The Trump administration late on Nov. 25 appealed a federal district judge’s ruling requiring the government to end its deployment of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital.

President Donald Trump had said the troops were needed to deal with crime and violence in the District of Columbia and support federal immigration law enforcement efforts there.

On Aug. 11, Trump signed a presidential memorandum, in which he said the local D.C. government “has lost control of public order and safety in the city.”

“It is a point of national disgrace that Washington, D.C., has a violent crime rate that is higher than some of the most dangerous places in the world,” the document stated.

The new one-page notice of appeal states that the federal government is appealing the Nov. 20 ruling of U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

It does not provide a rationale for the appeal.

Cobb heard oral arguments on Oct. 24 on the District of Columbia government’s federal lawsuit against the deployment.

Cobb held that Trump’s takeover of the D.C. National Guard runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution and unlawfully interferes with local officials’ authority to control law enforcement in the District of Columbia.

The judge said the president has authority to call up the National Guard only “through the exercise of a specific power outlined in state law,” and not for “whatever reason” he sees fit.

Cobb said in her order that the court rejects the federal government’s “fly-by 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.”

Article II of the U.S. Constitution spells out the president’s powers.

The president “has no free-floating Article II power to deploy the [D.C. National Guard] for the deterrence of crime,” she said.

“Historical practice confirms this understanding of the president’s authority.”

In her Nov. 20 ruling, Cobb paused enforcement of the decision for 21 days to allow the federal government to appeal.

D.C. government attorney Mitchell Reich said during the Oct. 24 hearing that the Trump administration’s deployment was unlawful because no statute authorizes the federal government to carry out law enforcement activities in the District of Columbia.

He said that Congress has exclusive jurisdiction, or authority, over the District of Columbia and has enacted a highly detailed militia code that spells out when the president may deploy the D.C. National Guard. That code states that the president may use the Guard to deal with riots and similar disturbances and requires that before he does so, civil authorities must request assistance, which they have not done, the lawyer said.

The federal government’s position is that the president has “essentially unbounded authority to deploy the [D.C. National Guard] as a parallel police force in the District of Columbia,” Reich said.

At the same hearing, Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Eric Hamilton said that the National Guard members were “not doing law enforcement.” The National Guard was carrying out a protective function and was not involved in “core law enforcement activities,” Hamilton said.

When a guardsman temporarily detains someone, “they’re doing it for protective purposes … they aren’t doing it to enforce a law,” he said.

Hamilton said a Guard member will detain someone “to neutralize what was a threat, and this is consistent with their ability to provide protection.”

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Nov. 25, 2025, in The Epoch Times.