Oral Arguments Reveal Dangerous Haziness Around National Guard Powers

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Oct 22, 2025

A panel of appellate judges spent considerable time Wednesday prodding at whether the National Guard troops currently deployed in American cities are subject to the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) — a worrying sign of the ambiguity around what power the Guard has.

The PCA prevents the military from doing law enforcement, a bulwark rooted in American tradition against the military being turned inwards against its citizens. Conventional wisdom holds that the Guard are prevented from acting like regular law enforcement unless President Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, an explicit exception to the PCA.

But Wednesday’s argument before a 9th Circuit of Appeals panel — composed of two Trump appointees and one Biden appointee — showed that the division is not so clear-cut.

A district court found last month that the Guard deployed to Los Angeles had violated the PCA by participating in law enforcement activities. But the Trump administration is advancing such an expansive definition of the statute that allows the President to federalize the Guard that its lawyers argue that there was no such violation, that the troops are perfectly free to behave like a municipal police force.

Paraphrasing California’s argument, Judge Mark Bennett asked: “Even members of the Guard called into service are subject to all laws and regulations etc., which would include the PCA. So what’s your response to that?”

“I don’t think that language would override the express authorization in Section 12406 to execute the laws,” the Justice Department’s Eric McArthur responded.

Add to the perfect storm of legally untested presidential powers, ambiguously written statutes and a bloodlusting President: troops without clear guardrails on the force they can use against citizens. To use the proper legal terminology, yikes.

— Kate Riga

Prop 50 Has Majority Support in California

A new CBS News poll has found that 68% of those surveyed in California, an overwhelming majority, support Proposition 50, the redistricting ballot proposal going before voters this fall during a special election. The measure asks voters to support temporarily changing district lines in California until 2030 to help the state pick up five Democratic seats in the U.S. House. It’s designed to offset the impact of Texas’ new maps, which the Republican state legislature passed at Trump’s behest to help Republicans maintain control of the House in the 2026 midterms.

Only 38% of those surveyed indicated they would vote “no” on the ballot measure. What’s more interesting, per CBS News, is that an overwhelming majority of those who support the measure (75%) see it as an opportunity to oppose Donald Trump:

Those voting for it overwhelmingly say one reason is for them to oppose the Trump administration — which they also feel generally treats California worse than other states — and oppose national Republicans.
Overall, those who see their Prop 50 vote as a national issue are backing it, and that rationale is in turn helping push the “yes” side of the measure into the lead.

— Nicole LaFond

Trolls and Conspiracy Theory Websites Make Up Pentagon’s ‘New Media’ Press Corps

In case you needed another reason to distrust the official line coming out of Pete Hegseth’s Defense Department, the agency just announced a “new media” press corps composed of the furthest fringes of right-wing media. Gateway Pundit is part of it, as is Tim Pool’s Timcast, Turning Point USA’s media organization Frontlines, and Jack Posobiec’s publication Human Events, according to the Washington Post. Diehard Trump fan and MyPillow CEO’s streaming service, Lindell TV, is on board too, ‘cause why not.

The announcement comes a week after the longtime Pentagon press corps left their posts over an egregious new press policy that prevents journalists from “soliciting” even unclassified information that hasn’t been authorized for release, keeping them from doing the most basic aspects of their jobs. In a show of solidarity, reporters from major news outlets turned in their press credentials and walked together out of their longtime offices in the building. Interestingly, as WaPo points out, some Trump-friendly outlets, including Newsmax and Hegseth’s old employer Fox News, also declined to sign onto the media policy.

— Allegra Kirkland

Some House GOP Are Itching to Come Back

The House has been out of session for more than four weeks — since House Republicans narrowly passed their short term spending bill. Since then, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has refused to bring the House back into session. It’s all part of an effort to jam Senate Democrats into voting for the GOP CR.

That, of course, has not worked and no funding resolutions have passed the Senate because Republicans refuse to engage with Democrats’ request to extend Obamacare subsidies set to expire at the end of the year. Now, 22 days into the shutdown, some House GOPers are becoming more vocal about their itch to get back to work.

“If it were up to me, we’d come back right away,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said on Tuesday, per NOTUS.

Cole said he respects Johnson’s decision, but said that it has kept him from being able to send appropriations bills to the floor to try to plan ahead. The House-passed CR was set to fund the government until Nov. 21. But with that deadline less than a month away, Cole now says he would like to do a CR that would fund the government into mid January. And the House would need to be back in session in order to consider such a measure.

Earlier this month, other GOP members voiced their frustration with Johnson’s decision.

“I think everyone’s frustrated,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said. “Zero communication. There’s zero planning, and we have no idea when we’re coming back, if we’re coming back. Everybody wants to work, and we can’t work.”

Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-CA), Julie Fedorchak (R-ND) and Stephanie Bice (R-OK) also expressed concern over the prolonged absence during a private House GOP call, the Washington Post reported.

Meanwhile Democrats have been incessantly slamming Johnson and House Republicans for being “on vacation” while they try to negotiate to find a way out of the shutdown.

— Emine Yücel