lawsuit monday

CHICAGO — Illinois and Chicago filed a lawsuit Monday aiming to stop President Trump’s administration from sending hundreds of National Guard troops to the city, just as troops prepared to deploy and hours after a federal judge blocked troops from being sent to Portland, Oregon.

The quickly unfolding developments come as the administration portrays the Democrat-led cities as war-ravaged and lawless and amid Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Officials in both cities have disputed the president’s characterizations, saying military intervention isn’t needed and it’s federal involvement that’s inflaming the situation.

The legal challenge comes after Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said some 300 of the state’s guard troops were to be federalized and deployed to the nation’s third-largest city, along with 400 others from Texas.

The lawsuit alleges that “these advances in President Trump’s long-declared ‘War’ on Chicago and Illinois are unlawful and dangerous.”

“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the lawsuit says.

Pritzker said the potential deployment amounted to “Trump’s invasion” and called on Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to block it. Abbott pushed back and said the crackdown was needed to protect federal workers who are in the city as part of the president’s increased immigration enforcement.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed in a weekend statement that Trump authorized using Illinois National Guard members, citing what she called “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” that local leaders have not quelled.

In Chicago, the sight of armed Border Patrol agents making arrests near famous landmarks amplified concerns from residents already uneasy after an immigration crackdown that began last month. Agents have targeted immigrant-heavy and largely Latino areas.

Protesters have frequently rallied near an immigration facility outside the city, and federal officials reported the arrests of 13 protesters on Friday near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview.

The Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that federal agents shot a woman Saturday morning on the southwest side of Chicago. A department statement said it happened after Border Patrol agents patrolling the area “were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.”

No law enforcement officers were seriously injured, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.

In Portland, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut granted a temporary restraining order sought by Oregon and California to block the deployment of guard troops from those states to the city.

There has been a sustained and low-level protest outside the Portland ICE facility, but it’s been less disruptive than the downtown clashes of 2020 when demonstrations erupted after George Floyd’s killing.

Immergut, a first-term Trump appointee, seemed incredulous that the president moved to send National Guard troops to Oregon from neighboring California and then from Texas on Sunday.

“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she said. “Why is this appropriate?”

Local officials have suggested that many of the president’s claims and social media posts about Portland appear to rely on images from 2020. Under a new mayor, the city has reduced crime, and downtown has seen fewer homeless encampments and increased foot traffic.

Most violent crime around the U.S. has actually declined in recent years, including in Portland, where a recent report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association found that homicides from January through June decreased by 51% this year compared to the same period in 2024.

Since the start of his second term, Trump has sent or talked about sending troops to 10 cities, including Baltimore; Memphis, Tennessee; the District of Columbia; New Orleans; and the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

A federal judge in September said the administration “willfully” broke federal law by deploying guard troops to Los Angeles over protests about immigration raids.

Press writes for the Associated Press.

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily halted a Trump administration plan to reduce disaster relief and anti-terrorism funding for states with so-called sanctuary policies for undocumented immigrants.

U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy granted the temporary restraining order curtailing the cuts at the request of California, 10 other states and the District of Columbia, which argued in a lawsuit Monday that the policy appeared to have illegally cost them hundreds of millions of dollars.

The states said they were first notified of the cuts over the weekend. McElroy made her decision during an emergency hearing on the states’ motion in Rhode Island District Court on Tuesday afternoon.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta cheered the decision as the state’s latest win in pushing back against what he described as a series of unlawful, funding-related power grabs by the Trump administration.

“Over and over, the courts have stopped the Trump Administration’s illegal efforts to tie unrelated grant funding to state policies,” Bonta said. “It’s a little thing called state sovereignty, but given the President’s propensity to violate the Constitution, it’s unsurprising that he’s unfamiliar with it.”

Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the funding and notified the states of the cuts, immediately responded to a request for comment Tuesday.

Sanctuary policies are not uniform and the term is imprecise, but it generally refers to policies that bar states and localities — and their local law enforcement agencies — from participating in federal immigration raids or other enforcement initiatives.

The Trump administration and other Republicans have cast such policies as undermining law and order. Democrats and progressives including in California say instead that states and cities have finite public safety resources and that engaging in immigration enforcement serves only to undermine the trust they and their law enforcement agencies need to maintain with the public in order to prevent and solve crime, including in large immigrant communities.

In their lawsuit Monday, the states said the funding being reduced was part of billions in federal dollars annually distributed to the states to “prepare for, protect against, respond to, and recover from catastrophic disasters,” and which administrations of both political parties distributed “evenhandedly” for decades before Trump.

Authorized by Congress after events such as Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina, the funding covers the salaries of first responders, testing of state computer networks for cyberattack vulnerabilities, mutual aid compacts between regional partners and emergency responses after disasters, the states said.

Bonta’s office said California was informed over the weekend by Homeland Security officials that it would be receiving $110 million instead of $165 million, a reduction of its budget by about a third. The states’ lawsuit said other blue states saw even more dramatic cuts, with Illinois seeing a 69% reduction and New York receiving a 79% reduction, while red states saw substantial funding increases.

Bonta on Tuesday said the administration’s reshuffling of funds based on state compliance with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement priorities was illegal and needed to be halted — and restored to previous levels based on risk assessment — in order to keep everyone in the country safe.

“California uses the grant funding at stake in our lawsuit to protect the safety of our communities from acts of terrorism and other disasters — meaning the stakes are quite literally life and death,” he said. “This is not something to play politics with. I’m grateful to the court for seeing the urgency of this dangerous diversion of homeland security funding.”

Homeland Security officials have previously argued that the agency should be able to withhold funding from states that it believes are not upholding or are actively undermining its core mission of defending the nation from threats, including the threat it sees from illegal immigration.

Other judges have also ruled against the administration conditioning disaster and public safety funding on states and localities complying with federal immigration policies.

Joining California in Monday’s lawsuit were Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.

California and a coalition of other liberal-led states sued the Trump administration Tuesday over a provision in the “Big Beautiful Bill” that bars Planned Parenthood and other large nonprofit abortion providers from receiving Medicaid funding for a host of unrelated healthcare services.

The measure has threatened clinics across the country that rely on federal funding to operate. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who is helping to lead the litigation, called it a “cruel, backdoor abortion ban” that violates the law in multiple ways.

The states’ challenge comes one day after Planned Parenthood won a major victory in its own lawsuit over the measure in Boston, where a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the ban from taking effect against Planned Parenthood affiliates nationwide.

Federal law already prohibits the use of federal Medicaid funding to pay for abortions, but the new “defund provision” in the bill passed by congressional Republicans earlier this month goes further. It also bars nonprofit abortion providers that generated $800,000 or more in annual Medicaid revenue in 2023 from receiving any such funding for the next year — including for services unrelated to abortion, such as annual checkups, cancer screenings, birth control and testing for sexually transmitted infections.

Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice have argued that the measure “stops federal subsidies for Big Abortion,” that Congress under the constitution is “free to decline to provide taxpayer funds to entities that provide abortions,” and that Planned Parenthood’s position should not hold sway over that of Congress.

In announcing the states’ lawsuit Monday, Bonta’s office echoed Planned Parenthood officials in asserting that the provision specifically and illegally targets Planned Parenthood and its affiliate clinics — calling it “a direct attack on the healthcare access of millions of low-income Americans, disproportionally affecting women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and communities of color.”

Bonta’s office said the measure threatened $300 million in federal funding for clinics in California, where Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider, and “jeopardized the stability” of Planned Parenthood’s 114 clinics across the state, which serve about 700,000 patients annually — many of whom use Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid.

During a virtual news conference Monday, Bonta noted that federal funds already don’t cover abortions. He said the new provision was “punishment for Planned Parenthood’s constitutionally protected advocacy for abortion” and “a direct attack on access to essential healthcare for millions who rely on Medicaid.”

“The Trump administration and Congress are actually gutting essential lifesaving care, like cancer screenings and STI testing, simply because Planned Parenthood has spoken out in support of reproductive rights,” Bonta said. “The hypocrisy is really hard to ignore. A party that claims to be defenders of free speech only seem to care about it when it aligns with their own agenda.”

Bonta added: “Rest assured, California will continue to lead as a reproductive freedom state, and will continue to defend healthcare as a human right.”

In their lawsuit, the states argue that the measure is unlawfully ambiguous and violates the spending powers of Congress by singling out Planned Parenthood for negative treatment, and that it will harm people’s health and increase the cost of Medicaid programs for states by more than $50 million over the next decade.

In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood also argued that the measure intentionally singled it and its affiliates out for punishment, in violation of their constitutional rights, including free speech.

In granting Planned Parenthood’s request for a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote Monday that she was “not enjoining the federal government from regulating abortion and is not directing the federal government to fund elective abortions or any healthcare service not otherwise eligible for Medicaid coverage.”

Talwani, an Obama appointee, wrote that she also was not requiring the federal government “to spend money not already appropriated for Medicaid or any other funds.”

Instead, Talwani wrote, her order blocks the Trump administration from “targeting a specific group of entities — Planned Parenthood Federation members — for exclusion from reimbursements under the Medicaid program,” as they were likely to prove that “such targeted exclusion violates the United States Constitution.”

In a statement to The Times on Tuesday, White House spokesman Harrison Fields said the “Big, Beautiful Bill” was “legally passed by both chambers of the Legislative Branch and signed into law by the Chief Executive,” and Talwani’s order granting the injunction was “not only absurd but illogical and incorrect.”

“It is orders like these that underscore the audacity of the lower courts as well as the chaos within the judicial branch. We look forward to ultimate victory on the issue,” Fields said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment on the states’ lawsuit.

Jodi Hicks, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, joined Bonta during his news conference. She welcomed the states’ lawsuit, saying “an attack this severe requires a multi-pronged response with both short and long term strategies.”

Hicks said it’s particularly important that California is helping to fight back, given the huge stakes for the state.

“California is the most impacted state across the country because of the volume of patients that we have, but also because of the amount of Medicaid that our state takes,” she said. “It speaks to our values. And this defund provision is certainly [an] attack on values — most heavily on California.”

Bonta is leading the lawsuit along with the attorneys general of Connecticut and New York. Joining them are Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and the attorneys general of Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.

Bonta noted the lawsuit is the 36th his office has filed against the Trump administration in the last 27 weeks.