Hegseth Won’t Say Whether He’d Follow Judicial Orders Relating to Troops in LA

In an appearance before the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth refused to answer questions on whether the Trump administration would abide by future potential judicial rulings that could limit the deployment of the U.S. military in cities like Los Angeles.

The administration has sent 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines to Los Angeles so far to suppress uprisings against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the city. Notably, President Donald Trump’s order to send the troops to L.A. is ambiguous enough to allow him to take similar actions in cities across the country.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is suing the Trump administration, stating that the use of troops in the city is unnecessary and unlawful. A federal judge did not place an immediate hold on the administration’s actions but is set to hear both sides in oral arguments later this month.

During the congressional hearing on Thursday, Hegseth repeatedly dodged lawmakers’ questions on what he or the administration would do in the event that a federal court or even the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the deployment of military personnel to Los Angeles was illegal.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) pressed Hegseth to answer the question, asking, “You’re not willing to say you would respect those decisions?”

“What I’m saying is local district judges shouldn’t make foreign policy,” Hegseth countered, oddly contending that the deployment of troops in a U.S. city was not a domestic matter.

In Senate testimony the day prior, Hegseth similarly attempted to dodge lawmakers’ questions. On Wednesday, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) requested that Hegseth cite a statutory authority that could justify the administration sending troops into U.S. cities.

“Just specifically, Mr. Secretary, what is the authority that the administration is using to deploy active-duty Marines to California neighborhoods? What authority?” Baldwin asked.

Hegseth appeared unwilling to answer, instead offering the generic response that Trump “has constitutional authority” to deploy troops to U.S. cities. But Baldwin pushed further, asking Hegseth to cite the specific Article II power the president supposedly used to issue such orders.

Hegseth wasn’t able to answer. “I’d have to pull up the specific provision,” he said.

Hegseth’s comments come as the administration has repeatedly suggested in the past several weeks that the White House may ignore judges’ rulings relating to unconstitutional orders by Trump. Indeed, Trump himself in March demanded that a federal district judge be impeached from his position after he had ruled that the deportation of around 200 Venezuelan immigrants who had been denied their due process rights was improper and illegal.

Trump called Federal District Judge James Boasberg — who has had support from presidents of both major political parties — a “Radical Left Lunatic,” claiming that his orders were illegitimate because he wasn’t elected to his position. Trump also said that his own actions should take greater precedence than the judge’s because he was supposedly elected with “an overwhelming mandate” in the 2024 presidential election — an assertion that is false, as Trump didn’t win a majority of the popular vote totals.

“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ [sic] I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Other members of the administration have expressed similarly alarming views of the judiciary, which is meant to be a co-equal branch of government, including:

• Vice President J.D. Vance wrongly suggesting that judges “aren’t allowed” to constrain presidential power, ignoring the fact that he and other conservatives have celebrated when judges did so to Democratic presidents in the past;
• Border czar Tom Homan saying that he and the administration were “not stopping” in response to immigration-related court rulings they disagreed with;
• And White House adviser Stephen Miller errantly claiming that courts have “no authority” to block presidential decrees relating to “national security operations.”

In an op-ed for Truthout earlier this year regarding Trump officials’ willingness to flout judicial orders, Sasha Abramsky, a freelance journalist and part-time lecturer at the University of California, Davis, described their statements as a “constitutional crisis” that will likely “worsen in the coming months.”

“The courts are going to continue to issue rulings against the Trump administration’s flagrant disregard of the Constitution; and the administration is going to continue to find ways to ignore those rulings,” Abramsky wrote.

“As the crisis deepens, the rights and protections that Americans have taken for granted for centuries will increasingly be on the line,” he added. “And how to respond to that unsettling reality is a political question at least as much as it is a judicial one.”