Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea J. Campbell, joined by colleagues in nearly two dozen states, has joined Washington, D.C.’s fight to get the National Guard off the streets of the nation’s capital.
In a brief filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Campbell and her colleagues argue that the Trump administration’s decision to deploy troops without the consent of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is "unlawful, unconstitutional, and undemocratic."
“I am proud to stand with my colleagues in urging the court to reject this illegal National Guard deployment that creates unnecessary fear, undermines established trust between residents and local law enforcement, and conjures up the horrors of a police state where law enforcement patrols and controls rather than protects its people,” Campbell said in a statement.
President Donald Trump sent the National Guard to DC last month after earlier federalizing the district’s Metropolitan Police force and dispatching federal law enforcement to “re-establish law, order, and public safety,” according to Reuters.
The deployment to D.C. came after Trump sent National Guard soldiers and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles in June in an immigration and public safety crackdown. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta sued over the action.
Trump has since floated the idea of sending the Guard to other cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, and Memphis. All three cities have mayors who were elected as Democrats.
In their statement, Campbell and her colleagues argued that “domestic use of the military has long been recognized as antithetical to American values.”
While the deployments to California and D.C. were not the first cities “subjected to unlawful federalized deployments of the National Guard, President Trump has made clear that this is the beginning — not the end — of the military occupation of American cities," the attorneys general asserted.
The brief asks a federal judge to grant D.C.’s request for a preliminary injunction and to make clear that the U.S. Constitution forbids using soldiers as local law enforcement.
In addition to Massachusetts, attorneys general from California, Maryland, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaiʻi, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin also joined the brief.
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