Former Bush administration official and constitutional law professor John Yoo reportedly warned on Fox News Wednesday that a recent Supreme Court ruling restricting President Donald Trump’s ability to deploy the National Guard in Chicago could have an unintended and far more serious consequence: opening the door for Trump to send active-duty U.S. Marines or Army units instead.
Appearing on Fox News, Yoo laid out the legal logic behind Trump’s original attempt to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, a move blocked after Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker refused to cooperate and successfully challenged the action in court. Yoo explained that Trump’s argument was rooted in enforcing federal law and protecting federal personnel.
“Look, I’m trying to enforce the laws with ICE agents, with federal law enforcement, and I can’t do it, so I need to call the National Guard,” Yoo said, summarizing Trump’s position. The issue, Yoo explained, centers on how federal law defines when a president may deploy the Guard.
Under the statute, the president must be unable to enforce federal law using “regular forces” before calling up the National Guard. Until now, the Supreme Court had never clarified what “regular forces” actually meant. That changed with the Court’s recent ruling.
According to Yoo, the Supreme Court now appears to interpret “regular forces” as the regular armed forces of the United States, meaning active-duty military units. In practical terms, that means a president must first attempt to use troops like the Army or Marines before legally deploying the National Guard.
“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,” Yoo said. He pointed to historical precedent, noting that President Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed federal troops in the South following the Brown v. Board of Education decision to enforce desegregation when states refused to comply.
Under the Court’s reasoning, Yoo said, Trump may now have to follow a similar path if he wants to protect federal buildings and ICE agents in cities like Chicago. Only after active-duty forces prove insufficient would he then be legally justified in calling in the National Guard.
Fox News correspondent Kevin Corke read a statement from Gov. Pritzker, who celebrated the ruling as a victory and accused Trump of abusing power and moving toward authoritarianism. Corke dismissed the statement as political theater, arguing that Trump has clearly tried to operate within the law based on advice from his legal team.
Yoo agreed, saying Pritzker’s response was entirely predictable and heavily politicized. “He’s, of course, injecting a lot of heated political rhetoric into this,” Yoo said.
More importantly, Yoo stressed that the legal fight is far from over. He said Trump still has the option to return to the Supreme Court to argue the full merits of the case, since the current ruling is preliminary and could be overturned.
But Yoo also warned that the Court’s interpretation creates a troubling incentive structure. By limiting access to the National Guard, which governors typically prefer, the Court may be pushing presidents toward more dramatic and disruptive military deployments.
“I think a governor would rather have National Guard troops than the 82nd Airborne and the Marine Corps patrolling the streets of Chicago,” Yoo said.
The warning highlights a paradox at the heart of the ruling: in an effort to curb presidential authority, the Court may have made it more likely that active-duty combat troops, rather than citizen-soldiers from the Guard, end up enforcing federal law in major American cities.
[READ MORE: Former Sen. Ben Sasse Reveals Stage-Four Cancer Diagnosis]
