Appeals Court Blocks Trump from Deploying National Guard to Illinois Amid Legal Battle Over Federal Power

federal appeals court has ruled that President Donald Trump’s administration cannot deploy the National Guard to Illinois, marking a major legal setback for the White House amid ongoing disputes over the president’s authority to use military force in Democratic-led states.

The Chicago-based US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that temporarily blocked Trump’s plan to deploy troops in the Chicago area, saying such action was “likely to lead to civil unrest” and “only add fuel to the fire.”

While the court barred the president from ordering a new deployment, it allowed the existing federal control of the National Guard to remain in place until further judicial review.

The ruling comes after Illinois officials and the city of Chicago sued the Trump administration, calling the troop deployment a “grave intrusion on Illinois’ sovereignty.”

US District Judge April Perry, who first issued a restraining order last week, wrote that she had seen “no credible evidence that there has been rebellion in the state of Illinois,” rejecting the White House’s justification for federal intervention.

The Trump administration had argued that the troops were necessary to curb illegal immigration and rising crime in Chicago — a city that has frequently drawn the president’s ire.

The US military confirmed that 300 members of the Illinois National Guard and 200 from the Texas National Guard had already been activated in the area before the court’s ruling.

The decision adds to a growing list of legal defeats for the Trump administration over its controversial use of federal forces.

In recent months, Trump has sent troops to several Democratic-led cities, including Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Portland, Oregon — all under the banner of operations aimed at detaining undocumented migrants and quelling unrest.

Last week, a Trump-appointed judge in Oregon, Karin Immergut, also blocked the president’s deployment of 200 National Guard troops to Portland, saying the justification “was simply untethered to the facts.”

And in June, Trump ordered 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines into Los Angeles to respond to protests against immigration raids. Most of those forces have since been withdrawn, but California continues to pursue a lawsuit over the operation.

The Illinois case marks the latest flashpoint in the ongoing national debate over presidential power, federal overreach, and state sovereignty — a clash that could ultimately reach the US Supreme Court.