Note: National Guard deployments to Chicago and Portland were temporarily blocked by a court order. Elements of the District of Columbia National Guard were activated and deployed to Washington, D.C.
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The New York Times
Since taking office, President Trump has relied on the National Guard to help implement a sweeping agenda on crime and immigration, kicking off a blitz of deployments that have rattled cities, tested the limits of his legal authority, and drawn in the Supreme Court.
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So far, Mr. Trump has called upon the military force to help stop illegal crossings at the southern border and staff immigration facilities; to guard federal property and personnel amid protests in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore.; and to back crime-fighting efforts in Washington, D.C., and Memphis. He has done all this while publicly mulling similar actions in cities like Baltimore, New Orleans and San Francisco.
National Guard deployments to U.S. cities
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Legal status
Active
Type of deployment
Federal
Date of deployment
June 7
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Max. number of troops
4,100
Legal status
Active
Type of deployment
Hybrid
Date of deployment
Aug. 11
Max. number of troops
2,500
Legal status
Pending
Type of deployment
Federal
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Date of deployment
Sept. 28
Max. number of troops
400
Legal status
Pending
Type of deployment
Federal
Date of deployment
Oct. 4
Max. number of troops
500
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Legal status
Active
Type of deployment
Hybrid
Date of deployment
Oct. 10
Max. number of troops
150
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Notes: The date of deployment corresponds to the date of the executive order or memorandum ordering the deployment of the National Guard. The number of troops deployed to each city is the maximum number of troops listed in the announcement or mentioned by public officials. The number of National Guard troops on the ground at any given time can fluctuate.
Who is in charge of National Guard deployments?
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The deployments, which have provoked fierce lawsuits from state and local leaders, are not all on the same legal footing. The main difference, according to experts in armed forces law, comes down to who commands the Guard: the president, or the governor of an individual state.
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Who approves the deployment?
Governor
Both president and governor
President
Who commands the Guard?
Governor
Governor
President
How is the Guard paid?
State funds
Federal funds
Federal funds
Can the Guard perform law enforcement duties?
Yes, unless prohibited by state law
Yes, unless prohibited by state law
No, with narrow exceptions
When called into action by a governor responding to a state-level emergency, the Guard serves under a status known as state active duty, under which there is no general prohibition against troops conducting law enforcement. In recent years, Guard members under that status have policed the southern border, patrolled New York City’s subway platforms and helped support crime-fighting efforts in Albuquerque.
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But when deployed under the president’s command — typically, when called to train or fight overseas — National Guard troops become federalized and are subject to a section of the U.S. Code known as Title 10, the same laws governing other active-duty military branches.
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Where National Guard troops have deployed under Title 10
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States with federalized National Guard troops
Note: National Guard deployments to Chicago and Portland were temporarily blocked by a court order.
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The New York Times
Crucially, troops under that status are forbidden, with narrow exceptions, from performing law enforcement under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which came about after the federal government withdrew troops from the Southern states defeated in the Civil War.
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In Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, where Mr. Trump has deployed the Guard over governors’ objections, he has done so by placing the troops directly under federal control — itself a legally contentious move. As a result, troops’ activities there are largely restricted to guarding federal property.
A third status, known as Title 32, combines aspects of state and federal duty. In that hybrid designation, Guard troops remain under their governor’s command, but the deployment receives federal funding and comes at the request of the president or secretary of defense.
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Where National Guard troops have deployed under Title 32
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States with activated troops
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Note: Elements of the District of Columbia National Guard were activated and deployed to Washington, D.C.
The New York Times
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In Memphis, where the governor is commanding the Guard mission at Mr. Trump’s urging, and in Washington, D.C., where the president has authority over the local Guard, troops have deployed under a hybrid status. Guard soldiers in those cities have more openly patrolled the streets, but they have so far steered clear of serving warrants or making arrests.
Military law experts say the distinction between those different deployment statuses is critical not only to what troops can do on the ground but also to how courts will weigh the legal questions posed by Mr. Trump’s rapid assumption of power.
“There is very little case law on all of this,” said Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school, “partly because domestic deployment of the military has happened extremely sparingly in our nation’s history.”
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What the courts say
In court, the Trump administration has argued that the president has broad authority to federalize the National Guard anywhere in the country, at any time, whenever he feels it is necessary to enforce the law or suppress disorder.
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That power, federal lawyers say, extends from an obscure, rarely invoked statute that gives the president authority to federalize the force in times of rebellion, invasion or when the president is otherwise unable to enforce federal law.
But the Trump administration has gone further, arguing that the same statute grants the president a sweeping exemption from the Posse Comitatus Act, the law barring the use of federal soldiers for law enforcement. Presidents typically have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, an extreme step, to claim such an exemption.
Further complicating the issue are Mr. Trump’s moves to deploy the National Guard across state lines, a step usually taken only with the consent of all parties involved, said Mark Nevitt, an associate professor at Emory University School of Law.
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Mr. Trump has pushed to deploy federalized Guard troops from Texas to Chicago, and troops from California to Portland, while several Republican governors have agreed to send troops under their command to Washington, D.C.
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National Guard troops that have deployed to another state
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Note: National Guard deployments to Chicago and Portland were temporarily blocked by a court order.
The New York Times
State leaders in California, Illinois and Oregon have contested the Trump administration’s arguments in court, and rulings so far have been divided. The administration has recently appealed to the Supreme Court in the Illinois case, setting the stage for a high-stakes decision that could shape how the Guard is used moving forward.
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Officials in Tennessee and Washington, D.C., have also challenged the deployments to their cities.
Military law experts described Mr. Trump’s actions as a rarity in U.S. history, highlighting that the president’s aggressive maneuvering of federalized Guard troops comes in the face of protests far more subdued than the kind of mass unrest that has been used to justify their use in the past.
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But Kevin Greene, a co-director of the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for the Study of the National Guard, said it also strikes at a question dating back to the country’s earliest days, and the founders’ skepticism of a standing army on domestic soil.
“The history of the United States is about the pendulum swinging back and forth as it relates to the militia and the National Guard, as to who has authority over it, and who should,” he said.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Amazon has been accused of listing products from independent retailers without their consent, even as the ecommerce giant sues start-up Perplexity over its AI software shopping without permission.
The $2.5tn online retailer has listed some independent shops’ full inventory on its platform without seeking permission, four business owners told the Financial Times, enabling customers to shop through Amazon rather than buy directly.
Two independent retailers told the FT that they had also received orders for products that were either out of stock or were mispriced and mislabelled by Amazon leading to customer complaints.
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“Nobody opted into this,” said Angie Chua, owner of Bobo Design Studio, a stationery store based in Los Angeles.
Tech companies are experimenting with artificial intelligence “agents” that can perform tasks like shopping autonomously based on user instructions.
Amazon has blocked agents from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and a host of other AI start-ups from its website.
It filed a lawsuit in November against Perplexity, whose Comet browser was making purchases on Amazon on behalf of users, alleging that the company’s actions risked undermining user privacy and violated its terms of service.
In its complaint, Amazon said Perplexity had taken steps “without prior notice to Amazon and without authorisation” and that it degraded a customer shopping experience it had invested in over several decades.
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Perplexity in a statement at the time said that the lawsuit was a “bully tactic” aimed at scaring “disruptive companies like Perplexity” from improving customers’ experience.
The recent complaints against Amazon relate to its “Buy for Me” function, launched last April, which lets some customers purchase items that are not listed with Amazon but on other retailers’ sites.
Retailers said Amazon did not seek their permission before sending them orders that were placed on the ecommerce site. They do not receive the user’s email address or other information that might be helpful for generating future sales, several sellers told the FT.
“We consciously avoid Amazon because our business is rooted in community and building a relationship with customers,” Chua said. “I don’t know who these customers are.”
Several of the independent retailers said Amazon’s move had led to poor experiences for customers, or hurt their business.
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Sarah Hitchcock Burzio, the owner of Hitchcock Paper Co. in Virginia, said that Amazon had mislabelled items leading to a surge in orders as customers believed they were receiving more expensive versions of a product at a much lower price.
“There were no guardrails set up so when there were issues there was nobody I could go to,” she said.
Product returns and complaints for the “Buy for Me” function are handled by sellers rather than Amazon, even when errors are produced by the Seattle-based group.
Amazon enables sellers to opt out of the service by contacting the company on a specific email address.
Amazon said: “Shop Direct and Buy for Me are programmes we’re testing that help customers discover brands and products not currently sold in Amazon’s store, while helping businesses reach new customers and drive incremental sales.
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“We have received positive feedback on these programmes. Businesses can opt out at any time.”
President Donald Trump said Tuesday night that Venezuela will turn over 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States, to be sold at market value and with the proceeds controlled by the US.
Interim authorities in Venezuela will turn over “sanctioned oil” Trump said on Truth Social.
The US will use the proceeds “to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!” he wrote.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has been directed to “execute this plan, immediately,” and the barrels “will be taken by storage ships, and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States.”
CNN has reached out to the White House for more information.
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A senior administration official, speaking under condition of anonymity, told CNN that the oil has already been produced and put in barrels. The majority of it is currently on boats and will now go to US facilities in the Gulf to be refined.
Although 30 to 50 million barrels of oil sounds like a lot, the United States consumed just over 20 million barrels of oil per day over the past month.
That amount may lower oil prices a bit, but it probably won’t lower Americans’ gas prices that much: Former President Joe Biden released about four to six times as much — 180 million barrels of oil — from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 2022, which lowered gas prices by only between 13 cents and 31 cents a gallon over the course of four months, according to a Treasury Department analysis.
US oil fell about $1 a barrel, or just under 2%, to $56, immediately after Trump made his announcement on Truth Social.
Selling up to 50 million barrels could raise quite a bit of revenue: Venezuelan oil is currently trading at $55 per barrel, so if the United States can find buyers willing to pay market price, it could raise between $1.65 billion and $2.75 billion from the sale.
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Venezuela has built up significant stockpiles of crude over since the United States began its oil embargo late last year. But handing over that much oil to the United States may deplete Venezuela’s own oil reserves.
The oil is almost certainly coming from both its onshore storage and some of the seized tankers that were transporting oil: The country has about 48 million barrels of storage capacity and was nearly full, according to Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at the Price Futures Group. The tankers were transporting about 15 million to 22 million barrels of oil, according to industry estimates.
It’s unclear over what time period Venezuela will hand over the oil to the United States.
The senior administration official said the transfer would happen quickly because Venezuela’s crude is very heavy, which means it can’t be stored for long.
But crude does not go bad if it is not refined in a certain amount of time, said Andrew Lipow, the president of Lipow Oil Associates, in a note. “It has sat underground for hundreds of millions of years. In fact, much of the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been around for decades,” he wrote.
new video loaded: Nvidia Shows Off New A.I. Chip at CES
transcript
transcript
Nvidia Shows Off New A.I. Chip at CES
At the annual tech conference, CES, Nvidia showed off a new A.I. chip, known as Vera Rubin, which is more efficient and powerful than previous generations of chips.
This is the Vera CPU. This is one CPU. This is groundbreaking work. I would not be surprised if the industry would like us to make this format and this structure an industry standard in the future. Today, we’re announcing Alpamayo, the world’s first thinking, reasoning autonomous vehicle A.I.
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At the annual tech conference, CES, Nvidia showed off a new A.I. chip, known as Vera Rubin, which is more efficient and powerful than previous generations of chips.
