Solicitor General Overturns Court Orders: National Guard Deployment in Chicago Faces New Legal Battle

After several days of mounting tension, the Trump administration has decided to take an emergency appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. This urgent petition follows decisions made by two judges in Illinois and a three-judge panel from the Seventh Circuit, which effectively challenge the President’s constitutional authority over the deployment of National Guard troops under federal command. These rulings have replaced the President’s decision-making powers with those of a single judge.

Here’s the current situation:

On October 4, 2025, President Trump concluded that the escalating situation in Chicago had become too perilous for federal agents, particularly those involved in immigration enforcement, to carry out their duties. In response, he directed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to call up at least 300 members of the Illinois National Guard for federal service. This action was meant to continue until the Governor of Illinois agreed to a federally-funded mobilization under Title 32 of the United States Code, keeping the Guard under state control. The federalized troops were tasked with protecting ICE, FPS, and other federal personnel, as well as safeguarding federal property throughout Illinois. However, on October 6, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, humorously nicknamed “Royale with Cheese,” filed a lawsuit to halt the mobilization.

Since then, several court rulings have seemingly contradicted the straightforward interpretation of the law. According to the administration, the President holds absolute authority to determine when the National Guard should be federalized, a decision that they argue should not be up for debate.

Judge April Perry issued a 14-day temporary restraining order that blocked the federalization and deployment of the National Guard within Illinois, including troops from other states. Despite video evidence to the contrary, she concluded there was no “credible evidence of a danger of rebellion” nor an inability to enforce federal laws. She further argued that deploying federalized Guardsmen could exacerbate tensions. Her ruling invoked state sovereignty arguments that harkened back to the days of early 1861 Charleston, South Carolina.

Judge April Perry granted a 14-day temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking the “federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois” (including out-of-state troops). Despite the video to the contrary, she found no “credible evidence of a danger of rebellion” or inability to enforce federal laws. She opined that using federalized Guardsmen would add fuel to the fire.” There was even an appeal to ‘state sovereignty’ that wouldn’t have been out of place in Charleston, South Carolina, in early 1861.

The administration appealed to the Seventh Circuit and won a partial stay of Perry’s order on October 11. It graciously allowed the administration to federalize Guardsmen, but they were not allowed to be deployed for riot control duties or security patrols. A three-judge panel upheld Perry’s TRO on Friday, finding that the judges didn’t think a little rioting was all that bad.

Although we substantially agree with the definition of rebellion set forth by the district court in Newsom, we emphasize that the critical analysis of a “rebellion” centers on the nature of the resistance to governmental authority. Political opposition is not rebellion. A protest does not become a rebellion merely because the protestors advocate for myriad legal or policy changes, are well organized, call for significant changes to the structure of the U.S. government, use civil disobedience as a form of protest, or exercise their Second Amendment right to carry firearms as the law currently allows. Nor does a protest become a rebellion merely because of sporadic and isolated incidents of unlawful activity or even violence committed by rogue participants in the protest. Such conduct exceeds the scope of the First Amendment, of course, and law enforcement has apprehended the perpetrators accordingly. But because rebellions at least use deliberate, organized violence to resist governmental authority, the problematic incidents in this record clearly fall within the considerable daylight between protected speech and rebellion.

Applying our tentative understanding of “rebellion” to the district court’s factual findings, and even after affording great deference to the President’s evaluation of the circumstances, we see insufficient evidence of a rebellion or danger of rebellion in Illinois. The spirited, sustained, and occasionally violent actions of demonstrators in protest of the federal government’s immigration policies and actions, without more, does not give rise to a danger of rebellion against the government’s authority. The administration thus has not demonstrated that it is likely to succeed on this issue.

The three judges were appointed by Obama, G.H.W. Bush, and Trump.

The ruling is utterly insane. They rely entirely upon the situation as described to them by one side of the lawsuit and completely ignore any possible intelligence that the administration may have. Not to mention that the law places the responsibility upon the President to make the judgment to federalize troops. Had this standard been applied in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, the schools would still be segregated.

The new filing by Solicitor General John Sauer is basically a strike at all resistance to the President’s authority over the National Guard, because a SCOTUS ruling on this threshold matter will eliminate all current and further lawsuits on the issue.

This is an EXCEPTIONAL piece of work out of the Solicitor General’s Office yesterday.https://t.co/wZRwoTv8QE

— Shipwreckedcrew (@shipwreckedcrew) October 18, 2025

At bottom, the plaintiffs seek to use this suit to second-guess the President’s judgment that recent and repeated acts of violence targeting federal facilities and personnel in Illinois warrant calling up the National Guard—including because the violence has left the President sufficiently “unable” to ensure faithful “execut[ion]” of federal law.  10 U.S.C. 12406(3).  Like the 1795 law at issue in Martin, Section 12406 makes clear that Congress has granted “the authority to decide whether” the statutory prerequisites are satisfied “exclusively to the President.”

…

The district court’s order—and the court of appeals’ partial stay of that order— cause irreparable harm to the Executive Branch by countermanding the President’s authority as Commander in Chief, jeopardizing the lives and safety of DHS officers, and preventing the President and the Secretary of War from taking reasonable and lawful measures to protect federal personnel from the violent resistance that has persisted in the Chicago area for several months. As this Court recently reiterated, the President “must ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ ” and he “bears responsibility for the actions” of his subordinates in the Executive Branch.

I can’t copypasta the whole thing, but if you want to understand the issues, you have to read the brief.

The plaintiffs in this case, which might as well include the judges who have heard it, have until 5 p.m. to reply. The administration will be allowed to rebut, and we should see a decision in the next couple of weeks.

The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this. Help us continue to report the truth about the Schumer Shutdown. Use promo code POTUS47 to get 74% off your VIP membership.