Armed members of the National Guard are seen outside the Edward Roybal Federal Building, with graffiti visible after recent protests against immigration raids, in Los Angeles on June 23, 2025. (Photo by Frederic J. B...Armed members of the National Guard are seen outside the Edward Roybal Federal Building, with graffiti visible after recent protests against immigration raids, in Los Angeles on June 23, 2025. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)MORE LESS
The full 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rehear a panel’s order allowing National Guard troops to deploy to California, prompting the dissenting judges to pen lengthy warnings about the danger the United States now faces.
The same panel heard oral arguments in the case on Thursday. Elsewhere, a request for a rehearing at the same circuit court is percolating out of the Guard deployment in Portland. And the Trump administration has requested intervention from the Supreme Court, after a panel on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court order blocking the deployment.
“The recent record of the Supreme Court does not give much reason to hope that they will take a careful approach to the legal issues here, or that they will consider reining in a President who has massively overstepped his authority,” Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, told TPM. “I expect a ruling from the Supreme Court, probably on the shadow docket, that is favorable to the federal government.”
Read the statement and dissent from the en banc dissenters here:
“We deal not with an armed uprising, a foreign invasion, a civil war, a state government’s refusal to enforce federal court orders, or a strike that threatens to bring the nation to a standstill,” she wrote. “Instead, the President’s purported basis for federalizing the National Guard is to respond to less than two days of sporadic protests involving low-level violence and property damage that state, local, and federal law enforcement was competently addressing. Never over the course of our long history has a President attempted to pass off such ordinary circumstances as an emergency justifying the domestic deployment of military forces.”
The same panel heard oral arguments in the case on Thursday. Elsewhere, a request for a rehearing at the same circuit court is percolating out of the Guard deployment in Portland. And the Trump administration has requested intervention from the Supreme Court, after a panel on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court order blocking the deployment.
“The recent record of the Supreme Court does not give much reason to hope that they will take a careful approach to the legal issues here, or that they will consider reining in a President who has massively overstepped his authority,” Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, told TPM. “I expect a ruling from the Supreme Court, probably on the shadow docket, that is favorable to the federal government.”
Read the statement and dissent from the en banc dissenters here:
The dissenting judges, led by judge Marsha Berzon, a Clinton appointee, acknowledge the oddity of a request for rehearing of a preliminary stay granted before the case entered the merits stage. But, she wrote, the danger of erring so badly in favor of presidential deference has already snowballed, as Trump has sent soldiers into Portland, Washington, D.C. and Chicago over the objection of local officials and has promised to do the same to other blue cities imminently.
“We deal not with an armed uprising, a foreign invasion, a civil war, a state government’s refusal to enforce federal court orders, or a strike that threatens to bring the nation to a standstill,” she wrote. “Instead, the President’s purported basis for federalizing the National Guard is to respond to less than two days of sporadic protests involving low-level violence and property damage that state, local, and federal law enforcement was competently addressing. Never over the course of our long history has a President attempted to pass off such ordinary circumstances as an emergency justifying the domestic deployment of military forces.”
The same panel heard oral arguments in the case on Thursday. Elsewhere, a request for a rehearing at the same circuit court is percolating out of the Guard deployment in Portland. And the Trump administration has requested intervention from the Supreme Court, after a panel on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court order blocking the deployment.
“The recent record of the Supreme Court does not give much reason to hope that they will take a careful approach to the legal issues here, or that they will consider reining in a President who has massively overstepped his authority,” Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, told TPM. “I expect a ruling from the Supreme Court, probably on the shadow docket, that is favorable to the federal government.”
Read the statement and dissent from the en banc dissenters here:
A single judge had requested the vote to rehear the case, after a panel — composed of two Trump appointees and one Biden appointee — stayed a district court order blocking the Guard’s deployment.
The dissenting judges, led by judge Marsha Berzon, a Clinton appointee, acknowledge the oddity of a request for rehearing of a preliminary stay granted before the case entered the merits stage. But, she wrote, the danger of erring so badly in favor of presidential deference has already snowballed, as Trump has sent soldiers into Portland, Washington, D.C. and Chicago over the objection of local officials and has promised to do the same to other blue cities imminently.
“We deal not with an armed uprising, a foreign invasion, a civil war, a state government’s refusal to enforce federal court orders, or a strike that threatens to bring the nation to a standstill,” she wrote. “Instead, the President’s purported basis for federalizing the National Guard is to respond to less than two days of sporadic protests involving low-level violence and property damage that state, local, and federal law enforcement was competently addressing. Never over the course of our long history has a President attempted to pass off such ordinary circumstances as an emergency justifying the domestic deployment of military forces.”
The same panel heard oral arguments in the case on Thursday. Elsewhere, a request for a rehearing at the same circuit court is percolating out of the Guard deployment in Portland. And the Trump administration has requested intervention from the Supreme Court, after a panel on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court order blocking the deployment.
“The recent record of the Supreme Court does not give much reason to hope that they will take a careful approach to the legal issues here, or that they will consider reining in a President who has massively overstepped his authority,” Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, told TPM. “I expect a ruling from the Supreme Court, probably on the shadow docket, that is favorable to the federal government.”
Read the statement and dissent from the en banc dissenters here:
The dissenters point out the historical abnormality of the current moment, that the statute President Trump used to call up the Guard has only been used one other time in the 122 years of its enactment. That many protests have occurred in that window, they point out, is further proof that the law wasn’t supposed to be used like this.
A single judge had requested the vote to rehear the case, after a panel — composed of two Trump appointees and one Biden appointee — stayed a district court order blocking the Guard’s deployment.
The dissenting judges, led by judge Marsha Berzon, a Clinton appointee, acknowledge the oddity of a request for rehearing of a preliminary stay granted before the case entered the merits stage. But, she wrote, the danger of erring so badly in favor of presidential deference has already snowballed, as Trump has sent soldiers into Portland, Washington, D.C. and Chicago over the objection of local officials and has promised to do the same to other blue cities imminently.
“We deal not with an armed uprising, a foreign invasion, a civil war, a state government’s refusal to enforce federal court orders, or a strike that threatens to bring the nation to a standstill,” she wrote. “Instead, the President’s purported basis for federalizing the National Guard is to respond to less than two days of sporadic protests involving low-level violence and property damage that state, local, and federal law enforcement was competently addressing. Never over the course of our long history has a President attempted to pass off such ordinary circumstances as an emergency justifying the domestic deployment of military forces.”
The same panel heard oral arguments in the case on Thursday. Elsewhere, a request for a rehearing at the same circuit court is percolating out of the Guard deployment in Portland. And the Trump administration has requested intervention from the Supreme Court, after a panel on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court order blocking the deployment.
“The recent record of the Supreme Court does not give much reason to hope that they will take a careful approach to the legal issues here, or that they will consider reining in a President who has massively overstepped his authority,” Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, told TPM. “I expect a ruling from the Supreme Court, probably on the shadow docket, that is favorable to the federal government.”
Read the statement and dissent from the en banc dissenters here:
“The democratic ideals our nation has consistently promoted for the last quarter millennium will be gravely undercut by allowing military force and weapons of war to be deployed against American citizens on U.S. soil on the flimsy grounds asserted here for this use of Executive power,” wrote Judge Ronald Gould, a Clinton appointee, in a separate dissent from the group’s.
The dissenters point out the historical abnormality of the current moment, that the statute President Trump used to call up the Guard has only been used one other time in the 122 years of its enactment. That many protests have occurred in that window, they point out, is further proof that the law wasn’t supposed to be used like this.
A single judge had requested the vote to rehear the case, after a panel — composed of two Trump appointees and one Biden appointee — stayed a district court order blocking the Guard’s deployment.
The dissenting judges, led by judge Marsha Berzon, a Clinton appointee, acknowledge the oddity of a request for rehearing of a preliminary stay granted before the case entered the merits stage. But, she wrote, the danger of erring so badly in favor of presidential deference has already snowballed, as Trump has sent soldiers into Portland, Washington, D.C. and Chicago over the objection of local officials and has promised to do the same to other blue cities imminently.
“We deal not with an armed uprising, a foreign invasion, a civil war, a state government’s refusal to enforce federal court orders, or a strike that threatens to bring the nation to a standstill,” she wrote. “Instead, the President’s purported basis for federalizing the National Guard is to respond to less than two days of sporadic protests involving low-level violence and property damage that state, local, and federal law enforcement was competently addressing. Never over the course of our long history has a President attempted to pass off such ordinary circumstances as an emergency justifying the domestic deployment of military forces.”
The same panel heard oral arguments in the case on Thursday. Elsewhere, a request for a rehearing at the same circuit court is percolating out of the Guard deployment in Portland. And the Trump administration has requested intervention from the Supreme Court, after a panel on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court order blocking the deployment.
“The recent record of the Supreme Court does not give much reason to hope that they will take a careful approach to the legal issues here, or that they will consider reining in a President who has massively overstepped his authority,” Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, told TPM. “I expect a ruling from the Supreme Court, probably on the shadow docket, that is favorable to the federal government.”
Read the statement and dissent from the en banc dissenters here:
“The democratic ideals our nation has consistently promoted for the last quarter millennium will be gravely undercut by allowing military force and weapons of war to be deployed against American citizens on U.S. soil on the flimsy grounds asserted here for this use of Executive power,” wrote Judge Ronald Gould, a Clinton appointee, in a separate dissent from the group’s.
The dissenters point out the historical abnormality of the current moment, that the statute President Trump used to call up the Guard has only been used one other time in the 122 years of its enactment. That many protests have occurred in that window, they point out, is further proof that the law wasn’t supposed to be used like this.
A single judge had requested the vote to rehear the case, after a panel — composed of two Trump appointees and one Biden appointee — stayed a district court order blocking the Guard’s deployment.
The dissenting judges, led by judge Marsha Berzon, a Clinton appointee, acknowledge the oddity of a request for rehearing of a preliminary stay granted before the case entered the merits stage. But, she wrote, the danger of erring so badly in favor of presidential deference has already snowballed, as Trump has sent soldiers into Portland, Washington, D.C. and Chicago over the objection of local officials and has promised to do the same to other blue cities imminently.
“We deal not with an armed uprising, a foreign invasion, a civil war, a state government’s refusal to enforce federal court orders, or a strike that threatens to bring the nation to a standstill,” she wrote. “Instead, the President’s purported basis for federalizing the National Guard is to respond to less than two days of sporadic protests involving low-level violence and property damage that state, local, and federal law enforcement was competently addressing. Never over the course of our long history has a President attempted to pass off such ordinary circumstances as an emergency justifying the domestic deployment of military forces.”
The same panel heard oral arguments in the case on Thursday. Elsewhere, a request for a rehearing at the same circuit court is percolating out of the Guard deployment in Portland. And the Trump administration has requested intervention from the Supreme Court, after a panel on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court order blocking the deployment.
“The recent record of the Supreme Court does not give much reason to hope that they will take a careful approach to the legal issues here, or that they will consider reining in a President who has massively overstepped his authority,” Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, told TPM. “I expect a ruling from the Supreme Court, probably on the shadow docket, that is favorable to the federal government.”
Read the statement and dissent from the en banc dissenters here:
