Judge rules Trump's deployment of troops in California illegal - National & International News - TUE 2Sep2025 -

Judge rules Trump’s deployment of troops in California illegal.

Russia accused of jamming GPS of plane carrying EU chief.

Judge rules Trump’s deployment of troops in California illegal

Earlier this year, President Trump federalized 4,000 members of the California National Guard and deployed them to Los Angeles, along with 700 Marines. The troops were assigned to protect federal agents and federal buildings and carry out crowd control and other law enforcement activities amid widespread protests over ICE’s heavy handed immigration enforcement tactics. California’s government almost immediately sued the Trump administration, alleging the deployment violated federal law. Specifically, California accused the administration of violating the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which generally forbids using the military to enforce domestic policy except under very limited circumstances.

San Francisco-based Federal District Judge Charles Breyer, a Clinton appointee, ruled today that the Trump administration had indeed violated the Posse Comitatus Act. He also barred the federal government from further deployments in California, pausing the order until Friday to give the government a chance to respond. Crucially, Judge Breyer’s ruling is limited to California.

At this moment, a major deployment of ICE and other federal agents is expected to begin in Chicago, IL, any day now. These agents will reportedly be headquartered at the nearby Naval Station Great Lakes. Leadership at the base learned last week that National Guard deployments were also a possibility. Thousands in Chicago are protesting ahead of the deployment.

Russia accused of jamming GPS of plane carrying European Commission President

Yesterday, a charter plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suffered a GPS jamming attack, forcing the pilots to land at a Bulgarian airport using paper maps. The plane landed safely. Bulgarian authorities have accused Russia of being behind the jamming attack, though the Kremlin denies this. Von der Leyen was on a lightning tour of Eastern European states over the weekend to shore up support for Ukraine. She visited Latvia and Finland on Friday, Estonia on Saturday, and Poland and Bulgaria on Sunday. She completed her tour in Lithuania and Romania today without incident.

Scandinavian countries have previously accused Russia of carrying out GPS jamming attacks against air and maritime traffic in the Baltic Sea. Last year, civilian flights were canceled between Finland and Estonia due to GPS interference, which was blamed on Russia. A month before that, a plane carrying then-British Defense Minister Grant Shapps experienced a GPS signal loss for 30 minutes while flying over the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

Unlike other forms of electronic interference, GPS jamming is quite easy to trace, at least to within a plausible geographical area. This made it possible to narrow down the source of the jamming signals to specific parts of Russia, or Kaliningrad, or to Russian ships at sea. However, when emitting a GPS jamming, it is much more difficult to “target” specific devices or aircraft. Therefore, it is impossible to say whether these attacks are intentional or a byproduct of signals being emitted for some other purpose.

Military recently scrambled jets 5 times in less than a week to monitor a Russian spy plane near Alaska.