A federal appeals court granted a request by the Trump administration to continue to allow for the deployment of the D.C. National Guard in the capital city on Thursday, temporarily halting a lower court’s previous order.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted an administrative stay of U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb’s November ruling that the deployment of the troops to the District of Columbia was unlawful. Cobb’s order to end the deployment by Dec. 11 has been paused as a result of the appeals court’s Thursday order.
The order from the appeals court said the pause was “to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the motion for stay pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion.”
The three-judge panel assigned to the case includes two appointees of President Donald Trump and one appointee of former President Barack Obama.
The order allowing the deployment to continue comes just over a week after two National Guardsmen from West Virginia on patrol in Washington, D.C., were shot. Sarah Beckstrom later died from her injuries suffered from the shooting, while Andrew Wolfe remains in critical condition. The two guardsmen were allegedly shot by Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who pleaded not guilty to multiple charges levied against him, including first-degree murder, earlier this week.
Earlier in November, Cobb ruled that Trump’s deployment of the D.C. National Guard and use of out-of-state troops around the District of Columbia was likely unlawful.
“The Court finds that the President has no free-floating Article II power to deploy the [D.C. National Guard] for the deterrence of crime. Historical practice confirms this understanding of the President’s authority,” Cobb wrote in her Nov. 20 ruling.
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The ruling from the appeals court panel halts Cobb’s finding and allows troops to remain deployed in the district, pending further order from the panel. The administration had previously set the troops to be deployed through at least February 2026.
The president’s deployment of the National Guard to various cities across the country has been focused on protecting federal immigration operations from unruly protests. However, in D.C., the deployment was done to combat crime in the capital city. Because of the unique setup of the D.C. National Guard, with the president as the commander in chief of the force instead of a governor, different laws govern how the president may use that force as opposed to other state National Guard troops.