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Tag: legal challenges

  • Justice Department under scrutiny for revealing victim info and concealing possible enablers in Epstein files

    The Justice Department failed to black out identifying information about many of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims and redacted the details of individuals who may have aided the convicted sex offender, prompting an outcry from survivors who accuse DOJ of botching the release of more than 3 million documents last week.A CNN review of the Epstein documents identified several examples of people whose identities were blacked out possibly helping to connect him with women, including redacted co-conspirators in a much-anticipated draft indictment of Epstein from the 2000s.A redacted individual wrote in one 2015 email to Epstein: “And this one is (i think) totally your girl.”In another 2014 email in the files, a person wrote to Epstein: “Thank you for a fun night… Your littlest girl was a little naughty.” But the name of the individual who wrote that message is redacted.The Department of Justice on Friday released what it said was the last of the Epstein files that it was required to disclose by law, but the documents have prompted widespread outcry about a continued lack of transparency and justice for Epstein’s many survivors.Epstein survivors are up in arms about the mishandled redactions, including blacked out statements that victims made to the FBI.A DOJ official said in a statement that any fully redacted names are of victims. “In many instances, as it has been well documented publicly, those who were originally victims became participants and co-conspirators,” the official said. “We did not redact any names of men, only female victims.”FBI and law enforcement names were also redacted, the DOJ official said.Meanwhile, the Justice Department has been scrambling to fix the improper disclosure of victim information.The Justice Department narrowly avoided a hearing in federal court on Wednesday by reaching an agreement late Tuesday with lawyers for some of the Epstein survivors, who had accused DOJ of releasing information about nearly 100 Epstein victims in the files.Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged Monday that “mistakes were made” but argued that DOJ has moved expeditiously to correct any information unintentionally released.For Epstein survivors, the DOJ’s response is unacceptable.“To have pieces of my life be out there on display in that way, was really troublesome,” said Dani Bensky, who told CNN in a roundtable with Epstein survivors that her name, address and phone number were all initially in the files.“And I know that I’m public now, yes, it hurts me — but it really hurts our survivor sisters who are still ‘Jane Does’ even more,” she added.The furor over what is and isn’t included in the Epstein documents highlights how the department’s release of more than 3 million documents on Friday is hardly the end of the fight over the Epstein files — even as both Blanche and President Donald Trump have said they think it’s time to move on.Congress forced the disclosure of the Epstein documents after passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act last November over Trump’s initial objections. But the bipartisan group of lawmakers who pushed for the law’s passage say there are still millions of files that have not been released, which the DOJ argued fell within exceptions to the law not requiring their disclosure.Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who led the effort to release the files, have asked to view the unredacted files — and are still threatening Attorney General Pam Bondi with impeachment or contempt for failing to comply with the law if more are not disclosed.“The DOJ has protected the Epstein class with blanket redactions in some areas while failing to protect the identities of survivors in other areas,” Khanna said in a statement to CNN. “Congress cannot properly assess DOJ’s handling of the Epstein and Maxwell cases without access to the complete record.”‘There’s no reason to redact it’The documents released on Friday include the names of numerous high-profile men who interacted with Epstein — who died by suicide in 2019 awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges — a list that included Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and the former Prince Andrew, among many others. All have denied any wrongdoing related to Epstein and have never been charged by law enforcement with any crimes.But Epstein survivors say the files appear to shield those who specifically enabled the convicted sex offender’s abuse, as well as other men who may have been named in the survivors’ statements that were completely redacted.One Epstein survivor pointed to another FBI form contained in the files where full pages were blacked out.“It basically outlines everything that this person experienced and shared with the FBI. It was seven pages long and four of them looked like this,” Jess Michaels told CNN in an interview. “What happened to her and who did it is also redacted. So you cannot say in the same sentence: ‘There were no men, there was no list’ and redact this much of a statement. Because if there’s no men, then there’s no reason to redact it. There’s no other reason.”One of the most anticipated documents in the files was the controversial draft indictment from the Southern District of Florida from the 2000s, which would have charged Epstein, along with three others, who were described as having been “employed” by Epstein.The individuals are all described as having conspired to “persuade, induce, and entice individuals who had not attained the age of 18 years to engage in prostitution.” But their names are redacted.The files also include numerous email exchanges with Epstein that appear to describe the procurement of women.A redacted individual from a Paris modeling agency wrote in a 2013 email to Epstein: “New Brazilian just arrived, sexy and cute, 19yo .”The email appears in the files twice: In one version, the modeling agency’s name is redacted, but in another, the agency is not redacted from the sender’s email signature.In a 2018 email to Epstein, another redacted individual wrote: “I found at least 3 very good young poor.”“Meet this one,” the person continued. “Not the beauty queen but we both likes her a lot.”In a letter to Congress on Friday, the Justice Department detailed how it made redactions, saying it complied with the law by redacting victim information, child sex abuse materials and anything that would jeopardize an active investigation.DOJ also withheld 200,000 pages “covered by various privileges, including deliberative process privilege, the work-product doctrine, and attorney-client privilege,” according to the letter.At his press conference last Friday announcing the release of the files, Blanche said they did not contain information about evidence that would lead to the prosecution of any men who abused women.“I said this earlier, there’s this built-in assumption that somehow there’s this hidden tranche of information of men that we know about that we’re covering up or that we’re choosing not to prosecute. That is not the case,” Blanche said. “I don’t know whether there are men out there that abuse these women.”Scrambling to scrub filesIn the hours after Friday’s DOJ release, CNN reported that multiple survivors, including anonymous “Jane Doe” victims, were seeing their names and information throughout the documents that were published.Attorneys for some of the survivors sent a letter saying the DOJ’s failure to properly redact victims’ information had triggered an “unfolding emergency,” asking two federal judges in New York for an “immediate judicial intervention.”Sunday’s letter included testimony from various anonymous “Jane Doe” victims who described receiving death threats and harassment from the media since the publication of the files.“When DOJ believed it was ready to publish, it needed only to type each victim’s name into its own search function. Any resulting hit should have been redacted before publication. Had DOJ done that, the harm would have been avoided,” the lawyers wrote.DOJ said in a response filed to the judges that it had removed all documents that victims or their lawyers identified, and a Justice Department spokesperson had said it had 500 reviewers looking at the files “for this very reason.”“Mistakes were made by – you have really hard-working lawyers that worked for the past 60 days. Think about this though: you’re talking about pieces of paper that stack from the ground to two Eiffel Towers,” Blanche said Monday on Fox News. “The minute that a victim or their lawyer reached out to us since Friday, we immediately dealt with it and pulled it down.”Epstein’s survivors say the release of names, even if corrected, is yet another example of how the Justice Department failed them.“Publishing images of victims while shielding predators is just a failure of complete justice,” Epstein survivor Sharlene Rochard told CNN. “There’s this deep sense of betrayal when the systems meant to protect you becomes the one causing all of this harm.”

    WASHINGTON —

    The Justice Department failed to black out identifying information about many of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims and redacted the details of individuals who may have aided the convicted sex offender, prompting an outcry from survivors who accuse DOJ of botching the release of more than 3 million documents last week.

    A CNN review of the Epstein documents identified several examples of people whose identities were blacked out possibly helping to connect him with women, including redacted co-conspirators in a much-anticipated draft indictment of Epstein from the 2000s.

    A redacted individual wrote in one 2015 email to Epstein: “And this one is (i think) totally your girl.”

    In another 2014 email in the files, a person wrote to Epstein: “Thank you for a fun night… Your littlest girl was a little naughty.” But the name of the individual who wrote that message is redacted.

    The Department of Justice on Friday released what it said was the last of the Epstein files that it was required to disclose by law, but the documents have prompted widespread outcry about a continued lack of transparency and justice for Epstein’s many survivors.

    Epstein survivors are up in arms about the mishandled redactions, including blacked out statements that victims made to the FBI.

    A DOJ official said in a statement that any fully redacted names are of victims. “In many instances, as it has been well documented publicly, those who were originally victims became participants and co-conspirators,” the official said. “We did not redact any names of men, only female victims.”

    FBI and law enforcement names were also redacted, the DOJ official said.

    Meanwhile, the Justice Department has been scrambling to fix the improper disclosure of victim information.

    The Justice Department narrowly avoided a hearing in federal court on Wednesday by reaching an agreement late Tuesday with lawyers for some of the Epstein survivors, who had accused DOJ of releasing information about nearly 100 Epstein victims in the files.

    Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged Monday that “mistakes were made” but argued that DOJ has moved expeditiously to correct any information unintentionally released.

    For Epstein survivors, the DOJ’s response is unacceptable.

    “To have pieces of my life be out there on display in that way, was really troublesome,” said Dani Bensky, who told CNN in a roundtable with Epstein survivors that her name, address and phone number were all initially in the files.

    “And I know that I’m public now, yes, it hurts me — but it really hurts our survivor sisters who are still ‘Jane Does’ even more,” she added.

    The furor over what is and isn’t included in the Epstein documents highlights how the department’s release of more than 3 million documents on Friday is hardly the end of the fight over the Epstein files — even as both Blanche and President Donald Trump have said they think it’s time to move on.

    Congress forced the disclosure of the Epstein documents after passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act last November over Trump’s initial objections. But the bipartisan group of lawmakers who pushed for the law’s passage say there are still millions of files that have not been released, which the DOJ argued fell within exceptions to the law not requiring their disclosure.

    Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who led the effort to release the files, have asked to view the unredacted files — and are still threatening Attorney General Pam Bondi with impeachment or contempt for failing to comply with the law if more are not disclosed.

    “The DOJ has protected the Epstein class with blanket redactions in some areas while failing to protect the identities of survivors in other areas,” Khanna said in a statement to CNN. “Congress cannot properly assess DOJ’s handling of the Epstein and Maxwell cases without access to the complete record.”

    ‘There’s no reason to redact it’

    The documents released on Friday include the names of numerous high-profile men who interacted with Epstein — who died by suicide in 2019 awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges — a list that included Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and the former Prince Andrew, among many others. All have denied any wrongdoing related to Epstein and have never been charged by law enforcement with any crimes.

    But Epstein survivors say the files appear to shield those who specifically enabled the convicted sex offender’s abuse, as well as other men who may have been named in the survivors’ statements that were completely redacted.

    One Epstein survivor pointed to another FBI form contained in the files where full pages were blacked out.

    “It basically outlines everything that this person experienced and shared with the FBI. It was seven pages long and four of them looked like this,” Jess Michaels told CNN in an interview. “What happened to her and who did it is also redacted. So you cannot say in the same sentence: ‘There were no men, there was no list’ and redact this much of a statement. Because if there’s no men, then there’s no reason to redact it. There’s no other reason.”

    One of the most anticipated documents in the files was the controversial draft indictment from the Southern District of Florida from the 2000s, which would have charged Epstein, along with three others, who were described as having been “employed” by Epstein.

    The individuals are all described as having conspired to “persuade, induce, and entice individuals who had not attained the age of 18 years to engage in prostitution.” But their names are redacted.

    The files also include numerous email exchanges with Epstein that appear to describe the procurement of women.

    A redacted individual from a Paris modeling agency wrote in a 2013 email to Epstein: “New Brazilian just arrived, sexy and cute, 19yo .”

    The email appears in the files twice: In one version, the modeling agency’s name is redacted, but in another, the agency is not redacted from the sender’s email signature.

    In a 2018 email to Epstein, another redacted individual wrote: “I found at least 3 very good young poor.”

    “Meet this one,” the person continued. “Not the beauty queen but we both likes her a lot.”

    In a letter to Congress on Friday, the Justice Department detailed how it made redactions, saying it complied with the law by redacting victim information, child sex abuse materials and anything that would jeopardize an active investigation.

    DOJ also withheld 200,000 pages “covered by various privileges, including deliberative process privilege, the work-product doctrine, and attorney-client privilege,” according to the letter.

    At his press conference last Friday announcing the release of the files, Blanche said they did not contain information about evidence that would lead to the prosecution of any men who abused women.

    “I said this earlier, there’s this built-in assumption that somehow there’s this hidden tranche of information of men that we know about that we’re covering up or that we’re choosing not to prosecute. That is not the case,” Blanche said. “I don’t know whether there are men out there that abuse these women.”

    Scrambling to scrub files

    In the hours after Friday’s DOJ release, CNN reported that multiple survivors, including anonymous “Jane Doe” victims, were seeing their names and information throughout the documents that were published.

    Attorneys for some of the survivors sent a letter saying the DOJ’s failure to properly redact victims’ information had triggered an “unfolding emergency,” asking two federal judges in New York for an “immediate judicial intervention.”

    Sunday’s letter included testimony from various anonymous “Jane Doe” victims who described receiving death threats and harassment from the media since the publication of the files.

    “When DOJ believed it was ready to publish, it needed only to type each victim’s name into its own search function. Any resulting hit should have been redacted before publication. Had DOJ done that, the harm would have been avoided,” the lawyers wrote.

    DOJ said in a response filed to the judges that it had removed all documents that victims or their lawyers identified, and a Justice Department spokesperson had said it had 500 reviewers looking at the files “for this very reason.”

    “Mistakes were made by – you have really hard-working lawyers that worked for the past 60 days. Think about this though: you’re talking about pieces of paper that stack from the ground to two Eiffel Towers,” Blanche said Monday on Fox News. “The minute that a victim or their lawyer reached out to us since Friday, we immediately dealt with it and pulled it down.”

    Epstein’s survivors say the release of names, even if corrected, is yet another example of how the Justice Department failed them.

    “Publishing images of victims while shielding predators is just a failure of complete justice,” Epstein survivor Sharlene Rochard told CNN. “There’s this deep sense of betrayal when the systems meant to protect you becomes the one causing all of this harm.”

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  • Supreme Court hears arguments on whether states can ban conversion therapy for LBGTQ+ kids

    The Supreme Court will hear arguments in its latest LGBTQ+ rights case Tuesday, weighing the constitutionality of bans passed by nearly half of U.S. states on the practice known as conversion therapy for children.The justices are hearing a lawsuit from a Christian counselor challenging a Colorado law that prohibits therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation or gender identity. Kaley Chiles, with support from President Donald Trump’s Republican administration, argues the law violates her freedom of speech by barring her from offering voluntary, faith-based therapy for kids.Colorado, on the other hand, says the measure simply regulates licensed therapists by barring a practice that’s been scientifically discredited and linked to serious harm.The arguments come months after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority found states can ban transition-related health care for transgender youths, a setback for LGBTQ rights. The justices are also expected to hear a case about sports participation by transgender players this term.State says therapy is health care and subject to regulationColorado has not sanctioned anyone under the 2019 law, which exempts religious ministries. State attorneys say it still allows any therapist to have wide-ranging, faith-based conversations with young patients about gender and sexuality.“The only thing that the law prohibits therapists from doing is performing a treatment that seeks the predetermined outcome of changing a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity because that treatment is unsafe and ineffective,” Colorado state attorneys wrote.Therapy isn’t just speech, they said — it’s health care that governments have a responsibility to regulate. Violating the law carries potential fines of $5,000 and license suspension or even revocation.Linda Robertson is a Christian mom of four from Washington state whose son Ryan underwent therapy that promised to change his sexual orientation after he came out to her at age 12. The techniques led him to blame himself when it didn’t work, leaving him ashamed and depressed. He died in 2009, after multiple suicide attempts and a drug overdose at age 20.“What happened in conversion therapy, it devastated Ryan’s bond with me and my husband,” she said. “And it absolutely destroyed his confidence he could ever be loved or accepted by God.”Chiles contends her approach is different from the kind of conversion therapy once associated with practices like shock therapy decades ago. She said she believes “people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex,” and she argues evidence of harm from her approach is lacking.Chiles says Colorado is discriminating because it allows counselors to affirm minors coming out as gay or identifying as transgender but bans counseling like hers for young patients who may want to change their behavior or feelings. “We’re not saying this counseling should be mandatory, but if someone wants the counseling they should be able to get it,” said one of her attorneys, Jonathan Scruggs.The Trump administration said there are First Amendment issues with Colorado’s law that should make the law subject to a higher legal standard that few measures pass.Similar laws also face court challengesChiles is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal organization that has appeared frequently at the court in recent years. The group also represented a Christian website designer who doesn’t want to work with same-sex couples and successfully challenged a Colorado anti-discrimination law in 2023.The group’s argument in the conversion therapy case also builds on another victory from 2018: A Supreme Court decision found California could not force state-licensed anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to provide information about abortion. Chiles should also be free from that kind of state regulation, the group argued.Still, the Supreme Court has also found that regulations that only “incidentally” burden speech are permissible, and the state argues that striking down its law against conversion therapy would undercut states’ ability to regulate discredited health care of all kinds.The high court agreed to hear the case after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the law. Another appeals court, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, has struck down similar bans in Florida.Legal wrangling has continued elsewhere as well. In Wisconsin, the state’s highest court recently cleared the way for the state to enforce its ban. Virginia officials, by contrast, have agreed to scale back the enforcement of its law as part of an agreement with a faith-based conservative group that sued.

    WASHINGTON —

    The Supreme Court will hear arguments in its latest LGBTQ+ rights case Tuesday, weighing the constitutionality of bans passed by nearly half of U.S. states on the practice known as conversion therapy for children.

    The justices are hearing a lawsuit from a Christian counselor challenging a Colorado law that prohibits therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation or gender identity. Kaley Chiles, with support from President Donald Trump’s Republican administration, argues the law violates her freedom of speech by barring her from offering voluntary, faith-based therapy for kids.

    Colorado, on the other hand, says the measure simply regulates licensed therapists by barring a practice that’s been scientifically discredited and linked to serious harm.

    The arguments come months after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority found states can ban transition-related health care for transgender youths, a setback for LGBTQ rights. The justices are also expected to hear a case about sports participation by transgender players this term.

    State says therapy is health care and subject to regulation

    Colorado has not sanctioned anyone under the 2019 law, which exempts religious ministries. State attorneys say it still allows any therapist to have wide-ranging, faith-based conversations with young patients about gender and sexuality.

    “The only thing that the law prohibits therapists from doing is performing a treatment that seeks the predetermined outcome of changing a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity because that treatment is unsafe and ineffective,” Colorado state attorneys wrote.

    Therapy isn’t just speech, they said — it’s health care that governments have a responsibility to regulate. Violating the law carries potential fines of $5,000 and license suspension or even revocation.

    Linda Robertson is a Christian mom of four from Washington state whose son Ryan underwent therapy that promised to change his sexual orientation after he came out to her at age 12. The techniques led him to blame himself when it didn’t work, leaving him ashamed and depressed. He died in 2009, after multiple suicide attempts and a drug overdose at age 20.

    “What happened in conversion therapy, it devastated Ryan’s bond with me and my husband,” she said. “And it absolutely destroyed his confidence he could ever be loved or accepted by God.”

    Chiles contends her approach is different from the kind of conversion therapy once associated with practices like shock therapy decades ago. She said she believes “people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex,” and she argues evidence of harm from her approach is lacking.

    Chiles says Colorado is discriminating because it allows counselors to affirm minors coming out as gay or identifying as transgender but bans counseling like hers for young patients who may want to change their behavior or feelings. “We’re not saying this counseling should be mandatory, but if someone wants the counseling they should be able to get it,” said one of her attorneys, Jonathan Scruggs.

    The Trump administration said there are First Amendment issues with Colorado’s law that should make the law subject to a higher legal standard that few measures pass.

    Similar laws also face court challenges

    Chiles is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal organization that has appeared frequently at the court in recent years. The group also represented a Christian website designer who doesn’t want to work with same-sex couples and successfully challenged a Colorado anti-discrimination law in 2023.

    The group’s argument in the conversion therapy case also builds on another victory from 2018: A Supreme Court decision found California could not force state-licensed anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to provide information about abortion. Chiles should also be free from that kind of state regulation, the group argued.

    Still, the Supreme Court has also found that regulations that only “incidentally” burden speech are permissible, and the state argues that striking down its law against conversion therapy would undercut states’ ability to regulate discredited health care of all kinds.

    The high court agreed to hear the case after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the law. Another appeals court, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, has struck down similar bans in Florida.

    Legal wrangling has continued elsewhere as well. In Wisconsin, the state’s highest court recently cleared the way for the state to enforce its ban. Virginia officials, by contrast, have agreed to scale back the enforcement of its law as part of an agreement with a faith-based conservative group that sued.

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  • What federal laws could President Trump use to send troops to US cities?

    What federal laws could President Trump use to send troops to US cities?

    Updated: 3:24 PM EDT Aug 26, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    President Donald Trump indicated late last week that Chicago could be the next U.S. city targeted for a federal troop deployment, mirroring similar actions already taken in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.On Monday, Trump doubled down on the potential of sending the U.S. military to Chicago, though he stopped short of making any guarantees.”They need help. We may wait. We may or may not, we may just go in and do it, which is probably what we should do,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the Trump administration has been working on plans for some time to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, possibly as early as September.The Trump administration has cited high levels of crime and lack of immigration enforcement as reasons for deploying federal troops. However, officials from D.C., Los Angeles and Chicago have pushed back against those claims and voiced strong opposition to Trump’s actions.“The guard is not needed,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson told NBC News. “This is not the role of our military. The brave men and women who signed up to serve our country did not sign up to occupy American cities.”Sending federal troops to Chicago would represent a significant escalation beyond the Trump administration’s earlier deployments in Los Angeles and D.C., pushing the limits of executive authority and inviting greater legal scrutiny. It could also lay the groundwork for Trump to send troops to other U.S. cities.Here’s a closer look at the federal laws at play and the legal arguments the Trump administration may use to uphold its deployment of federal troops to cities like Chicago.Title 10, Section 12406When considering the legal justifications for future troop deployments to cities like Chicago, Baltimore and New York, it’s best to begin with the Trump administration’s past actions.Washington, D.C., was the most recent place targeted, but its unique status as the capital means it’s unlikely to serve as a legal precedent for a nationwide rollout.Los Angeles, on the other hand, may offer a better roadmap.On June 7, Trump deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops in response to protests over his administration’s immigration policies. Shortly after, the number of Guard troops was increased to 4,100, plus approximately 700 Marines were also sent to the state.In a memo announcing the deployment, Trump invoked Title 10, Section 12406 of the U.S. Code, which states that the president can federalize National Guard units to repel an invasion, suppress a rebellion or enforce federal law.Video below: President Trump considers deploying armed National Guard to cities amid criticismAccording to Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, it was the first time since 1965 that a president activated a state’s National Guard without the governor’s request.California subsequently sued Trump, arguing that the deployment of federal troops violated the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 federal law that generally prohibits the use of the U.S. military to enforce domestic law.The Trump administration has maintained that federal troops were not engaged in law enforcement, but were instead deployed to protect federal immigration personnel and property.A federal judge initially ruled in favor of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, stating that Trump must relinquish control of the National Guard back to the state. However, a week later, an appeals court overturned the ruling.The lawsuit went back to court earlier this month, but a new ruling has not been made.Looking toward Chicago, Baltimore and New York, Trump could attempt to invoke Section 12406 again, using claims of high crime rates or lack of cooperation with federal officials in immigration enforcement as justification. But, like California, the move would certainly be met with legal action.Insurrection Act of 1807Another route the Trump administration could take is to invoke the rarely used Insurrection Act of 1807.The 19th-century law serves as an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, giving the president the power to use the U.S. military to carry out domestic law enforcement duties.Like Section 12406 of Title 10, the Insurrection Act requires certain conditions to be met to justify its use, such as suppressing an insurrection, quelling domestic violence or enforcing civil rights. However, it is widely viewed as a more extreme measure, especially when used without a state’s consent.Additionally, Section 12406 only gives the president control of the National Guard, while the Insurrection Act extends to the entire armed forces. The act also authorizes those forces to engage in domestic law enforcement, including detaining civilians and controlling crowds. Section 12406 does not.According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the Insurrection Act has only been used 30 times in American history. Most recently, it was used in 1992, at the request of California’s governor, to respond to the Los Angeles riots. The last time it was used against the state’s wishes was during the 1950s and 1960s to enforce school desegregation and to protect civil rights marches.Trump has never officially invoked the Insurrection Act, though he has repeatedly threatened to do so. “If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it,” Trump said in June, regarding the situation in Los Angeles. “We’ll see … If we didn’t get involved right now, Los Angeles would be burning.”Some legal experts have questioned whether Trump’s past actions have already crossed the threshold, including his deployment of the Marines to Los Angeles, which isn’t explicitly protected by Section 12406, but does fall under the Insurrection Act’s powers.Ultimately, if Trump does invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops to cities like Chicago, Baltimore, or New York, it would almost assuredly be challenged in court.However, it’s important to note that the Supreme Court, in the 1827 case Martin v. Mott, ruled that the president has sole discretion to determine if conditions are met to invoke the Insurrection Act. It’s a judgment that courts have historically been reluctant to contest.

    President Donald Trump indicated late last week that Chicago could be the next U.S. city targeted for a federal troop deployment, mirroring similar actions already taken in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

    On Monday, Trump doubled down on the potential of sending the U.S. military to Chicago, though he stopped short of making any guarantees.

    “They need help. We may wait. We may or may not, we may just go in and do it, which is probably what we should do,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

    The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the Trump administration has been working on plans for some time to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, possibly as early as September.

    The Trump administration has cited high levels of crime and lack of immigration enforcement as reasons for deploying federal troops. However, officials from D.C., Los Angeles and Chicago have pushed back against those claims and voiced strong opposition to Trump’s actions.

    “The guard is not needed,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson told NBC News. “This is not the role of our military. The brave men and women who signed up to serve our country did not sign up to occupy American cities.”

    Sending federal troops to Chicago would represent a significant escalation beyond the Trump administration’s earlier deployments in Los Angeles and D.C., pushing the limits of executive authority and inviting greater legal scrutiny. It could also lay the groundwork for Trump to send troops to other U.S. cities.

    Here’s a closer look at the federal laws at play and the legal arguments the Trump administration may use to uphold its deployment of federal troops to cities like Chicago.

    Title 10, Section 12406

    When considering the legal justifications for future troop deployments to cities like Chicago, Baltimore and New York, it’s best to begin with the Trump administration’s past actions.

    Washington, D.C., was the most recent place targeted, but its unique status as the capital means it’s unlikely to serve as a legal precedent for a nationwide rollout.

    Los Angeles, on the other hand, may offer a better roadmap.

    On June 7, Trump deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops in response to protests over his administration’s immigration policies. Shortly after, the number of Guard troops was increased to 4,100, plus approximately 700 Marines were also sent to the state.

    In a memo announcing the deployment, Trump invoked Title 10, Section 12406 of the U.S. Code, which states that the president can federalize National Guard units to repel an invasion, suppress a rebellion or enforce federal law.

    Video below: President Trump considers deploying armed National Guard to cities amid criticism

    According to Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, it was the first time since 1965 that a president activated a state’s National Guard without the governor’s request.

    California subsequently sued Trump, arguing that the deployment of federal troops violated the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 federal law that generally prohibits the use of the U.S. military to enforce domestic law.

    The Trump administration has maintained that federal troops were not engaged in law enforcement, but were instead deployed to protect federal immigration personnel and property.

    A federal judge initially ruled in favor of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, stating that Trump must relinquish control of the National Guard back to the state. However, a week later, an appeals court overturned the ruling.

    The lawsuit went back to court earlier this month, but a new ruling has not been made.

    Looking toward Chicago, Baltimore and New York, Trump could attempt to invoke Section 12406 again, using claims of high crime rates or lack of cooperation with federal officials in immigration enforcement as justification. But, like California, the move would certainly be met with legal action.

    Insurrection Act of 1807

    Another route the Trump administration could take is to invoke the rarely used Insurrection Act of 1807.

    The 19th-century law serves as an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, giving the president the power to use the U.S. military to carry out domestic law enforcement duties.

    Like Section 12406 of Title 10, the Insurrection Act requires certain conditions to be met to justify its use, such as suppressing an insurrection, quelling domestic violence or enforcing civil rights. However, it is widely viewed as a more extreme measure, especially when used without a state’s consent.

    Additionally, Section 12406 only gives the president control of the National Guard, while the Insurrection Act extends to the entire armed forces. The act also authorizes those forces to engage in domestic law enforcement, including detaining civilians and controlling crowds. Section 12406 does not.

    According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the Insurrection Act has only been used 30 times in American history. Most recently, it was used in 1992, at the request of California’s governor, to respond to the Los Angeles riots. The last time it was used against the state’s wishes was during the 1950s and 1960s to enforce school desegregation and to protect civil rights marches.

    Trump has never officially invoked the Insurrection Act, though he has repeatedly threatened to do so.

    “If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it,” Trump said in June, regarding the situation in Los Angeles. “We’ll see … If we didn’t get involved right now, Los Angeles would be burning.”

    Some legal experts have questioned whether Trump’s past actions have already crossed the threshold, including his deployment of the Marines to Los Angeles, which isn’t explicitly protected by Section 12406, but does fall under the Insurrection Act’s powers.

    Ultimately, if Trump does invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops to cities like Chicago, Baltimore, or New York, it would almost assuredly be challenged in court.

    However, it’s important to note that the Supreme Court, in the 1827 case Martin v. Mott, ruled that the president has sole discretion to determine if conditions are met to invoke the Insurrection Act. It’s a judgment that courts have historically been reluctant to contest.

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  • The Left Can’t Afford to Go Mad

    The Left Can’t Afford to Go Mad

    The Trump years had a radicalizing effect on the American right. But, let’s be honest, they also sent many on the left completely around the bend. Some liberals, particularly upper-middle-class white ones, cracked up because other people couldn’t see what was obvious to them: that Trump was a bad candidate and an even worse president.

    At first, liberals tried established tactics such as sit-ins and legal challenges; lawyers and activists rallied to protest the administration’s Muslim travel ban, and courts successfully blocked its early versions. Soon, however, the sheer volume of outrages overwhelmed Trump’s critics, and the self-styled resistance settled into a pattern of high-drama, low-impact indignation.

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    Rather than focusing on how to oppose Trump’s policies, or how to expose the hollowness of his promises, the resistance simply wished Trump would disappear. Many on the left insisted that he wasn’t a legitimate president, and that he was only in the White House because of Russian interference. Social media made everything worse, as it always does; the resistance became the #Resistance. Instead of concentrating on the hard work of door-knocking and community activism, its members tweeted to the choir, drawing no distinction between Trump’s crackpot comments and his serious transgressions. They fantasized about a deus ex machina—impeachment, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the pee tape, outtakes from The Apprentice—leading to Trump’s removal from office, and became ever more frustrated as each successive news cycle failed to make the scales fall from his supporters’ eyes. The other side got wise to this trend, and coined a phrase to encapsulate it: “Orange Man Bad.”

    The Trump presidency was a failure of right-wing elites; the Republican Party underestimated his appeal to disaffected voters and failed to find a candidate who could defeat him in the primary. Once he became president, the party establishment was content to grumble in private and grovel in public. But the Trump years demonstrated a failure of the left, too. Trump created an enormous reservoir of political energy, but that energy was too often misdirected. Many liberals turned inward, taking comfort in self-help and purification rituals. They might have to share a country with people who would vote for the Orange Man, but they could purge their Facebook feeds, friendship circles, and perhaps even workplaces of conservatives, contrarians, and the insufficiently progressive. Feeling under intense threat, they wanted everyone to pick a side on issues such as taking the Founding Fathers’ names off school buildings and giving puberty blockers to minors—and they insisted that ambivalence was not an option. (Nor was sitting out a debate, because “silence is violence.”) Any deviation from the progressive consensus was seen as a moral failing rather than a political difference.

    The cataclysms of 2020—the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd—might have snapped the left out of its reverie. Instead, the resisters buried their heads deeper in the sand. Health experts insisted that anyone who broke social-distancing rules was selfish, before deciding that attending protests (for causes they supported, at least) was more important than observing COVID restrictions. The summer of 2020 made a best seller out of a white woman’s book about “white fragility,” but negotiations around a comprehensive police-reform bill collapsed the following year. As conservative Supreme Court justices laid the ground for the repeal of Roe v. Wade, activist organizations became fixated on purifying their language. (By 2021, the ACLU was so far gone, it rewrote a famous Ruth Bader Ginsburg quote on abortion to remove the word woman.) Demoralized and disorganized, having given up hope of changing Trump supporters’ minds, the left flexed its muscles in the few spaces in which it held power: liberal media, publishing, academia.

    From the April 2023 issue: George Packer on the moral case against equity language

    If you attempted to criticize these tendencies, the rejoinder was simple whataboutism: Why not focus on Trump? The answer, of course, was that a bad government demands a strong opposition—one that seeks converts rather than hunting heretics. Many of the most interesting Democratic politicians to emerge during this time—the CIA veteran Abigail Spanberger, in Virginia; the Baptist pastor Raphael Warnock, in Georgia; Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who promised to “fix the damn roads”—were pragmatists who flipped red territories blue. When it came to the 2020 election, Democrats ultimately nominated the moderate candidate most likely to defeat Trump.

    That Joe Biden would prevail as the party’s candidate was hardly a given, however. He defeated his more progressive rivals for the Democratic nomination only after staging a comeback in the South Carolina primary. He was 44 points ahead of his closest rival, Bernie Sanders, among the state’s Black voters, according to an exit poll. That is not a coincidence. These voters recognized that they had far more to gain from a candidate like Biden, who regularly talked about working with Republicans, than from the activist wing of the party. As Biden put it in August 2020, responding to civil unrest across American cities: “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters?”

    Biden is older now, and a second victory is far from assured. If he loses, the challenges to American democratic norms will be enormous. The withering of Twitter may impede Trump’s ability to hijack the news cycle as effectively as last time, but he’ll only be more committed to enriching himself and seeking revenge. I hope that the left has learned its lesson, and will look outward rather than inward: The battle is not for control of Bud Light’s advertising strategy, or who gets published in The New York Times, but against gerrymandering and election interference, against women being locked up for having abortions, against transgender Americans losing access to health care, against domestic abusers being able to buy guns, against police violence going unpunished, against the empowerment of white nationalists, and against book bans.

    The path back to sanity in the United States lies in persuasion—in defending freedom of speech and the rule of law, in clearly and calmly opposing Trump’s abuses of power, and in offering an attractive alternative. The left cannot afford to go bonkers at the exact moment America needs it most.

    This article appears in the January/February 2024 print edition with the headline “The Left Can’t Afford to Go Mad.”

    Helen Lewis

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