US court rules Trump’s National Guard deployment to LA “illegal”

US President Donald Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard to Los Angeles in the wake of protests against the wishes of California Governor Gavin Newsom has been deemed "illegal" by a US court. "His actions were illegal," said US Supreme Court Justice Charles Breyer in a ruling regarding Trump, seen by the news agency AFP on Thursday (local time). The judge ordered the president to "immediately" return control of the California National Guard to the state.

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However, Breyer suspended the order until noon local time (9:00 p.m. CEST) on Friday. The White House immediately appealed the ruling; the case could go all the way to the Supreme Court. "Donald Trump will be removed from office tomorrow at noon," Newsom said in an initial televised statement after the verdict was announced. "He is not a monarch, he is not a king, and he should stop acting like one," said the 57-year-old Democrat.

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Trump invoked Title 10, a rarely used law, to deploy a total of 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles. Typically, the governor of a state mobilizes the National Guard to provide support during natural disasters. The Republican justified the move by saying that the protests in Los Angeles against the crackdown on immigrants ordered by his administration had gotten out of control and that the city was "burning."

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However, Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, saw no need to deploy the troops to quell the protests. Trump deployed the National Guard anyway. The last time President Lyndon B. Johnson activated the National Guard was in 1965, against the wishes of a governor, to protect civil rights activists in Alabama. Title 10 allows the use of the National Guard in the event of "a rebellion or threat of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States," but does not authorize the troops to assume police duties.