Federal appeals court rules Trump can maintain control of National Guard in US state of California

HOUSTON, United States 

A federal appeals court ruled late Thursday that President Donald Trump can maintain control of nearly 4,000 California National Guard troops that he federalized to respond to protests in Los Angeles of controversial immigration raids.

The ruling by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals paused a lower court ruling earlier in the day that determined Trump's actions were unlawful and instead allowed the president to continue mobilizing guardsmen and 700 US Marines to place a military presence in the nation's second-largest city.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has fiercely opposed Trump’s decision to deploy the troops, arguing that the presence of militarized law enforcement was a political move by Trump and would only escalate the protests.

"The Department of Defense did not transmit this directive to the Office of the Governor, nor was it approved or ordered by the Governor of California," as required by the law, Newsom wrote in a letter requesting the order be rescinded.

The governor welcomed US District Judge Charles Breyer's earlier ruling, in which the judge wrote that Trump's "actions were illegal – both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution."

"I hope it’s the beginning of a new day in this country where we push back against overreach," Newsom said in a statement after the lower court ruling. "We push back against these authoritarian tendencies of a president that has pushed the boundaries, push the limit, but no longer can push this state around."

Lawyers for the Trump administration argued that the federal government had met the requirements of a federal statute that governs when the National Guard can be called into federal service.

"The district court has entered an unprecedented order enjoining the President from deploying National Guardsmen to protect federal officers from ongoing violent protests and attacks, and to protect federal property from further damage," they wrote in a court filing, adding that the "order is an extraordinary intrusion on the President’s constitutional authority as Commander in Chief to call forth the National Guard as necessary to protect federal officials."

Newsom has denounced the deployment as an attempt to militarize the situation, saying local police have the protests under control, with little violence within an area of just a few city blocks. Trump has suggested that without federal help, Los Angeles would be a city in flames.