A U.S. federal judge has temporarily halted the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., without the mayor’s consent.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, issued on Thursday, November 20, halts a plan to use troops for law enforcement purposes in the capital.
Judge Jia Cobb penned a 61-page ruling, writing, “The Court rejects Defendant’s fly-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.”
However, the judge has extended her ruling until December 11 to allow the administration time to appeal.
Donald Trump had announced the deployment of more than 2,300 National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., on August 11, 2025.
While Brian Schwalb, the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, challenged President Trump’s troop deployment orders in the federal court on September 4, 2025.
The lawsuit alleged that Trump illegally seized control of the city’s law enforcement and breached a law that bars military troops from doing domestic law enforcement duties.
The legal team of the Trump administration termed the lawsuit a political stunt in court filings and said the president is free to deploy troops to Washington without getting assent from the local leaders.
Earlier, President Donald Trump also deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, Oregon, to fight what he labelled as lawlessness and violent unrest over his crackdown on illegal immigration.
But the Democratic leaders in these states have sued the deployment move, claiming that these actions constitute an effort to intimidate political opponents through a militarized show of force.
