Trump invoked § 12406 to federalize California National Guard over governor's objection, labels LA protesters 'rebellion'

On June 7, 2025, President Trump signed a presidential memorandum invoking 10 U.S.C. § 12406 — a statute designed for calling forth the National Guard to repel invasions or suppress insurrections — to federalize at least 2,000 California National Guard members, transferring their command from Governor Gavin Newsom to the Secretary of Defense for 60 days. Newsom had explicitly refused to consent, making this a unilateral federal seizure of state military forces. The memo labeled Los Angeles anti-ICE protesters as engaged in "a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States," a characterization that carried no factual or legal support; the protests were largely peaceful demonstrations against immigration enforcement, not an armed uprising.

The § 12406 authority had historically been understood to apply to genuine insurrectionary or invasion scenarios, not to civilian immigration protests in a major American city. Legal scholars and the Brennan Center for Justice noted that the memo also granted the Secretary of Defense open-ended authority to deploy any regular Armed Forces, far beyond the guard federalization the statute contemplates. On June 9, Trump expanded the footprint with an additional 2,000 National Guard troops and authorized 700 active-duty Marines from Twentynine Palms to deploy to Los Angeles — the first domestic Marine deployment since the 1992 Rodney King riots. A federal court subsequently ruled the deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the use of regular Army and Air Force troops for civilian law enforcement absent express statutory authorization.