President Donald Trump salutes during a military parade marking the Army’s 250th anniversary, which coincides with his 79th birthday, on Saturday, June 14, 2025, in Washington. Joining him are Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and First Lady Melania Trump (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson).
In anticipation of a Zoom hearing set for Tuesday at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a coalition of retired four-star generals and admirals who served under presidents from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama have filed court documents expressing concern that President Donald Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard and deployment of U.S. Marines present “potentially grave risk of irreparable harm.”
The group is requesting the appellate court’s permission to file a brief and join the case as amici curiae — meaning “friends of the court” in Latin. While the retired generals, admirals, and former U.S. Army and Navy secretaries did not explicitly side with Governor Gavin Newsom in the case, they suggested on Sunday that the Trump administration’s attempt to obtain an emergency stay of a lower-court decision and its ongoing efforts to suppress “violent riots” in Los Angeles during nationwide “No Kings” protests over ICE raids may not be legally justified based on historical precedents.
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The overarching points of retired Admirals Steve Abbot, Thad Allen, Samuel Jones Locklear III, and Bill Owens, retired Generals Walton W. Fulford, Jr., Michael Hayden, former Army Secretary Louis Caldera, and former Navy Secretary Sean O’Keefe, are that the deployments of the National Guard and Marines in a domestic law enforcement context distracts from the military’s core mission, creates risks to troops and the public by placing military members in a setting they are not adequately trained for, and risks politicization of the military when not done as a “last resort” — potentially harming “recruitment, retention, morale, and cohesion of the force.”
In the federal district court ruling — which is currently under an administrative stay — Judge Charles Breyer, the brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, ruled that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard against Newsom’s wishes was “illegal” and violated the Constitution.
Again, although the retired admirals and generals did not support either party to the case, they implicitly warmed to Breyer’s ruling that the definition of “rebellion” has not been met and that, in the proposed amici’s words, the “recent and ongoing situation” in Los Angeles “appears to be different in kind” from the “extreme circumstances” of the 1992 Rodney King riots and the times when state governors “openly” and defiantly stood against the end of racial segregation during the Civil Rights era.
“[F]ederal deployments on U.S. soil have been rare, serious, and legally clear. The last major deployment of federal troops domestically occurred during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, at the request of California Governor Pete Wilson and pursuant to the Insurrection Act,” the filing said, emphasizing that then-Gov. Wilson sought federal help, unlike Newsom. “That deployment was prompted by widespread violence and looting of businesses, the burning of entire blocks of homes and businesses, and dozens of civilian fatalities. By contrast, recent public reporting from Los Angeles suggests that, notwithstanding troubling incidents of property damage and violence, the recent and ongoing situation appears to be different in kind.”
Also different were President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s use of the National Guard to “enforce the Supreme Court’s order in Brown v. Board of Education to desegregate schools” and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “federalization of Guard troops to protect civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama,” the proposed brief continued.
Noting that Trump has “not” invoked the Insurrection Act, unlike President George H.W. Bush in 1992, the would-be amici asserted together that it’s “essential that such deployments be a last resort, especially in the context of policing protests and other constitutionally protected speech and activities.”
They further argued that the risks of politicizing what should be an “apolitical” military are “profound and not speculative,” in no small part because of President Trump’s own recent words and actions “overtly pitt[ing] the military against his professed political opponents.”
From the filing:
President Trump has suggested the governor of California, to whom he refers by a derogatory name, should be arrested, calling his “primary crime” as “running for governor.” In a recent speech before U.S. Army personnel at Fort Bragg, President Trump repeatedly referred to the Los Angeles protests and denounced the governor, while encouraging service personnel to cheer as if at a political rally. Speaking about a military parade to be held in observance of the Army’s 250th birthday, President Trump said, “For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force.”
The brief concluded that Trump’s injection of the military into “domestic political controversies” — “undermining its ability to achieve its core mission of protecting the nation” — is a case in point as to why troops “should be kept out of domestic law enforcement whenever possible.”
