Illinois v. Trump — a confused US Supreme Court illustrates why it is useless

© 2025 Peter Free

 

24 December 2025

 

 

If the US Supreme Court cannot even state . . .

 

. . . the dominant issues of a reasonably simple case with clarity, what hope should we have that it ever will?

 

 

Trump v. Illinois

 

Amy Howe (at SCOTUSblog) wrote the best summary of the Illinois v. Trump judicial embarrassment that I have come across.

 

Yet, even she struggled to make coherent sense of what I see as the Justices' predominantly shared inability to concisely write and cogently reason.

 

Below in excerpted form, so as to hone key legal points:

 

 

The Supreme Court on Tuesday left in place a ruling by a federal judge in Chicago that bars the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops in Illinois. In a three-page unsigned order, the justices turned down the government’s request to put the temporary restraining order issued by U.S. District Judge April Perry on Oct. 9 on hold while litigation continues in the lower courts.

 

“At this preliminary stage,” the court said, “the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois.”

 

Three justices [Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch] dissented from Tuesday’s order.

 

In deploying 300 members of the National Guard to Chicago in early October, Trump relied on a federal law that allows the president to call up the National Guard for federal service when there is an invasion or a rebellion or danger of rebellion, as well as when he cannot “with the regular forces … execute the laws of the United States.”

 

On Oct. 29, the court asked the litigants to address a new question . . . whether, for purposes of the federal law on which Trump relied to call up the National Guard, “the term ‘regular forces’ refers to the regular forces of the United States military, and, if so, how that interpretation affects the operation” of the law.

 

In a brief filed on Nov. 10, the Trump administration argued that the term refers to civilian law-enforcement officers, rather than the U.S. military.

 

Illinois and Chicago countered that when Congress passed the law on which Trump is relying, lawmakers “understood ‘the regular forces’ to refer specifically to the full-time personnel of the United States military.”

 

The majority “conclude[d] that the term ‘regular forces’ … likely refers to the regular forces of the United States military.

 

This interpretation means,” the majority said, “that to call the Guard into active federal service” . . . the president “likely must have statutory or constitutional authority to execute the laws with the regular military and must be ‘unable’ with those forces to perform that function.”

 

But at this early stage of litigation, the court wrote, the government has not pointed to such a source of authority.

 

In dissent, Alito criticized his colleagues in the majority for what he characterized as having “unnecessarily and unwisely departed from standard practice.”

 

The challengers, he emphasized, did not raise the argument regarding the “regular forces” in the lower courts; that issue was instead raised in the “friend of the court” brief filed in the Supreme Court by Lederman. “

 

To make matters worse,” Alito continued, “the Court reaches out and expresses tentative views on other highly important issues on which there is no relevant judicial precedent and on which we have received scant briefing and no oral argument.”

 

© 2025 Amy Howe, Supreme Court rejects Trump’s effort to deploy National Guard in Illinois, SCOTUSblog (23 )

 

 

Essentially, the crux of this case revolves around . . .

 

. . . the statutory meaning of 'regular forces'.

 

Which indicatively, neither litigating side had raised. Thereby exhibiting what a bunch of foggy-brained idiots we have on both sides of the National Guard deployment matter.

 

Then 'worse' — as Justice Alito categorized it — the Court itself further muddied the legal water by jumping, without a shred of procedural justification, to an amicus brief that does raise the logically key-most issue.

 

In short, we see the Supreme Court (not uncharacteristically) adding its own penchant for rules-evading, interpretative irrationality to American society's constant squabbling.

 

 

The moral? — There is nothing so clear that . . .

 

. . . the Grand American Oligarchy cannot, intentionally, obfuscate it.

 

The US Supreme Court is merely one prong of the Oligarchy's constant effort to confuse, divide and mind-control We the People.