By TARA COPP and LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon was scrambling Monday to establish rules to guide U.S. Marines who could be faced with the rare and difficult prospect of using force against citizens on American soil, now that the Trump administration is deploying active duty troops to the immigration raid protests in Los Angeles.

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U.S. Northern Command said it is sending 700 Marines into the Los Angeles area to protect federal property and personnel, including federal immigration agents. The 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines are coming from Twentynine Palms, California, and will augment about 2,100 National Guard soldiers in LA responding to the protests.

The forces have been trained in deescalation, crowd control and standing rules for the use of force, Northern Command said.

But the use of the active duty forces still raises difficult questions.

The Marines are highly trained in combat and crisis response, with time in conflict zones like Syria and Afghanistan. But that is starkly different from the role they will face now: They could potentially be hit by protesters carrying gas canisters and have to quickly decide how to respond or face decisions about protecting an immigration enforcement agent from crowds.

According to a U.S. official, troops will be armed with their normal service weapons but will not be carrying tear gas. They also will have protective equipment such as helmets, shields and gas masks.

When troops are overseas, how they can respond to threats is outlined by the rules of engagement. At home, they are guided by standing rules for the use of force, which have to be set and agreed to by Northern Command, and then each Marine should receive a card explaining what they can and cannot do, another U.S. official said.

For example, warning shots would be prohibited, according to use-of-force draft documents viewed by The Associated Press. Marines are directed to deescalate a situation whenever possible but also are authorized to act in self-defense, the documents say.

The AP reviewed documents and interviewed nine U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet public, about the guidance being determined for the Marines.

The Pentagon also is working on a memo with clarifying language for the Marines that will lay out the steps they can take to protect federal personnel and property. Those guidelines also will include specifics on the possibility that they could temporarily detain civilians if troops are under assault or to prevent harm, the first U.S. official said.

Those measures could involve detaining civilians until they can be turned over to law enforcement.

Having the Marines deploy to protect federal buildings allows them to be used without invoking the Insurrection Act, one U.S. official said.

Union workers rally for David Huerta, the president of Service Employees International Union California, who was arrested during a Los Angeles protest, on Monday, June 9, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

The Insurrection Act allows the president to direct federal troops to conduct law enforcement functions in national emergencies. But the use of that act is extremely rare. Officials said that has not yet been done in this case and that it’s not clear it will be done.

President George H.W. Bush used the Insurrection Act to respond to riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of white police officers who were videotaped beating Black motorist Rodney King.

If their role expands if the violence escalates, it is not clear under what legal authority they would be able to engage, said Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.

“If in fact those Marines are laying hands on civilians, doing searches, then you have pretty powerful legal concerns,” Goitein said. “No statutory authority Trump has invoked so far permits this.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tweeted late Saturday that he was considering deploying the Marines to respond to the unrest after getting advice earlier in the day from Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to one of the U.S. officials.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth salutes during a ceremony at the US cemetery to commemorate the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings, Friday, June 6, 2025 in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

Still, the tweet, which was posted to Hegseth’s personal X account and not to his official government account, caught many inside the Pentagon by surprise. As late as Monday, the military’s highest offices were still considering the potential ramifications.

But the Marine Corps were asking broader questions, too: Do they send more senior, experienced personnel so as not to put newer, less experienced troops at risk of potentially making a judgment call on whether to use force against a civilian?

What’s lawful under a domestic deployment — where troops may end up in a policing role — is governed by the Fourth Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, which forbids seizure of persons, including temporarily restraining them, unless it could be considered reasonable under the circumstances.

Troops under federal authorities are in general prohibited from conducting law enforcement on U.S. soil under the Posse Comitatus Act.

BY ASHRAF KHALIL

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the nation’s capital cleans up from the culmination of World Pride this past weekend, focus now shifts to a very different massive event — Saturday’s military parade to honor the 250th birthday of the Army and the 79th birthday of President Donald Trump.

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“We’re preparing for an enormous turnout,” said Matt McCool of the Secret Service’s Washington Field office, who said more than 18 miles of “anti-scale fencing” would be erected and “multiple drones” would be in the air. The entire District of Columbia is normally a no-fly zone for drones.

Army officials have estimated around 200,000 attendees for the evening military parade, and McCool said he was prepared for “hundreds of thousands” of people.

“We have a ton of magnetometers,” he said. “If a million people show up, then we’re going to have some lines.”

A total of 175 magnetometers would be used at security checkpoints controlling access to the daytime birthday festival and the nighttime parade. Metropolitan Police Department chief Pamela Smith predicted “major impacts to traffic” and advised attendees to arrive early and consider forgoing cars for the Metro.

“This is a significant event with a large footprint,” she said. “We’re relying on the public to be an extra set of ears and eyes for us.”

The military parade has been designated a National Special Security Event — similar to a presidential inauguration or state funeral. That status is reserved for events that draw large crowds and potential mass protests. It calls for an enhanced degree of high-level coordination among D.C. officials, the FBI, Capitol Police and Washington’s National Guard contingent — with the Secret Service taking the lead.

The Army birthday celebration had already been planned for months. But earlier this spring, Trump announced his intention to transform the event — which coincides with his 79th birthday — into a massive military parade complete with 60-ton M1 Abrams battle tanks and Paladin self-propelled howitzers rolling through the city streets.

Multiple counter-protests of varying sizes are planned for Saturday, with the largest being a mass march to the White House dubbed the No Kings rally. Officials say they are also on alert for signs that the immigration-related clashes between law enforcement and protesters currently roiling Los Angeles would spread.

“We’re paying attention, obviously, to what is happening there. We’ll be ready,” McCool said. “We have a robust plan for civil disobedience.”

Agent Phillip Bates of the FBI’s Washington Field office, which is tasked with counterterrorism and crisis management, said there were “no credible threats” to the event at the moment.

Lindsey Appiah, the deputy mayor for public safety, told The Associated Press last week that the city had longstanding plans for the Army birthday celebration. But those plans “got a lot bigger on short notice” when Trump got involved.

Still, Appiah said the city has grown “very flexible, very nimble” at rolling with these sort of changes.

For more details, including road closures and security restrictions, go to: www.nsse.dc.gov.

The mother of an 8-month-old boy who died of a fentanyl overdose in a Roseville hotel room has been sentenced to five years of probation as part of a plea deal with the prosecution.

Wynona Ann Littlewolf, 30, of Bemidji, Minn., pleaded guilty in March to second-degree manslaughter in connection with the 2022 death of Ashton Michael Littlewolf at the DoubleTree by Hilton on Cleveland Avenue.

Wynona Ann Littlewolf (Courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Corrections)

Ramsey County District Judge Mark Ireland sentenced Littlewolf on Friday to the agreed-upon downward departure to state guidelines, staying an 8¾-year prison sentence. She must follow any programming recommended by probation and the standard conditions, including no use or possession of mood-altering substances and random testing.

According to the criminal complaint, St. Paul police were sent to a business in the city’s St. Anthony Park neighborhood around 2:45 p.m. March 12, 2022, on a report of a baby who was blue, unconscious and not breathing. Medics responded and pronounced the infant dead, noting he was already in rigor mortis and his body seemed abnormally cold.

Littlewolf and her boyfriend told officers they had stayed overnight at the DoubleTree and found Ashton was purple when they awoke in the afternoon. They left for a hospital, but stopped at the St. Paul business for help after getting lost.

Officers recovered drug paraphernalia from the hotel room: a burnt piece of tinfoil in the bathroom and a rolled-up dollar bill on the floor.

An autopsy on her son concluded he died of fentanyl toxicity.

Littlewolf agreed to speak to investigators from the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee on March 30, 2023, when she was serving time for two Cass County cases. She said her son was starting to eat solid foods and had just started crawling and standing up. She said he crawled on the hotel floor during their stay.

Littlewolf said she and her boyfriend had argued after dinner and so she went into the hotel bathroom to calm down and smoke heroin. When she left the bathroom, she found her boyfriend and Ashton asleep on a bed. She moved the infant to his crib.

When asked if she was responsible for her son’s death, Littlewolf replied, “I think I should have been watching him more,” the complaint states.

Charged while imprisoned

The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged Littlewolf just over two years after Ashton’s death while she was incarcerated at the Shakopee prison for second-degree burglary and possession of a fifth-degree controlled substance. Both cases occurred on Sept. 21, 2022, six months after the infant’s death.

Dennis Gerhardstein, Ramsey County Attorney’s Office spokesman, said Monday the delay in charging Littlewolf in Ashton’s death had to do with an ongoing law enforcement investigation and because in January 2023 she requested execution of her Cass County cases. She received a sentence of two years and four months in prison, with 45 days of credit for time already served in custody.

The investigation into Ashton’s death hinged on results of an analysis by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension of the drug paraphernalia found in the Roseville hotel room — the tinfoil and dollar bill — as well as a subsequent blood sample from Littlewolf. Both the items and her blood tested positive for the presence of fentanyl, the complaint says.

Littlewolf was released from the Shakopee prison and into supervised probation on July 1. She was discharged from probation on April 9.

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As far as the plea deal calling for probation in the infant’s death, Gerhardstein said the attorney’s office reviews the facts on a case-by-case basis before recommending a solution. He noted that Littlewolf had taken advantage of sobriety counseling and other prison services.

“Knowing she was progressing well and that her time inside would count as time served in any conviction, the (attorney’s office) felt it would be better to pursue an outcome of extended supervised probation rather than a few additional months in prison,” he said.

The investigator supported the downward departure, as did Littlewolf’s current probation officer, Gerhardstein added.

For four years, maternal health experts, reproductive rights advocates, and patients who suffered under Texas’ abortion ban have pleaded for lawmakers to clarify medical emergency exceptions in the state’s abortion law, seen as the bare minimum they could do to mitigate the disaster inflicted by the harsh restrictions. 

Vague exceptions coupled with severe penalties that include $100,000 in fines and up to 99 years in prison have led confused and fearful doctors to deny critical care to high-risk patients. Last fall, when ProPublica reported the tragic—and “preventable”—deaths of three pregnant Texans who faced delayed care for miscarriages, Republicans continued their unabashed defense of the state’s ban. 

Pressure from constituents and public outcry may have finally tilted the scales for state Senator Bryan Hughes, a Mineola Republican, who authored Senate Bill 31 this legislative session, a measure that seeks to provide clarity about when doctors can perform life-saving care. Under the bipartisan bill, an “imminent” risk of death or a “substantial impairment of a major bodily function”—the previous standard—does not need to be present before a doctor can intervene. The bill also clarifies that a doctor or lawyer can discuss a medically necessary abortion with a patient without facing “aiding and abetting” charges.

Bryan Hughes on the Senate floor on May 19 (Jordan Vonderhaar for the Texas Observer)

SB 31 was a glacially slow response to a public health crisis that Republicans themselves created, so it was expected that reproductive rights advocates would remain wary. (After all, it was Hughes himself who authored the state’s bounty hunter-style abortion ban in 2021, prior to the fall of Roe.) But what surprised many was the full-on opposition to the bill from pro-abortion activists—largely around the concern that the bill was a “Trojan horse” to revive a century-old abortion ban that could criminalize abortion supporters and even patients. Lawmakers later added language meant to neutralize the issue, but groups say they still are not entirely assuaged.

For reproductive rights advocates, SB 31—which has been sent to the governor for signing—does not offer meaningful change. They’ve deemed the legislation an “exception deception” bill. The clarifying language remains vague and open to interpretation, leaving the legal gray area intact, which will continue to “cause confusion, delay care, and endanger lives,” said leaders from six Texas abortion support groups, including The Lilith Fund, Fund Texas Choice, and The Afiya Center. 

And, glaringly, the bill fails to add carve-outs for rape, incest, or fatal fetal diagnoses—exceptions approved in a number of other red states with bans. 

“[SB 31] will not stop hospitals from prioritizing legal risks over patient health nor fully shield doctors from prosecution,” said the abortion fund leaders. “This bill only exists to provide anti-abortion politicians cover for their decision to ban abortion, while still keeping care inaccessible.” 

In a statement, Blair Wallace, policy and advocacy strategist for reproductive rights at the ACLU of Texas, didn’t mince words: “Texans know bullshit when we see it. This bill is a political stunt designed to distract us from the damage the state’s abortion ban continues to cause.” 

Moreover, no abortion providers were engaged in the drafting of the bill, as Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi—a Dallas-area OB-GYN and complex family planning specialist—pointed out. “You can’t address the problem of abortion access without actually talking to the doctors who provide abortion care—it’s a fallacy to think you can,” Moayedi, a vocal opponent of SB 31, told the Observer. “You need our expertise and our lived experiences to inform the legislation.” 

Pro-reproductive rights march in May 2022 (Gus Bova)

When the Observer spoke with Hughes earlier this session to ask if, indeed, any abortion providers were sought to help craft the bill language, he replied, “No abortionists were consulted or invited to participate in this process. This bill is not about them.”

Pushback to SB 31 emphasizes the innate problem with attempts at “fixing” draconian abortion bans. “Any ‘exceptions’ language is always going to result in lingering confusion about when doctors can provide life-saving care,” Lucie Arvallo, executive director of Jane’s Due Process, told the Observer. “The only real way to solve the public health crisis started by politicians is to fully repeal the ban.””

Amy Bresnen, an attorney and health care lobbyist who has championed widening exceptions and is among those who helped draft SB 31, acknowledged some of the measure’s shortcomings but called it the “first step” in a long process. Ultimately, she views it as a victory for Texans. “At the end of the day, we are a red state, and we pushed as far as we could go,” Bresnen said. “Obviously, we didn’t get everything we wanted. We just didn’t have the votes, but I do believe this is a great bill that will save women’s lives.”

During the session, Hughes pushed with one hand his bill to “save mothers” while using the other to advance Senate Bill 2880—which would have been the nation’s most aggressive assault on the flow abortion pills, among the only options left for many pregnant Texans. The bill would have empowered citizens to sue anyone who “manufactures, distributes, mails, prescribes, or provides” abortion pills to Texans for at least $100,000 in damages. 

Meant to serve as a blueprint for other red states to model, the legislation seemed poised to pass. However, after gliding through the Senate, the bill stalled in the House State Affairs Committee for three weeks (where it received pressure from more than 40 right-wing lawmakers), only making it out at the last minute and never reaching the House floor for a vote. Anti-abortion advocates attribute SB 2880’s death to “apathy” from what they consider less ardently “pro-life” Republicans, specifically State Affairs Committee Chairman Ken King. “The House didn’t prioritize this important bill and Ken King is responsible for sabotaging it, along with Speaker [Dustin] Burrows, who shares the blame because the buck stops with [the] Speaker,” Texas Right to Life president John Seago told the Observer. 

The bill’s failure marks a significant—and rare—loss for Texas anti-abortion activists, who have been increasingly successful at the Capitol, and underscores the tension between the Lege’s extremist faction and more moderate Republicans. It also mirrors the reality that Texas voters largely oppose allowing private lawsuits against those who provide abortion pills. 

Deemed  “unprecedented” and “shocking” by legal experts, SB 2880 would have also been immune from constitutional challenges in state court, per the bill text. 

“This bill was calling to fundamentally restructure our judicial system. It was pushing some radical legal theories which caused a stampede away from it,” Senator Sarah Eckhardt, an Austin Democrat, told the Observer. “I think this bill rightfully scared the crap out of a lot of people.”

Texas Right to Life says it is not giving up on other avenues to get the bill passed, including lobbying Abbott for an additional 30-day special session. “We are the most stubborn and committed pro-life group in Texas, and we will push for a special session to ensure passage of this bill,” said Seago.

While SB 2880 died, abortion rights in Texas did not exit this legislative session unscathed. Republicans managed to pass a measure that restricts local governments from using public funds to help abortion patients with practical support like out-of-state travel costs, lodging, food, and childcare. That financial assistance has become increasingly vital as Texans are forced to trek hundreds—and even thousands—of miles for care. 

Sarah Eckhardt on the floor in May (Jordan Vonderhaar for the Texas Observer)

State Senator Donna Campbell’s Senate Bill 33, a priority item for Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, takes direct aim at voter-approved investments from the cities of San Antonio and Austin, the latter of which allocated $400,000 to assist abortion patients in their current budget. 

“This law will strip away Austin’s ability to support Texans navigating complex, confusing, and difficult medical decisions,” Council member Vanessa Fuentes told the Observer. “It means that many in our community will face even greater barriers to accessing essential health care.”

Local government support for practical abortion needs served as one of the surviving vehicles for communities to help patients amid a state-level ban. “We at least still have the ability to make grassroots change in our local communities when it comes to reproductive rights, so for elected officials to undermine that, and make it harder to help the most marginalized get health care—it’s disgraceful,” Kamyon Conner, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, said.

A dozen abortion support groups worked to remove some of the most harmful language from the bill, and they say they can at least still partner with city governments to fund access to Plan B and birth control, as well as text support lines and hotlines. 

All told, reproductive rights leaders view the demise of SB 2880, the session’s most aggressive anti-abortion bill, as a temporary reprieve.

“We don’t necessarily feel victorious, we just feel relief for now. We can catch our breath a little; that’s a much different feeling than celebrating,” said Conner. “The bill is a stark reminder that even after making abortion illegal, Republicans are still continuing to find new ways to block any remaining access. It’s pretty scary to see how far they will go. I mean, what more do they want?”

The post This Session’s Worst Anti-Abortion Bill Died, but Pro-Choice Advocates Aren’t Celebrating appeared first on The Texas Observer.