A federal judge on Thursday ordered the monthslong National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C., to end, finding the use of troops in the city “unlawful.”
The ruling is the latest in a string of legal challenges to President Trump’s deployments of military and National Guard forces to U.S. cities to respond to protests, address crime or protect federal property and personnel. The decision follows a Tennessee judge’s temporary block on a Guard mobilization in Memphis — which had been activated by that state’s governor at the president’s request — and a recent Defense Department directive sending hundreds of troops out of Chicago and Portland as related deployments remained unsettled in federal courts.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, sided with D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb. Schwalb argued that the deployments undermined the District’s autonomy, escalated tensions between residents and law enforcement, and damaged the local economy. In her opinion, Cobb wrote that the District’s ability to exercise sovereign powers within its jurisdiction was “irreparably harmed” by the defendants’ deployment of Guard forces.
Cobb paused enforcement of her order until Dec. 11 to give the Trump administration time to file an appeal.
A White House spokesperson, Abigail Jackson, defended the president’s actions, saying he acted within his authority and labeling the lawsuit “nothing more than another attempt — at the detriment of DC residents — to undermine the President’s highly successful operations to stop violent crime in DC.”
President Trump ordered hundreds of Guard members into D.C. in early August without the mayor’s consent after declaring a citywide “crime emergency,” a claim disputed by local Democratic leaders. Guard personnel have been used largely for patrols and neighborhood improvement tasks such as trash cleanup, spreading mulch and pruning trees.
As of Wednesday, the deployment in the capital included more than 2,100 Guard members from the District and several states, including Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia and Alabama, according to the U.S. Army.