipped that "maybe other cities should try to convince a wealthy tech CEO or two to keep the president from siccing his agents on them."
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