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****Meyerson on TAP****

**Trump’s armed force to take over Democratic cities is nearly ready to deploy**

**Courts will now consider whether he needs any actual justification for sending them in.**

On Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit Federal Appeals Court voted to hear the case of the Trump administration’s attempted deployment of the National Guard to Portland, Oregon. Also on Tuesday, that case became even more important, as the globetrotting Trump told U.S. troops stationed in Japan that he was **prepared to deploy** [link removed] “more than the National Guard” into American cities (well, those where elected Democrats govern) to combat crime and undocumented immigration. He followed up yesterday, **telling the press** [link removed], “I could send the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. I could send anybody I wanted. But I haven’t done that because we’re doing well without it.”

Not coincidentally, our Department of War (more accurately, our Department of Government-Instigated-and-Waged Civil War) yesterday ordered the National Guard to complete its civil unrest mission training in the next couple of months so that it had a ready armed force, numbering in the tens of thousands, that it could send into cities at a moment’s notice. As if seeking to validate the apprehensions of the No Kings demonstrators, Trump **prefaced his remarks** [link removed] to the press about his ability to deploy the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines to our cities with the words “The courts wouldn’t get involved. Nobody would get involved.”

Which makes the case that 11 judges of the Ninth Circuit will hear en banc all the more important. It concerns the ruling of Federal District Judge Karin Immergut, a 2019 Trump appointee to the federal bench, to block his deployment of the National Guard to Portland. As I noted in a

**Prospect** **piece** [link removed] just after she issued her ruling, the lawyers from Trump’s Justice Department argued that the president had the legal authority to send in the Guard to suppress rebellions and repel invasions. Immergut agreed that the courts must provide “significant deference” to the president’s authority to do just that—provided there actually was a rebellion or invasion. As I wrote at the time, the judge had

**looked and looked and looked some more, but found no rebellion. There had been scattered resistance to ICE agents, but, she wrote, Trump’s lawyers “have not proffered any evidence that those episodes of violence were part of an organized attempt to overthrow the government.” The court, she continued, did owe the president, any president, significant deference, but “‘a great level of deference’ is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground.”**

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Trump’s attorneys appealed her ruling to the circuit’s appellate court, where a three-judge panel ruled that Trump’s authority effectively overrode the facts on the ground. They split two-to-one on their **ruling** [link removed], with the two Trump-appointed judges saying it was entirely up to Trump to decide whether or not there was reason to send in the troops, while the third judge, a Bill Clinton appointee, argued that the president’s authority in so grave a matter required some link to reality, and recommended that the case should go up to a full en banc hearing. Now, it will.

That hearing will address what is turning out to be the most crucial particular of Trump’s attempt to quell any and all opposition to his reign by the use of military force. Based on his deployments to date, both those of the Guard to cities and of election monitors to California and New Jersey to protest and delay the effects of the expected Democratic electoral victories there next Tuesday, and based on his comments this week and the War Department’s order to speed the creation of a national urban intervention force, it looks highly likely that there will be troops in any number of Democratic cities come Election Day 2026, sent there in the hope that they’ll suppress Democratic voting. If the courts rule that his authority to send in troops cannot be challenged in court on the grounds that there’s no rebellion or insurrection for his troops to suppress, then Trump’s statement of Wednesday—“the courts wouldn’t get involved”—would turn out to be true, if amended to “the courts

**couldn’t**get involved.”

That’s why Immergut’s ruling, at least for now, is the sine qua non of preserving American democracy, and why the appellate court’s consideration of that ruling—and ultimately, the Supreme Court’s consideration of that ruling—is so existentially important to the future of our democratic republic.

**– HAROLD MEYERSON**

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****On the

**Prospect **website****

Mamdani and the Jews [link removed]

His campaign has divided New York’s Jewish community, even as his outreach efforts have persisted—and will continue if he wins Tuesday’s mayoral election.

**BY NAOMI BETHUNE** [link removed]

[link removed]

The Flaw in Trump’s MAGA Media Empire Plot [link removed]

He is trying to force Warner Bros. Discovery to agree to a merger with Paramount, consolidating media with his allies the Ellisons. But states can block that merger.

**BY DAVID DAYEN** [link removed]

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How Can Unions Defend Worker Power Under Trump 2.0? [link removed]

A

**Labor Notes** Roundtable [link removed]

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