LOS ANGELES (TNND) — A San Francisco federal judge has denied California’s request to block President Donald Trump’s militarization of Los Angeles.
California Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta filed the emergency motion earlier Tuesday. The judge instead scheduled a hearing for 1:30 p.m. PST on Thursday to discuss the requested order.
The Justice Department has called Newsom’s filing “legally meritless” and said that if the block was granted, it “would jeopardize the safety of the Department of Homeland Security personnel and interfere with the Federal Government’s ability to carry out operations,” according to CNN.
A California Highway Patrol officer pulls an electric scooter off a vehicle on a highway as protesters throw objects at the police vehicles near the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, Sunday, June 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
The emergency motion would temporarily bar the Trump administration from using California’s National Guard troops to enforce state laws.
This order would also prohibit the National Guard from assisting with carrying out immigration raids.
After filing the emergency motion, Trump and Newsom are now fighting over a phone call.
Trump told Fox News reporter John Roberts, while aboard Air Force One, that his first call to Newsom went unanswered, with Trump calling Newsom a second time, where he picked up the call and they spoke for 16 minutes.
This phone call occurred on Friday, June 7.
According to Roberts, the president said that he “essentially” told him to “get his a** in gear and stop the riots, which were out of control. More than anything else, this shows what a liar he is. Said I never called. Here is the evidence.”
Newsom went to X, saying that “there was no call,” after Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he last spoke to Newsom a day ago.
Trump originally deployed 2,000 National Guard soldiers on Saturday night for what he called “Radical Left protests” by “instigators and often paid troublemakers.”
Trump cited a legal provision, allowing him to mobilize federal service members when there is “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
In response, Newsom announced that California would sue Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, accusing the president of circumventing state authority and inflaming immigration protests when he dispatched National Guard troops against the state’s wishes.
A protester taunts a line of California National Guard protecting a federal building in downtown Los Angeles on Monday, June 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)
The emergency order was filed as part of the lawsuit accusing Trump of violating the U.S. Constitution and the president’s Title 10 authority.
By Monday night, Trump had authorized the deployment of 2,000 more National Guard troops in response to the riots. The Department of Defense said the number of troops in Los Angeles had risen from 300 to 1,700.
Additionally, Hegseth deployed around 700 active-duty Marines to join California National Guard troops in L.A.
Attorneys for California told the court that the requested emergency order would “prevent the use of federalized National Guard and active duty Marines for law enforcement purposes on the streets of a civilian city,” according to CNN.
The attorneys also included that they were not looking for the National Guard troops to not be prevented from their job of protecting federal property throughout the city.
The emergency motion has not been responded to yet.
