Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been asked to remove 200 National Guard troops from policing protests in Los Angeles and deploy them to the California wildfire unit, according to the Associated Press. Gen. Gregory Guillot—the military commander in charge of the 4,000 troops Trump deployed to L.A. to respond to protests against raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement—made the request, saying the troops were needed to fight wildfires. Trump has been locked in a legal battle to keep the troops in L.A. On June 20, a U.S. appeals court ruled that Trump could retain control of the deployed troops over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom says that the National Guard’s wildfire-fighting unit, Joint Task Force Rattlesnake, is understaffed due to the L.A. deployment; the office of the governor published a memo claiming that the L.A. deployment further strains a firefighting force that was weakened by Trump’s cuts to the U.S. Forest Service. California’s peak wildfire season started this month, with more than 2,300 wildfires reported by CAL FIRE Director Joe Tyler.
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