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U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco is likely to decide in the coming weeks if troops were only providing permissible security, as the Trump administration has argued, or if the government violated the Posse Comitatus Act by using troops for law enforcement, as Governor Gavin Newsom claimed in a lawsuit. Read the complaint.
- The administration has argued there is a Constitutional exception to the Posse Comitatus Act for protecting federal personnel and property, which has never been tested in court.
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Testimony showed few practical limits on the use of the military to support federal law enforcement and provided a glimpse of how military commanders assessed what constituted a risk to property or personnel, which justified using troops.
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U.S. Army Major General Scott Sherman testified that leaders in the field had wide latitude to decide when protection was necessary, even in situations that they deemed low risk. He said he was told that establishing security perimeters, controlling traffic and crowds, and even detaining people -- classic functions of police -- were permissible whenever federal personnel and property were threatened.
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The military has no standardized definition of a threat, and Breyer pressed a DOJ lawyer to define the limits on military involvement. Police face threats every day and the Trump administration's argument would allow the military to be called in almost without limit, Breyer said.
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Read more about the trial here.
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