What happened
Judge Charles Breyer's 52-page ruling did not describe a grey area or a technical overreach — he found that the administration had violated the Posse Comitatus Act "willfully," as part of what he called "a top-down, systemic effort" by Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and the Department of Defense to use military personnel to execute domestic law enforcement functions the 1878 law specifically reserves for civilian police. Troops accompanied federal agents on raids of marijuana farms, set up traffic blockades, and were "mixed in" with agents conducting immigration enforcement — not standing guard at a federal building, but doing policing.
The deployments spread beyond Los Angeles to Chicago, where 500 Guard troops arrived in October 2025 before the Supreme Court declined to lift a lower court's block on the deployment, and Portland, where troops were placed on standby outside the city after being announced but not actually sent in. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the combined cost of deployments to Los Angeles, Memphis, Portland, Chicago, and Washington DC at approximately $496 million between June and December 2025 alone.
Trump announced on 31 December 2025 that the administration would end the Guard deployments to Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago, with all troops withdrawn by January 2026 — while explicitly saying future deployments to the same cities remained possible.