MAGA Freaks Out That Trump Ambassador Met With Spy Who Sold Out U.S.

The National Guard’s takeover of Washington was not legal, a U.S. District Court judge ruled Thursday.

Judge Jia Cobb ruled that the Pentagon had “exceeded the bounds of their authority” by ordering troops into the nation’s capital for “non-military, crime-deterrence missions” without the express permission of the city’s leadership.

Donald Trump deployed 800 National Guard members to Washington and federalized the capital’s police department at the end of the summer to combat what he described as a crime-riddled hellscape. By November, the number of troops had risen to 2,000.

To justify the government infringement, the president pointed to rising crime rates, immigrant populations, and homelessness—though the figures he used were from 2023. The cherry-picked statistics misrepresented the state of crime in the nation’s capital, which, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department that was touted by Trump’s own FBI, had actually fallen last year by 35 percent. That was part of a nationwide trend that saw violent crime plummet.

But while the buck stops with the president when it comes to military activity overseas, Cobb determined that Trump lacked the necessary authority to federalize law enforcement in America’s cities, especially in Washington, where Congress reigns supreme.

“The Court rejects Defendants’ fly-by assertion of constitutional power, finding that such a broad reading of the President’s Article II authority would erase Congress’s role in governing the District and its National Guard,” Cobb wrote.

Cobb stayed the effect of her ruling until December 11 to give the Trump administration time to appeal.

The decision doesn’t bode well for Trump’s plans for the rest of the country, which involve leveraging the National Guard to reinforce his immigration agenda in Democratic cities. So far, Trump has deployed federal forces to Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Memphis—all cities where residents publicly demonstrated against ICE.

This story has been updated.