Rob Bonta: How CA beat Trump in court over National Guard deployment

from Nickel DuraCalMatters

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In late December the tide decisively turned against the Trump administration deploying the National Guard to three states over the objections of their governors, including California.

First, the US Supreme Court on December 23 sided with Illinois in its efforts to blocked Trump from sending in the National Guard in Chicago as part of a crackdown on immigration. The court rejected the same legal reasoning Trump used to federalize and deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles last summer when protests broke out there.

“The government has not met its burden of showing that (the law) allows the president to federalize the Guard in the exercise of inherent authority to protect federal personnel and property in Illinois,” the Supreme Court’s unsigned order said.

The administration then quietly dropped its appeal of a federal court ruling that the president could not keep California National Guard troops under federal control forever. That withdrawal marked a victory for California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who had filed an amicus brief in the Illinois case.

“The law was designed in a way that will prevent what happened in the last six months from ever happening again,” Bonta said. “I think that door is closed for Trump.

CalMatters spoke with Bonta this week about those cases and how he views the Trump administration current focus on Minneapolis. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

CalMatters: In terms of what California is doing next on this issue, is there anything that you all are doing in preparation for maybe (large-scale immigration raids) coming back or maybe an escalation of tactics like we’re seeing in Minnesota?

Bonta: We are ready for anything. I think when you see incidents like these in Minnesota, you have to accept that it could happen here in California.

You know, the Trump administration didn’t hide from that. They are looking for blue states and only blue states. And it is political, it is armament, it is partisan. They are trying to own the libs and get the democrats. That’s their whole reason for existing. And chief among them, the largest state in the nation that rejected Trump three times when he ran, which sticks in his throat, he doesn’t like it.

CalMatters: In Los Angeles I don’t remember them going door to door to try to pick people up like we see in Minnesota. Is this an escalation?

Bonta: I think they are escalating. Minnesota shows it seems to be escalating. I mean there were some parts that are the same that are horrifying and terrorizing and traumatizing and inappropriate, like removing license plates and being in a moving truck, pulling up to Home Depot and having people run out the back and all the profiling that was being done.

I think this is an escalation and they are doing more. They are really trying to hit Minneapolis and Minnesota. This is the home of the vice presidential candidate who ran against Trump, right? This is where their racism is on full display with their attacks on Somalis. This is where the YouTuber was trying to imply that there are child care centers that don’t have children in them and there is something inappropriate about what he is showing.

So Minnesota is a big target right now. California always has been, and I think at some point they’ll get us back on track and we’ll be good to go.

CalMatters: What happened at the Supreme Court?

Bonta: The Supreme Court intervened and basically said that the theory the president has been operating on all along is completely illegal and without merit, a real slap in the face and an embarrassing and devastating loss for Trump who thinks he can always run to the Supreme Court and get what he wants.

And they followed the law, the law that we argued always applied, and that there was no authority … to deploy the military, that “regular forces” included the military forces. There was no analysis that they were unable to enforce the law, and there was no authority for the military to even enforce any laws given the Posse Comitatus Act (which prevents the president from using the military as domestic police). So this was really a devastating and shocking loss for Trump.

CalMatters: 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the Trump administration to deploy the National Guard to L.A. in June, but ruled differently six months later. The district judge’s reasoning was that Trump could not re-federalize the troops indefinitely.

But does that mean to you that if material conditions on the ground in Los Angeles change, similar to what the Trump administration cited in June when they claimed protesters were committing violent acts against federal personnel and property, the Trump administration could authorize a new deployment? Is this your understanding or am I wrong?

Bonta: I think you’re wrong, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say, but let me just explain my thinking.

This case in Los Angeles in June was the first in the nation, and built into the exercise of the authority of the federal administration here when deploying the military is a great deal of respect. I think respect was granted. This was the first case. There were mostly peaceful protests, but also some violence, as you just mentioned.

It was the first time they saw what the Trump administration was doing here.

And then they saw him again in DC Then they saw him again in Portland and they saw him again in Illinois. The judges saw what was happening and they saw what was being said and they saw the rationale, they saw Trump say Portland was a war zone when it was a peaceful city, they saw Trump say, “I’m going to bring in the military to do exactly what the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits, to enforce criminal law because these blue cities are not fighting crime.” Exactly what the military cannot do!

And so they saw what he was doing with the military and I think they understood where this was really going and what was going on here. … Once the U.S. Supreme Court said make sure the “regular forces” are military forces, you have to show that all the military forces can’t stop the concrete block being thrown or the Molotov cocktail being thrown—he’ll never be able to show that—then you can include the National Guard.

CalMatters: Just one point on that. Under the circumstances as they are today, again, if they were to mimic whatever happened in June, would that be a different conversation if the material conditions on the ground in Los Angeles changed?

Bonta: Yes, completely different. We would go to court right away, we would win, we would get an injunction and the 9th Circuit would uphold it. Because it wasn’t going to show that the military, all the military—I mean, thousands of military, there’s multiple military bases in California—that they couldn’t stop one guy from throwing concrete. I think our army is fully capable of this.

So, the same exact circumstances from June that happen today, the 9th Circuit affirms it and it doesn’t stay.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.