Federal Judge Orders Trump to Return National Guard Troops in LA to State Control

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered President Donald Trump to end his deployment of 300 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles and return control to Gov. Gavin Newsom, ruling that there is no evidence to justify the ongoing military presence among civilians.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco, which followed a Friday hearing, bluntly rejects the Trump administration’s argument that the troops’ presence in Los Angeles remains necessary in order to enforce federal laws and flatly dismisses their contention that the courts have no place to review such an order.

“The founders designed our government to be a system of checks and balances. Defendants, however, make clear that the only check they want is a blank one,” Breyer wrote.

“Six months after they first federalized the California National Guard, defendants still retain control of approximately 300 Guardsmen, despite no evidence that execution of federal law is impeded in any way — let alone significantly. What’s more, defendants have sent California Guardsmen into other states, effectively creating a national police force made up of state troops,” he added in his scathing opening remarks.

California leaders celebrated the decision.

“Once again, a court has firmly rejected the president’s attempt to make the National Guard a traveling national police force,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta. “The president is not king. And he cannot federalize the National Guard whenever, wherever, and for however long he wants, without justification. This is a good day for our democracy and the strength of the rule of law.”

The ruling will not take effect until Monday, giving the Trump administration time to appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which earlier this year halted a previous, temporary ruling by Breyer that also blocked the president from using the troops. The appeals court later ruled in favor of the president.

The appeals court is also considering a separate decision from Breyer that prohibited the administration from using troops to patrol civilians in L.A.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the ruling.

At issue in the current ruling is whether Trump had the authority to call up 300 members of the California National Guard over Newsom’s objections in June, amid immigration raids and subsequent protests in L.A. The state sued after that initial deployment. In August, the president extended the deployment through Nov. 4 — Election Day in California — and then, in October, moved again to lengthen the deployment through Feb. 2, 2026.

Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson said that although the 9th Circuit might accord the Trump administration more deference on appeal, Breyer’s order painstakingly spells out why the government has not met the necessary standard under the law it used to justify the deployment: that it was unable to execute federal law.

“What we have here is a decision that basically says the Trump administration doesn’t get to just point to statutory language and say that the conditions are satisfied,” she said. “And Judge Breyer spends a good deal of time in this 35-page decision saying, I think you are able to execute federal law through the regular forces. And what happened on the ground doesn’t rise to the level of what you need to, as a president, do to take this fairly extraordinary step of federalizing National Guard members — again, when a governor doesn’t want you to.”

Breyer homed in on that question of whether there was an ongoing inability to execute federal laws in L.A., noting that in mid-August, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “announced that the immigration enforcement mission had succeeded: the administration had ‘Removed the Worst of the Worst Illegal Aliens,’ arresting ‘4,481 illegal aliens in the Los Angeles area’ since June 6.”

“In August of 2025, the situation in Los Angeles was calm,” Breyer wrote, adding that the administration at that point justified the extension of the deployment through Election Day by citing the June protests and a July incident in Ventura County — 50 miles away.

The October extension order, he wrote, was similarly justified based on past events, minor recent incidents and the situation in another state, Oregon.

Breyer noted that the law cited by the Trump administration states that the president may call up National Guard troops when he “is unable” to execute federal law, writing that it’s clear “that the word ‘is’ conveys the present tense,” and that mere risk of future violence cannot justify something as serious as using military troops to police civilians.

“It is also a core right of the people to be able to gather in protest of their government and its policies — even when doing so is provocative, and even when doing so causes inconvenience,” Breyer wrote. “It is profoundly un-American to suggest that people peacefully exercising their fundamental right to protest constitute a risk justifying the federalization of military forces. Such logic, if accepted, would dangerously water down this precondition for federalization and run headfirst into the First Amendment.”

Trump has also deployed troops to Illinois, Oregon and Washington, D.C., over local objections. Lawsuits related to those cases are pending; the Illinois case is before the U.S. Supreme Court. California has filed in support of all of those cases, and also secured a ruling in October blocking the deployment of California National Guard troops to Oregon.

Levinson said those cases will remain separate because the legality of the deployment hinges on the facts on the ground.

“So these cases can’t really be consolidated,” she said. “This is not just a question of what does the law say. It’s a question of what does the law allow under different circumstances. … And so, what we see in all of these cases is federal judges looking at what’s actually happening. Are these protests turning violent? Can ICE agents execute immigration law?”