California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Monday he is suing the Trump administration for deploying hundreds of National Guard members to Los Angeles over the weekend, a move he called “unlawful.”
Bonta said President Donald Trump’s move to federalize 2,000 members of the state National Guard on Saturday in response to protests against the administration’s immigration actions was unnecessary and an “infringement” on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s authority.
The suit will seek a court finding that Trump’s order was illegal, he said.
“The president is trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends. Federalizing the California National Guard is an abuse of the President’s authority under the law — and not one we take lightly. We’re asking a court to put a stop to the unlawful, unprecedented order,” Bonta said.
Bonta also argued that the move took crucial resources away from wildfire season, and that the administration “had trampled over our state’s sovereignty.”
He charged that the “protests had dissipated and streets were quiet” before the troops arrived on Sunday morning and “reignited” tensions.
Speaking to reporters at a press conference, Bonta noted that the law Trump used to activate the guard had only been used once before, when then-President Richard Nixon used it in 1970 to activate the guard to deliver mail during a postal strike. He also said it’s the first time the guard had been activated without a governor’s consent since 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson deployed troops in Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators.
The White House had contended the move was necessary to combat “lawlessness that has been allowed to fester” in Los Angeles, referring to clashes and confrontations between federal agents carrying out immigration raids and protesters.
Newsom had said that there was no need to deploy the National Guard and that Trump took the drastic step out of a desire for a “spectacle.”
He also accused Trump of trying to “manufacture a crisis.”
“He’s hoping for chaos so he can justify more crackdowns, more fear, more control,” Newsom said in a post Sunday on X, where he also urged protesters to “stay peaceful.”
Tensions between protesters and law enforcement escalated on Saturday, with some protesters throwing objects and law enforcement deploying pepper balls and flash-bangs. Videos also showed looting and a car on fire.
The protests initially began in response to immigration enforcement operations, as the Trump administration has made mass deportations a centerpiece of its domestic policy. In recent days, administration officials have targeted major Democratic cities in their enforcement efforts, including L.A., Chicago and New York.
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social Monday, Trump insisted he’d done the right thing.
“We made a great decision in sending the National Guard to deal with the violent, instigated riots in California. If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated,” he wrote.
He also praised the National Guard on Truth Social for a “job well done” in the early hours of Sunday morning, before they’d been deployed in the city.
About 300 guard members are currently in L.A., officials said.
