Law Enforcement Isn't the Enemy

It's a strange thing to watch unfold, election cycle after election cycle: the people whose job is to protect us have become, for one entire political party, a favorite target instead. Not every Democrat, to be fair. But enough of the party's loudest, most visible figures have built careers on treating law enforcement as the villain of the story rather than its protagonist that the pattern is impossible to ignore anymore. Lie about what officers did. Assume the worst motive first and ask questions never. And in California, go so far as to pass a law designed to force plainclothes federal agents to identify themselves publicly, by name, while doing their jobs — effectively handing out a roadmap for anyone who wanted to target them.

This week, the nation's most reliably left-leaning federal appeals court looked at that law and said no.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a bench that has ruled against the Trump administration on immigration policy about as often as any court in the country, blocked a provision of California's "No Vigilantes Act" that would have required federal agents to display their badges and identification during operations. The panel didn't split hairs about it. They found the Trump administration "certain to succeed" in its underlying lawsuit, and ruled the law violates the Constitution's supremacy clause — the basic principle that when federal law and state law collide, federal law wins. "Section 10 explicitly overrides the federal government's power to determine whether, how, and when to publicly identify its officers," the panel wrote. California argued its requirement didn't really burden federal operations all that much. The court wasn't interested in weighing degrees of burden at all. "The burden of the regulation on federal operations, whether substantial or otherwise, is irrelevant," the judges wrote. California never had the authority to regulate federal agents in the first place, full stop.

Sit with the fact that this ruling came from the 9th Circuit specifically. This is the same court that blocked attempts to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities, restricted efforts to tighten asylum eligibility, and refused to reinstate Trump's first-term travel ban. Nobody serious calls this court a rubber stamp for this administration. And even this court looked at California's law and recognized it for what it actually was: an attempt to force the identity of individual federal officers into public view, under the friendly-sounding banner of "accountability," in a state where federal agents have already faced doxxing campaigns, harassment at their homes, and direct confrontation simply for showing up to do their jobs.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, the man widely assumed to be positioning himself for a 2028 presidential run, has spent the last couple of years signing a steady stream of legislation aimed at restricting federal immigration enforcement inside his state — the No Vigilantes Act and the companion No Secret Police Act among them, the latter of which separately tried to bar federal officers from wearing masks on the job. A federal judge already blocked that mask provision for similar reasons. Now the ID requirement is blocked, too. Two separate attempts to make federal agents easier to identify, locate, and target, both struck down by courts that owe this administration no particular favors.

Ask yourself what the actual purpose of a law like that was supposed to be. Supporters will tell you it's about transparency and accountability, and I understand why that framing polls well in a press release. But transparency doesn't require broadcasting an individual agent's name and face to anyone with a grudge and a smartphone. Accountability already exists through chains of command, internal review, and the courts — the same courts, notably, that just ruled against California on this exact question. What a law like this actually does, intentionally or not, is make it easier for someone who wants to confront, harass, or harm a specific federal officer to know exactly who they're looking for.

Justice Department officials were plain about what the ruling means. Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate called it confirmation that "California cannot regulate federal law enforcement." Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr. went further, calling the decision "a huge WIN for protecting the safety of our Nation's law enforcement officers."

He's right, and it shouldn't have needed a federal appeals court to say so. Men and women who put on a badge to enforce this country's laws deserve the basic presumption that their safety matters, regardless of which political party currently finds their work inconvenient. California tried to legislate that presumption away. Even the 9th Circuit wasn't willing to go along with it.

Law enforcement isn't the enemy. It never was. It's long past time the politicians treating it that way faced a court, a voter, or a mirror honest enough to tell them so.

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