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It's Sunday, September 14th. I'm Alex Osola for the Wall Street Journal. This is what's News Sunday, a show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest stories in the news by reaching out to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's happening happening in our world. On the show this week, President Trump is deploying the National Guard in a way that no president has done before. He and his supporters say it's necessary to address acute situations in various US Cities, but it's drawing mixed reactions among the residents of those cities and in U.S. courts. Our reporters weigh in on where it could go from here. It all started in June. Immigration rates in Los Angeles sparked protests in that city and across the country. In response, President Trump sent in military troops, including the National Guard. Then in August, he sent the national guard into Washington, D.C. to handle what he described as a scourge of violent crime. At the time, violent crime was trending down, according to FBI data. Since then, Trump says he's ready to order the National Guard to a number of other cities, including Chicago and New Orleans. And on Friday, Trump announced that he planned to send the National Guard to Memphis as part of a crackdown on crime across the country. The Memphis Police Department recently reported that overall crime had fallen to a 25 year low, with murder rates dropping to a six year low. But rates remain among the highest in the country. So what are these troops actually doing on the ground? And as challenges to Trump's moves make their way through the streets and the courts, is the president likely to achieve what he set out to do with the National Guard? Here to discuss are Journal White House reporter Natalie Andrews and WSJ Supreme Court correspondent Jess Braven. Jess, I want to start with you. What is the National Guard?
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Well, the National Guard is under the authority of each state's governor and they function as the armed force of the state. However, the president has the power to federalize them when there is a national emergency. When they are on the federal level, they are just like any other members of the armed forces. So the same rules that apply to other soldiers apply to them. And the main rule we're talking about is something called the Posse Comitatus Act. So the act says that the US Military cannot be involved in domestic law enforcement unless Congress has specifically authorized it. There are some exceptions, and one of those is when there is an emergency like a rebellion, and the question is, what is an emergency that justifies federalizing the Guard and deploying it to the streets and using it in ways that we really haven't seen before.
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Natalie, I want to talk about how the National Guard is being used under President Trump. So so far, he's deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles in response to protests against immigration raids there, as well as in the District of Columbia in response to what he says is a spate of violent crime. What are they actually doing on the ground day in, day out in these cities?
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The idea is that they're there as a kind of a backup police force. In D.C. they're pretty visible at metro stops, public parks. They've been spotted taking care of some garbage or fixing the mulch at the parks. Crime in D.C. in the past few weeks is down as people eating out at restaurants, people going out in the city because there is this larger force, they are carrying large weapons. And the understanding is that they're supporting law enforcement actions, be it. They're making arrests, they're out with officers. There's checkpoints into the city several days, they may pull over every car and ask for documentation. The National Guard is also helping with that.
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Jess, can you tell us a little bit about what they're doing in LA and maybe how, from a legal perspective, that's different than in D.C. it's different.
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In LA for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that in D.C. the National Guard is not under the command of the governor. There is no governor. It's the president. And so the federal government takes the view that it is functioning in D.C. as if it were the state militia. In Los Angeles, it was different because what happened there was the. The California National Guard is normally under the command of the state's governor, a Democrat named Gavin Newsom, who is not an ally of the president. What happened in California is that after some rocks were thrown and other resistance appeared to ice raids in June, the President said there is an emergency. Local authorities are unable to maintain order, and therefore the conditions are there for me to federalize the National Guard and send them there. There are 300 guardsmen still under this federal order. They are federalized through November under the President's orders and orders of Secretary Hegseth. They are, according to the Pentagon, protecting federal property and employees. There is some question about what activities are allowable under that standard Natalie, what.
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Is Trump's goal in deploying the National Guard to these places?
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Donald Trump has long campaigned on stopping crime. This was something that came up over and over at campaign rallies across the country. And in an era where people are increasingly worried about it, it's a winning issue. And Donald Trump sees this as him showing strength. This is him showing, hey, look, I came into these cities, I ended this. This is what you elected me for. He's also just really passionate about DC Being a nice looking capital. He's long been bugged by the graffiti here, a lot of which includes his name expletive, so it's understandable that he doesn't like it and wants to clean it up. So there's probably a little bit of that, too.
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Coming up, we'll explore the growing pushback from state and local leaders, as well as the public's reaction, plus what a more permanent deployment of the National Guard could mean for other cities. That's after the break.
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We've talked about how things are actually going and now I want to talk about how things could go. Natalie, I want to get into some of the reactions to Trump's moves with the National Guard. So how is this move going over?
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Well, there was a very notable moment early on. I think it was the first weekend of the guards occupation in D.C. where a man dressed all in pink threw a Subway sandwich at the National Guard or at federal law enforcement that were there and they went after him hard. The White House response. They filmed a TikTok esque video of them going to take him down and to arrest him. There's also a worry in Washington that there's really no end in sight. Mayor Bowser signed a mayoral order saying she would continue to work with federal law enforcement and kind of setting up more of a communications point so that they are more organized, signaling that this is going to go on for quite a long time.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing back against President Trump and the National Guard being deployed there. In his State of the State address last week, he accused the president of targeting California with his, quote, relentless, unhinged California obsession. Jess, how's the National Guard presence there been shaking out?
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What was remarkable about the federalization of the California National Guard was that it took place over the objection of the state governor and with barely any notice to him. And while the Guard has been federalized from time to time. We haven't seen it being done over the objection of the state itself. And Gavin Newsom went to court, a federal appeals court said, well, we're not going to second guess whether the conditions are there for the president to federalize the Guard, so we're going to let him do that. But in September, a federal district judge in San Francisco found that the actual things the Guard was doing on the ground violated this Posse Comitatus Act. They were going beyond just protecting the buildings and protecting the employees to do things that the Pentagon itself, in its own guidelines that predate this episode, say are the job of law enforcement. And now we have an appeal from the Trump administration saying that what they are doing is really permissible. It's not direct law enforcement, it's protection. But this is really the question is what they are doing straying into the field of civilian law enforcement? Are they doing the job of ICE agents? Are they doing the job of the lapd, which they're not authorized to do, or are they just protecting federal assets?
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What exactly is being disputed in that case? Essentially, what actions can the federalized National Guard do and not do?
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One of the exhibits that came up in the case was a slide from the Defense Department's own training for the National Guard or US Military forces when they are deployed stateside. And four of the activities that the slide prohibits were authorized by Defense Secretary Hegseth, and those were security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, and riot control. Other things on that list which remain off limits include pursuit, arrests, apprehension, search, seizure, evidence collection, interrogation, and a few other things.
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So, given the legal challenge to this National Guard deployment in la, what does this mean for the other cities that Trump potentially wants to send the National Guard to? Could this provide a sort of framework for other legal challenges?
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Well, the cases in California are certainly going to be influential on other courts as they confront the same issues, because we don't have a lot of experience with the military's deployment like this. When there isn't an insurrection, there aren't mass protests like was seen in the civil rights era or the Vietnam War era. However, one thing to keep in mind, though, is that Donald Trump had a provocation that he decided was enough to be an emergency situation that triggered the federalization in California. And that was when there were some protests that erupted after ICE raids all over LA County. I don't know that that is the case in Chicago. I don't know that there is the case in Baltimore. So the question is going to be, what is the Predicate, if you want to be legal about it, that would allow him to do this. What is going to be the justification for federalizing the National Guard and sending them in there over the objection of people like Governor Pritzker?
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Natalie, I want to talk about the political impact for a second. As you said, Trump really ran on this law and order kind of platform. What does this deployment of the National Guard and the reaction to it mean potentially for the midterms?
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One thing to note is that these cities that Donald Trump is talking about going into or cleaning up, these are not Republican cities. He is going into places where the majority of those people in those cities did not vote for Donald Trump. But these are cities that are well known across the country to Trump supporters. Washington, D.C. is a top tourist destination. Chicago is popular for those in the heartland. So does this help him if he can show, yes, look what I've done. I've really changed the numbers here for these cities. However, in Los Angeles, when there were these widespread raids and they were going to places like Home Depot and picking people up, there was backlash to that. So there's a chance that as Donald Trump goes into these cities, if there's large backlash, if there there's things that visually look very upsetting to people, then he risks having this backlash of almost being too much of a strongman.
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And Jess, how about from the legal perspective, could this create a legal precedent that allows presidents to do this more regularly?
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What happens with the military, I think, as Natalie said, depends in part on what happens if they just end up as window dressing or waging the war on trash that we've seen in D.C. maybe the issue goes away. Maybe it's a disappointment for Trump, maybe it's a victory for Trump if there's not much reaction to it and they can be demobilized. On the other hand, having a bunch of people standing around with combat weapons, people whose job is not doing crowd control normally, who's not doing local law enforcement, they're not regular cops on the beat who know people in the neighborhood. Things can go wrong by accident. I can't help thinking about 1970 and the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University.
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Also in this era, everyone has a phone, a camera, things like that. Any small incident has the chance to spread very widely, very quickly, which can have real serious political implications.
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That was WSJ reporters Jess Bravin and Natalie Andrews. And that's it for what's new Sunday for September 14th. Today's show is produced by Charlotte Gartenberg with supervising producer Melanie Roy and Deputy Editor Chris Sinsley. I'm Alex Osola and we'll be back tomorrow morning with a brand new show. Until then, thanks for listening.
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