The Brief

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Monday that President Donald Trump’s ongoing attempts to seize control of state National Guard troops and deploy them to Democratic-led cities are part of a larger plan to consolidate executive power and normalize the sight of armed forces on American streets.

Bonta’s comments came one day after a federal judge barred Trump from dispatching hundreds of California National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, and as Illinois and Chicago filed a separate lawsuit to prevent the deployment of hundreds of Texas National Guard members to Chicago. Trump has also sent troops to Memphis, Tenn., over the objections of local Democratic officials but with the support of the state’s Republican governor.

On Monday, Trump said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act if courts or state officials block his deployments. “If I had to enact it, I’d do it, if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Last month, a federal judge ruled that guard members and U.S. Marines had been illegally deployed to Los Angeles to quell immigration protests and police civilian populations. That case is being appealed, but in the meantime, the court has allowed troops to remain in L.A.

“Trump does think that the military is his personal police force and his personal army,” Bonta said Monday. “And he wants that force behind his policy decisions. … And I think he wants to weaponize the military against blue states and blue cities. That’s where he’s sending them. Exclusively, that is where he’s sending them.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom (right) speaks as Attorney General Rob Bonta looks on during a news conference on April 16, 2025, in Ceres, California.

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Bonta and Gov. Gavin Newsom joined Oregon’s lawsuit over the weekend, after the Trump administration attempted to get around an earlier court ruling that barred the president from seizing control of the Oregon National Guard and deploying 200 of its members to Portland.

After that ruling by U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut, a Trump appointee, the president ordered at least 200 previously federalized California guard members to deploy to Portland — a move Newsom called a “breathtaking abuse of the law and power.”

Immergut blocked that deployment, too, in a tense hearing late Sunday where she pressed lawyers for the administration as to why the California deployment shouldn’t be seen as the president’s attempt to circumvent her earlier order.

Ultimately, Immergut blocked the president from deploying any federalized National Guard troops to Oregon and refused to stay the order while the president appeals.

She set a hearing in the case for Oct. 29.

The president’s rationale for the deployments is not entirely consistent. He often talks about crime problems and lawlessness in Democratic-led cities, including calling Portland “war-ravaged.” Last week, he told a gathering of top military brass that he wants to use American cities as “training grounds” for the military.

But in other public statements and in court filings, the administration has argued that the troops need to be sent to Portland to protect an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office from ongoing protests. In general, the Trump administration has argued that protests outside ICE facilities — and in some cases, in communities where immigration enforcement actions are taking place — are preventing the president from enforcing immigration law, though judges have found little evidence to support such claims.

“With all due respect to that judge, I think her opinion is untethered in reality and in the law,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Monday, adding that the president “has the right to call up the National Guard in cases where he deems it’s appropriate.”

“And if you look at what has happened in Portland, Oregon, for more than 100 nights — I was talking to our law enforcement team about it this morning — for more than 100 days, night after night after night, the ICE facility has been really under siege by these anarchists outside. They have been disrespecting law enforcement. They’ve been inciting violence,” she said.

California National Guard patrols downtown Los Angeles on June 18, 2025.

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While there have been some fights and other instances of violence at protests, local officials say the situation is well within their control, and some protesters worry that federal agents are the ones escalating the situation.

Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson said that while there are multiple legal cases pending in numerous states, they all have one central question in common: How much power does Trump have to federalize a state’s National Guard?

“We know that the statute is a pretty broad grant of authority from Congress to the president, to federalize the National Guard under certain circumstances, like there’s an invasion or the possibility of a rebellion— and this is where a lot of litigation is — the president is unable through the regular forces to execute federal law,” Levinson said.

But despite the similarities, Levinson said it’s likely that for now all these lawsuits will continue on separate tracks.

Members of the National Guard armed with rifles and sidearms patrol the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 26, 2025. The Trump administration deployed federal officers and National Guard units to the District to place the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and assist with crime prevention efforts in the nation’s capital.

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“It essentially can’t be decided nationwide in the sense that I think the question of whether or not a president has the power to federalize the National Guard fundamentally depends on the facts on the ground in a specific jurisdiction,” she said.

Bonta said California’s position is that the president lacks authority to seize control of the National Guard from state governors or use the military to police civilians. He also criticized Trump’s rhetoric on crime as inconsistent with his efforts to cut billions of dollars in federal law enforcement and victims’ services funding from states that have policies he disagrees with..

“It’s an outrageous gap and delta and distance between what Trump says he stands for and what he purports to be. He wants to be a pro-public safety president, a tough-on-crime president,” Bonta said. “His actions completely undermine that image that he’s trying to present to the people.”

Bonta noted Trump’s pardons of Jan. 6 rioters as well as his moves to strip money from programs that help victims of domestic violence, seek to reduce violent street crime, and help communities prepare for natural disasters and terror attacks.