Following LA and DC, Trump wants to send the National Guard to other US cities. Here’s how he can do it
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By Kaanita Iyer, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump is hoping to replicate his law enforcement efforts in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, in cities across the country, with the administration making moves to once again use the US military for its anti-crime agenda.
Trump is afforded certain presidential powers that he could use to deploy the National Guard and federal law enforcement agencies in US cities to crack down on crime — though such a move would be unprecedented and, some experts and local leaders argue, illegal. He’s already facing a legal challenge in California following the June deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles after he claimed protests were blocking his federal immigration agenda.
“If the president can use the Army as a domestic police force, that can be a very powerful tool of oppression, and that is why we have a principle in this country going back hundreds of years against using the military for domestic law enforcement,” Elizabeth Goitein, the senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told CNN. “And that is the principle that Trump is completely shredding here.”
Trump has signaled he intends to expand the US military’s role in domestic law enforcement activities across the country. CNN reported last week that the administration has been discussing sending the National Guard to Chicago for weeks, though it remains unclear when the deployments would start or how many troops would be sent.
On Monday, Trump signed an executive order establishing “specialized units” in the National Guard to address crime in cities, though it is unclear how the order will work in practice. The National Guard already has reaction forces, designed to rapidly respond to incidents requiring law enforcement or security support in each state, territory and DC.
Speaking to reporters Monday, the president said he “may or may not” wait until governors request National Guard troops before ordering deployments to address crime.
“We may just go in and do it, which is probably what we should do,” Trump said.
The president is already facing pushback from big-city mayors, and governors are also likely to challenge him; outside of Washington, DC — where the National Guard reports to the president — a governor is in charge of the state’s guard troops.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a Democrat, has decried Trump’s threats, saying Monday, “What this president is attempting to do is not just unconstitutional, but it is very much a threat to our democracy.”
Meanwhile, Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said at a news conference Monday, “Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here.”
“This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals,” Pritzker added, vowing to “see the Trump administration in court” if troops arrive in Chicago.
David Janovsky, the acting director of The Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, warned that deploying troops to cities is “an inherently escalatory situation that puts … the folks who live in these cities and service members who are sent in in a dangerous and volatile situation.”
However, he added, “There’s very little to stop a president from doing this at the outset.”
“These powers unlock when specific circumstances exist. The problem is the president, under these laws, is the person who makes that determination,” Janovsky told CNN. “And then it’s very hard to unring that bell.”
Los Angeles is expected to serve as the blueprint
Trump has made exaggerated claims about crime across the United States to support an expansion of his law enforcement efforts, though violent crime nationally fell in 2024, including in many of the big cities Trump has called out.
“You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is,” Trump said earlier this month. “We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland.”
Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi has also made clear that cities and states across the country with so-called sanctuary policies, which limit local officials from assisting in federal immigration enforcement, could be a target for the National Guard.
Sources told CNN that the administration’s future plans — including in Chicago, which is a sanctuary city — are expected to look like Trump’s deployment of the National Guard earlier this summer to Los Angeles to quell immigration protests.
In June, Trump tried to circumvent California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to deploy National Guard members by invoking Section 12406 of the US Code, which allows the president to deploy the guard as necessary to repel invasion, suppress rebellion or execute laws. Trump, who also mobilized the Marines to LA, argued that he was not able to enforce federal immigration laws in the city.
The legality behind Trump’s action is now being challenged in a California court in a case that could have major implications for his future efforts.
Goitein told CNN that Trump may not be able to use Section 12406 in cities where he’s looking to crack down on crime.
“In Los Angeles, the pretext was that he was unable to conduct ICE raids because of the protests. Immigration law is federal law,” Goitein said. “Violent street crime, which is really what he’s talking about, is overwhelmingly a matter of state and local law, not federal law.”
Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act
Another potential avenue for Trump’s anti-crime agenda: the Insurrection Act, a rarely invoked law that permits the president to use military forces to end an insurrection or rebellion on US soil.
The main provision of the Insurrection Act — which was passed in 1807 and updated during Reconstruction — states that troops can be deployed to a state by the president only if the governor or state legislature requests it.
Another provision of the law, however, outlines that under certain limited circumstances involved in the defense of constitutional rights, the president can send troops unilaterally.
The Trump administration quietly discussed evoking the Insurrection Act in Los Angeles in June, but ultimately decided against it.
During his first term, Trump threatened to wield the Insurrection Act following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, arguing that he could use it as a way to break up anti-fascists, or antifa, who he said were organizing violent riots that led to looting.
“If the city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residence, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” Trump said at the time, though he never did.
Goitein told CNN that “even the Insurrection Act, as broad as it is … does not give (Trump) unlimited authority.”
“When the states fail to protect the constitutional rights of a class of people — and those rights are enshrined in state law — then the military can be deployed to enforce those laws” under the Insurrection Act, Goitein said, “not the state and local laws that apply in the context of violent street crime.”
There may be constitutional limits to Trump’s efforts
The legal battle playing out in California over Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles provides some insight into the possible challenges the president can face.
Newsom’s lawyers claim the president violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which largely prevents the president from using the military as a domestic police force, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal-leaning law and policy organization.
Newsom’s lawyers say the deployment was a violation of the act since it bars “the military from engaging in civil law enforcement unless explicitly authorized by law,” according to the complaint.
But Trump’s lawyers insist the National Guard and Marines didn’t engage in any civil law enforcement — and therefore didn’t violate the act.
Another possible limit to Trump expanding his efforts could be the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution, which says “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Newsom’s lawyers also claim Trump’s move to call up the National Guard against the governor’s wishes violates the 10th Amendment, arguing that the move infringed on the governor’s authority as commander in chief of the California National Guard and the state’s “sovereign right to control and have available its National Guard in the absence of a lawful invocation of federal power.”
CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz, Alaa Elassar, Zachary B. Wolf, Zoe Sottile, Julia Vargas Jones and Sarah Moon contributed to this report.
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