CNN’s Elie Honig Says National Guard Deployment Cases Could Reach Supreme Court And Sooner Than People Think

Legal battles over President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard could escalate to the Supreme Court in a matter of days, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said Friday.

President Donald Trump has deployed the National Guard in multiple cities—including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Portland, and Atlanta—citing a need to restore order amid rising crime and civil unrest. Speaking on “Anderson Cooper 360,” Honig said that legal challenges to Trump’s deployment of the National Guard are rapidly advancing through the courts and could soon land before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“This could go to the Supreme Court. Yeah, so these are all playing out in the district courts. There’s 94 federal districts geographically separated in the United States. What the judge does in Oregon is not binding on what the judge does in Chicago. They each have to make their own determination, but these could move very quickly because we’re in emergency posture here, which is why we’re seeing decisions within hours or days,” Honig told Anderson Cooper. “We’re already going to be in the Court of Appeals in Oregon. I think it’s only a matter of time before one or more of these cases reaches the Supreme Court, at least in an emergency.”

Honig explained that Trump has so far relied on a lesser-known emergency law to authorize National Guard mobilizations in response to what he described as “rebellion, invasion, or law enforcement emergencies.”

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“So they’re all going to depend on the facts on the ground. The law that Donald Trump is using so far to deploy the National Guard, it’s not the Insurrection Act yet. It’s a different emergency law, and what it says is the president can deploy National Guard if there’s a rebellion, an invasion, or if necessary to enforce federal laws. And so we’re gonna see each jurisdiction,” Honig said. “The argument that the president made is there is chaos in the streets. Now a judge rejected that.”

Honig said the legal fallout from Trump’s National Guard deployments is unfolding in unpredictable fashion, with federal judges across the country assessing on a case-by-case basis whether a true emergency exists. (RELATED: Mayor Brandon Johnson Signs ‘Right To Protest’ Order As Trump Admin Targets City)

“If anything separately, as you just addressed with the mayor, the federal judge in Chicago has not yet paused the deployment, but that’s again going to depend on an assessment of is there really an emergency? This is going to play out like legal whack-a-mole,” Honig said. “Each time the president deploys National Guard, we’re gonna see a lawsuit, and judges will have to assess, ‘Is this really an emergency?”

Democrat Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson escalated his sanctuary city policies Monday by signing an executive order that designates “ICE Free Zones” across the city. The order blocks federal immigration agents from accessing city-owned property and marks Johnson’s latest move against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Tensions spiked Saturday when anti-ICE protesters rammed Border Patrol agents and trapped them with 10 vehicles during a patrol in a Chicago suburb, prompting the agents to fire defensively. Chicago police reportedly ignored the agents’ call for help after the city’s chief of patrol instructed officers not to respond. On Monday, Democratic Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul filed a lawsuit to block the Trump administration’s National Guard deployment into the state.

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