The escalating legal battles over President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in multiple cities could reach the U.S. Supreme Court in a matter of days, according to CNN legal analyst Elie Honig. The president has mobilized the Guard in areas like Washington, D.C., Chicago, Portland, and Atlanta, citing a need to restore order amid civil unrest and rising crime.
Speaking on “Anderson Cooper 360” on Friday, Honig explained that legal challenges are rapidly moving through the federal courts and are being treated with a sense of urgency.
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“This could go to the Supreme Court. Yeah, so these are all playing out in the district courts,” Honig stated. He noted that while judges in different federal districts are making separate, non-binding determinations, the “emergency posture” of these cases is accelerating the legal timeline, leading to decisions within hours or days.
“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 predicted.
The legal analyst detailed that the administration has so far relied on a lesser-known emergency statute—not the Insurrection Act—to authorize the mobilizations. This law permits the president to deploy the National Guard in cases of “rebellion, invasion, or if necessary to enforce federal laws.”
The core of the legal dispute, Honig said, revolves around whether a genuine emergency exists in each jurisdiction. “The argument that the president made is there is chaos in the streets. Now a judge rejected that,” he said, adding that the legal fallout is proving unpredictable.
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The situation in Chicago exemplifies the growing tension and rapid legal action. Democratic Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul filed a lawsuit this week to block the Trump administration’s National Guard deployment into the state. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Chicago has not yet paused the deployment, waiting for an assessment of the emergency on the ground.
The deployment comes amid a separate flare-up over immigration in Chicago. Mayor Brandon Johnson recently signed an executive order designating “ICE Free Zones,” blocking federal immigration agents from city-owned property. Tensions peaked over the weekend when anti-ICE protesters reportedly rammed and trapped Border Patrol agents in a Chicago suburb, an incident that local police reportedly ignored after the city’s chief of patrol instructed officers not to respond.
Honig anticipates that the legal process will continue as a game of “legal whack-a-mole.” “Each time the president deploys National Guard, we’re gonna see a lawsuit, and judges will have to assess, ‘Is this really an emergency?'” he concluded.
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