Army to go ‘bigger’ to mark its 250th. Could it be the military parade Trump wants?
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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Army says it’s looking at options to make its 250th birthday celebration in June “bigger,” with possible demonstrations and vehicle displays on the National Mall in a multi-day event that could also include a military parade, although officials say no decisions have been made.
The Army celebration, which has been in the works for several months, has fueled speculation that President Donald Trump will try to turn the event into the kind of grand military parade he wanted in his first administration. Trump shares a birthday with the Army on June 14.
ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment.
D.C. city officials told reporters this week they had been approached about a parade route from the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, into Washington. Two other U.S. officials confirmed a military parade was under discussion, although it was unclear how big the parade would be.
“Military tanks on our streets would not be good. If military tanks were used, they should be accompanied with many millions of dollars to repair the roads,” said D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Heather Hagan, a U.S. Army spokeswoman, said Tuesday that a decision on the parade was “pre-decisional.” She noted that the Army is planning to celebrate its milestone birthday with “multiple events” leading up to June 14, including a festival on the National Mall.
“We intend to have a national level celebration to increase pride in America and America’s Army,” she wrote in a statement. “Given the significant milestone of 250 years, the Army is exploring options to make the celebration bigger, with more capability demonstrations, static displays of equipment, and more engagement with the community.”
Trump’s 2018 vision for a parade included vintage aircraft and fighter jets swooping over the streets of Washington with heavy tanks below. But the event never materialized as city officials pushed back and cost estimates topped tens of millions of dollars.
If a parade were to take place, it would significantly impact the city’s infrastructure, according to city officials. Bowser said the 14th Street Bridge would need to be tested before the event.
The iconic bridge has undergone several significant repairs and maintenance in recent decades, most notably after the 1982 Air Florida Flight 90 crash.
(LOS ANGELES) — A federal appeals court Thursday delayed an order requiring the Trump administration to return control of the California National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom, dealing the administration a temporary reprieve to what would have been a major reversal of its policy on the protests in Los Angeles.
Earlier Thursday, a federal judge in California issued a temporary restraining order that would have blocked Trump’s deployment of California National Guard troops during protests over immigration raids in LA and returned control of the California National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who did not consent to the Guard’s activation.
The order was set to take effect on noon Friday local time, but a panel of three judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an administrative stay of the lower court’s order and set a hearing for June 17. Two of the judges on the panel were nominated by President Donald Trump, and one was nominated by former President Joe Biden.
In a Friday morning post to Truth Social, Trump praised the appeals court’s decision, saying once again “If I didn’t send the Military into Los Angeles, that city would be burning to the ground right now.” Newsom and local officials have said the federalization of the National Guard and deployment of the military violated the state’s sovereignty, was unnecessary and has served to inflame the situation.
In its appeal to the Ninth Circuit, administration lawyers called the district judge’s order “unprecedented” and an “extraordinary intrusion on the President’s constitutional authority as Commander in Chief.”
The district judge’s order, which did not limit Trump’s use of the Marines, called Trump’s actions “illegal.”
“At this early stage of the proceedings, the Court must determine whether the President followed the congressionally mandated procedure for his actions. He did not,” U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said in his order granting the temporary restraining order sought by Newsom. “His actions were illegal—both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith.”
In a press conference after the district court’s order, Newsom said he was “gratified” by the ruling, saying he would return the National Guard “to what they were doing before Donald Trump commandeered them.”
“The National Guard will go back to border security, working on counter drug enforcement and fentanyl enforcement, which they were taken off by Donald Trump. The National Guard will go back to working on what we refer to as the rattlesnake teams, doing vegetation and forest management, which Donald Trump took them off in preparation for wildfire season. The National Guard men and women will go back to their day jobs, which include law enforcement,” Newsom’s speech continued.
Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta had filed an emergency request on Tuesday to block what they called Trump and the Department of Defense’s “unnecessary” and “unlawful militarization” after Trump issued a memorandum over the weekend deploying more than 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles amid the protests — over objections from Newsom and other state and local officials.
What the lower court judge said in his order
In his order, Breyer pointed to protesters’ First Amendment rights and said, “Just because some stray bad actors go too far does not wipe out that right for everyone. The idea that protesters can so quickly cross the line between protected conduct and ‘rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States’ is untenable and dangerous,” he wrote.
Breyer wrote that the protests in Los Angeles “fall far short” of the legal requirements of a “rebellion” to justify a federal deployment. Rebellions need to be armed, violent, organized, open, and aim to overturn a government, he wrote. The protests in California meet none of those conditions, he found.
“Plaintiffs and the citizens of Los Angeles face a greater harm from the continued unlawful militarization of their city, which not only inflames tensions with protesters, threatening increased hostilities and loss of life, but deprives the state for two months of its own use of thousands of National Guard members to fight fires, combat the fentanyl trade, and perform other critical functions,” the judge wrote in his order.
“Regardless of the outcome of this case or any other, that alone threatens serious injury to the constitutional balance of power between the federal and state governments, and it sets a dangerous precedent for future domestic military activity,” the judge wrote.
Some 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines were ordered to the Los Angeles area following protests over immigration raids. California leaders claim Trump inflamed the protests by sending in the military when it was not necessary.
Protests have since spread to other cities, including Boston, Chicago and Seattle.
To send thousands of National Guardsmen to Los Angeles, Trump invoked Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services, which allows a federal deployment in response to a “rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” In his order, Trump said the troops would protect federal property and federal personnel who are performing their functions.
The judge did not decide whether the military’s possible involvement in immigration enforcement — by being present with ICE agents during raids — violates the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the military from performing civilian law enforcement. The judge said he would hear additional arguments on that point at a hearing next week.
During a court hearing earlier Thursday, Breyer said during Thursday’s 70-minute hearing that the main issue before him was whether the president complied with the Title 10 statute and that the National Guard was “properly federalized.”
The federal government maintained that the president did comply while also arguing that the statute is not justiciable and the president has complete discretion. The judge was asked not to issue an injunction that would “countermand the president’s military judgments.”
Meanwhile, the attorney on behalf of the state of California and Newsom said their position is that the National Guard was not lawfully federalized, and that the president deploying troops in the streets of a civilian city in response to perceived disobedience was an “expansive, dangerous conception of federal executive power.”
Bonta additionally argued in the emergency filing that Trump failed to meet the legal requirements for such a federal deployment.
“To put it bluntly, there is no invasion or rebellion in Los Angeles; there is civil unrest that is no different from episodes that regularly occur in communities throughout the country, and that is capable of being contained by state and local authorities working together,” Bonta wrote.
Breyer had earlier declined California’s request to issue a temporary restraining order immediately and instead set the hearing for Thursday afternoon in San Francisco and gave the Trump administration the time they requested to file a response.
In their response, Department of Justice lawyers asked the judge to deny Newsom’s request for a temporary restraining order that would limit the military to protecting federal buildings, arguing such an order would amount to a “rioters’ veto to enforcement of federal law.”
“The extraordinary relief Plaintiffs request would judicially countermand the Commander in Chief’s military directives — and would do so in the posture of a temporary restraining order, no less. That would be unprecedented. It would be constitutionally anathema. And it would be dangerous,” they wrote.
They also argued California should not “second-guess the President’s judgment that federal reinforcements were necessary” and that a federal court should defer to the president’s discretion on military matters.
Trump on Tuesday defended his decision to send in the National Guard and Marines, saying the situation in LA was “out of control.”
“All I want is safety. I just want a safe area,” he told reporters. “Los Angeles was under siege until we got there. The police were unable to handle it.”
Trump went on to suggest that he sent in the National Guard and the Marines to send a message to other cities not to interfere with ICE operations or they will be met with equal or greater force.
“If we didn’t attack this one very strongly, you’d have them all over the country,” he said. “But I can inform the rest of the country that when they do it, if they do it, they’re going to be met with equal or greater force than we met right here.”
ABC News’ Jeffrey Cook and Peter Charalambous, Alyssa Pone and Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.
(CARPENTERSVILLE, Ill.) — A young woman was physically attacked and called “derogatory” names at a McDonald’s in Illinois, with two males — including one juvenile — charged for the incident, according to the Carpentersville Police Department.
The incident occurred on May 13, when police responded to a report of a fight at a McDonald’s in Carpentersville, Illinois, which is about an hour outside of Chicago.
Once on the scene, officials determined the incident “involved an aggravated battery against a female victim,” police said in a press release shared over the weekend.
Officials said the altercation began when two male suspects made “derogatory remarks about the victim’s sexual orientation as they passed by her.”
This confrontation escalated into a physical fight, police said.
The female victim, Kady Grass, sustained severe injuries and was transported to a local hospital, where “she was treated and subsequently released,” police said.
Grass told Chicago ABC station WLS that the two males began stomping on her head, causing her to become unconscious.
“It just blew my mind that this happened and it was all because I like girls instead of men,” Grass, who suffered a broken nose after the attack, told WLS.
Police said “multiple felony charges” were approved against the two males involved, including “the most serious” charge being aggravated battery causing bodily harm.
One of the suspects, a juvenile, turned himself in to police on May 16, and the other male, 19-year-old John Kammrad, was arrested on May 17, officials said.
“This incident underscores the importance of addressing violence and discrimination within our community. The Carpentersville Police Department remains committed to ensuring public safety and promoting respect for all individuals,” police said.
Kammrad was charged with two counts of aggravated battery and mob action-use of force or violence disturbing the peace, according to court records. He was in custody at the Kane County Jail, but court records indicate that on Monday, the suspect was “released to other agency.”
Grass told WLS the state’s attorney’s office informed her they are also considering charging Kammrad with a hate crime.
Kammrad’s status hearing is scheduled for May 22 and his plea setting is set for June 27, according to court records.
Court records indicate that Kammrad has appointed an attorney, but the name of the public defender is not listed.
(JACKSON, NH) — A 39-year-old man has died in a skiing accident after going off a trail he had been traversing near a ski resort in New Hampshire, police said.
The incident happened on Sunday at the Black Mountain ski area in Jackson, New Hampshire, at approximately 5:51 p.m. when Officer Mike Mosher of the Jackson Police Department responded to a report of a skiing accident from a passerby, according to a statement from the Jackson Police Department.
“The initial report was that a skier had gone off the trail and was seriously injured,” authorities said.
However, when police arrived on the scene, they discovered that the situation was worse than previously reported.
“Mountain ski patrol reported to ‘Upper Maple Slalom’ trail to aid the patient,” police said. “The area of the accident was near the summit. Upon arrival they found an unresponsive adult male with significant injuries on the edge of the snow line to the left of the trail.”
Life saving measures were immediately put into effect as authorities evacuated the man — identified as 39-year-old Eric Page of Bartlett, New Hampshire – to the base area.
“Additional life-saving efforts were provided by Bartlett Jackson ambulance personnel but were unsuccessful and the patient was declared deceased,” police said.
The crash was unwitnessed, according to the Jackson Police Department.
“The New Hampshire medical examiner’s office was notified and ordered the decedent to be taken to Furber and White Funeral Services in North Conway, New Hampshire,” authorities said.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
