A US appeals court on Thursday handed a victory to Donald Trump in his effort to keep national guard troops in Washington DC, pausing a lower court order that would have ended the deployment in the coming days.
In a written order, the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit lifted an injunction that said the troops needed to leave the nation’s capital by 11 December.
The DC circuit’s order, while not a final judgment, allows Trump to continue a deployment he began this summer and has ramped up in response to a 26 November shooting of two national guard members near the White House.
The order came in a lawsuit filed by the DC attorney general, Brian Schwalb, a Democrat and the capital city’s top legal officer.
More than 2,000 national guard soldiers have been in Washington since Trump’s initial deployment in August, part of the president’s contentious immigration and crime crackdown targeting Democratic-orled cities.
The guard troops in the city include contingents from the District of Columbia, as well as Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia and Alabama.