A high-stakes trial is underway in California over whether President Donald Trump’s deployment of the state’s National Guard to back up federal immigration officers broke the law.
California’s state government is trying to prove that the Trump administration, in activating troops and placing them alongside law enforcement, violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which allows the military to put down an armed rebellion but otherwise narrowly restricts using American soldiers for affairs at home. It’s a continuation of age-old English tradition that prevents military use in domestic affairs.
The timing of Monday’s opening remarks is also notable: The high-profile case arrived in court on the same day Trump tried to pull a similar maneuver in the District of Columbia, deploying the National Guard and taking control of the city’s police department due to a “crime emergency” that he declared Monday morning.