On Tuesday, the Supreme Court declined to block a lower court ruling that stopped the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops in Illinois. The decision sparked immediate outrage on the right and celebration on the left, including, of course, Illinois governor and presidential hopeful JB Pritzker.
“I am glad the Supreme Court has ruled that Donald Trump did not have the authority to deploy the federalized guard in Illinois. This is an important step in curbing the Trump Administration’s consistent abuse of power and slowing Trump’s march toward authoritarianism,” Pritzker said. “American cities, suburbs, and communities should not have to face masked federal agents asking for their papers, judging them for how they look or sound, and living in fear that the President can deploy the military to their streets.”
The problem with that characterization, of course, is that it simply isn’t true.
For starters, the ruling left in place a lower court’s temporary order blocking the move while the case proceeds. According to the court, the statute in question allows a president to federalize the National Guard only when he cannot enforce the law using the “regular forces,” which the Court said refers to the U.S. military, not civilian law enforcement. The decision certainly did not block future National Guard deployments, as Pritzker implied.
Legal scholar John Yoo, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, says the ruling carries an “unintended consequence” that could encourage President Trump to deploy active-duty military units rather than rely on the National Guard.
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“But the statute says, the President has to be unable to enforce the law with regular forces,” he explained on Fox News this week. “What does regular forces mean? We don't know; the Supreme Court has never decided this question before yesterday. The Supreme Court now says, regular forces means you have to try with the regular armed forces first before you bring out the National Guard.”
Yoo continued, “So, the unintended consequence here might be that the president is going to have to call the 82nd Airborne, or the Marines, or the 101st Airborne Division, as, for example, President Eisenhower did after Brown v. Board of Education in the South to enforce desegregation. President Trump might have to do that first in order to protect those federal buildings, those ICE agents. And then if they fail, he can then call out the National Guard.”
Yoo accused Pritzker of “injecting a lot of heated political rhetoric into this” but said that “Trump will of course now have the right to go to the Supreme Court on the full merits.”
And Pritzker may not like the inevitable outcome of that. “He may be able to get the court, the full court, to reverse this preliminary decision.”
Of course, there’s still the irony of Pritzker celebrating a ruling that could actually be bad news for him, because, as Yoo explained, “the Supreme Court is essentially inviting President Trump to send regular armed troops and deploy those to Chicago and Los Angeles before he can send the National Guard.”
Yoo remarked, “I think a governor would rather have National Guard troops than the 82nd Airborne and the Marine Corps patrolling the streets of Chicago.”
🚨 LMAO! The Democrat lawfare against President Trump may now BACKFIRE, resulting in MARINES being sent into Chicago instead of National Guard
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) December 24, 2025
SCOTUS said “regular forces” must be used before the Guard
MARINES are “regular forces”
JB Pritzker messed up🤣pic.twitter.com/jflO8dAauM
Democrats really must be careful of what they wish for because they may actually get it.
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