Yeah, well, good luck with that. Just remember that any fool with $100 and an attorney can file a lawsuit. It takes a wee bit more to win one, especially with the federal executive branch when it comes to protecting its own law enforcement agents.
Having done nothing to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers when they came under attack during deportation operations in Los Angeles, Newsom will now take Trump to court over the deployment of National Guard troops to protect those operations:
The state of California will file a lawsuit on Monday challenging President Trump’s order federalizing its National Guard forces, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on social media, as the city of Los Angeles braced for a fourth consecutive day of clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement officials over the Trump administration’s immigration policies. …
Over the weekend President Trump took extraordinary action by calling up 2,000 National Guard troops to quell immigration protests, making rare use of federal powers and bypassing the authority of Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, who has struck a defiant tone.
“Tough guy,” Mr. Newsom told MSNBC Sunday about a question that Thomas Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar, said he had not ruled out arresting public officials who interfere with the federal operations. “But you know what? Let your hands off 4-year-old girls that are trying to get educated. Let your hands off these poor people just trying to get live their lives, man.”
How is the New York Times covering the context of this legal dispute? Er …
As state officials urged protesters to be peaceful, videos taken Sunday so far have shown that the National Guard troops have largely avoided clashing with demonstrators, and most of the sprawling city kept to its usual sunlit rhythms.
Ah yes, the “mostly peaceful” narrative! For context, the Los Angeles metro area is huge, so of course “most of the city” isn’t rioting. However, most of the videos shown thus far on social media show arsons, attempted murders of law enforcement, vandalism, and other violent activities in the areas where the riots are taking place. And those show just how inept and possibly malicious Newsom and Karen Bass have been about the threat to federal law enforcement operating in those areas, with their willful refusal to protect them.
So what will happen when Newsom sues Trump? Newsom might find a sympathetic federal judge to issue a TRO demanding that Trump withdraw the National Guard, but that might be a step too far even for the forum-shoppers in Sacramento. Beege pointed this out in her earlier post, but Section 12406 is highly relevant here, as Reuters noted earlier today. The explicit language in the statute applies directly to the situation ICE agents face in Los Angeles in the riots that Democrats encouraged, emphasis mine:
Whenever—
(1) the United 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; orthe President may call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws. Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States or, in the case of the District of Columbia, through the commanding general of the National Guard of the District of Columbia.
Did these ‘protests’ interfere with the ability of ICE to execute their legitimate law-enforcement operations? They did indeed. Did Newsom or Karen Bass take action to restore order and allow those operations to proceed? They most certainly did not. Instead, Bass insisted that the city would not do anything to assist ICE in terms of their operations or protection, and Newsom refused to act. Instead, Newsom and Bass have insisted that ICE stop its legitimate operations in California rather than enforce the law. Their inaction and rhetoric attempted to leverage the violence directed at ICE as a way to prevent the Department of Homeland Security from ‘execut[ing] the law of the United States.’
Reuters spoke with four legal experts who cast doubt on this provision, but it exists clearly and explicitly in statute and in precedent. The rhetoric from Newsom and Bass — including Newsom’s remarks to Tom Homan that the NYT includes as context for this legal effort — makes it clear that Democrat leaders in California intend to prevent the federal government from executing federal laws in their jurisdiction. Newsom has taken the George Wallace/Orval Faubus position in history, and while he might find a federal judge to temporarily agree that Newsom can dictate terms of federal law enforcement in California, that won’t last long. Trump has both the law and precedent on his side here, and he will accelerate this to the Supreme Court before removing a single National Guard troop from LA.
The real question is how far Newsom will go to burn down his state to pwn MAGA. Even in California, deporting criminal illegals is a popular position, and Democrats’ decision to go all-in on behalf of gangsters, sex offenders, and human traffickers will reap some consequences — if not in California, then in some states where Democrat leadership has them well on the way to Californication.
