Marines take over some security in LA while cities across US prep for 'No Kings' rallies

LOS ANGELES (AP) — After a week of protests over federal immigration raids, about 200 Marines moved into Los Angeles on Friday to guard a federal building in the city while communities across the country prepped for what’s anticipated to be a nationwide wave of large-scale demonstrations against President Donald Trump’s polices this weekend.

The Marine troops wearing combat gear and carrying rifles took over some posts from National Guard members who were deployed to the city after the protests erupted last week. Those protests sparked dozens more over several days around the country, with some leading to clashes with police and hundreds of arrests.

On Friday, Marines started to replace Guard members protecting the federal building west of downtown, so the Guard soldiers can be assigned to protect law enforcement officers on raids, the commander in charge of 4,700 troops deployed to the LA protests said.

The Marines moved into Los Angeles before Saturday’s planned “No Kings” demonstrations nationally against Trump’s policies, which will also happen the same day as a military parade in Washington, D.C.

The Marines’ arrival also came a day after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked a federal judge’s order that had directed Trump to return control of Guard troops to California. The judge had ruled the Guard deployment was illegal, violated the Tenth Amendment, which defines the power between state and federal governments, and exceeded Trump’s statutory authority. The judge did not rule on the presence of the Marines.

Some 2,000 National Guard troops were deployed to Los Angeles this week. Hundreds have provided protection to immigration agents making arrests. Another 2,000 Guard members were notified of deployment earlier this week.

Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman, the commander of Task Force 51 who is overseeing the 4,700 combined troops, said none of the military troops will be detaining anyone, though the Marines temporarily detained a man Friday afternoon who had walked onto the property and did not immediately hear their commands to stop. He was later released without charges.

Roughly 500 National Guard members have been used to provide security on immigration raids after undergoing expanded instruction, legal training and rehearsals with the agents doing the enforcement before they go on those missions.

When asked about working together with the Marines, Los Angeles police Chief Jim McDonnell said he “wouldn’t call it coordination” but said he and the county sheriff were on a call with military senior leadership Thursday to open lines of communication in case situations arise where collaboration is needed.

Under federal law, active-duty forces are prohibited by law from conducting law enforcement.

By mid-afternoon Friday, more than a dozen Marines were stationed outside the 17-story Wilshire Federal Building. They mostly appeared to be checking tickets from members of the public who were there to renew their passports.

The federal building is the same place Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla on Thursday was forcefully removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference and handcuffed by officers as he tried to speak up about the immigration raids.

There were no protesters around the building. Occasionally, a passing driver shouted from their window, registering a mix of anger and support for the military presence.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has called the troop deployment a “serious breach of state sovereignty” and a power grab by Trump, and he has gone to court to stop it. The president has cited a legal provision that allows him to mobilize federal service members when there is “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

A federal judge said in a ruling late Thursday that what is happening in Los Angeles does not meet the definition of a rebellion and issued an order to return control of the Guard to California before the appeals court stopped it from going into effect Friday. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump thanked the appeals court Friday morning.

“If I didn’t send the Military into Los Angeles, that city would be burning to the ground right now,” he said.

The court will hold a hearing on the matter Tuesday.

The Trump administration has characterized the city as a “war zone,” which local authorities dispute. Recent protesters have drawn a few hundred attendees who marched through downtown chanting, dancing and poking fun at the Trump administration’s characterization of the city.

There have been about 500 arrests since Saturday, mostly for failing to leave the area at the request of law enforcement, according to the police. There have been a handful of more serious charges, including for assault against officers and for possession of a Molotov cocktail and a gun. Nine officers have been hurt, mostly with minor injuries.

An 8 p.m. curfew has been in place in a 1-square-mile (2.5-square-kilometer) section of downtown. The city of Los Angeles encompasses roughly 500 square miles (1,295 square kilometers). Protests have ended after a few hours with arrests this week largely for failure to disperse. Mayor Karen Bass said Friday there was no termination date for the curfew yet.

The occasional motorist, cyclist and pedestrian passed in front of the federal building and the troops guarding it as the curfew took effect Friday. Residents living in the curfew zone and traveling to and from work there are exempt from the rule.

The “No Kings” demonstrations are planned in nearly 2,000 locations around the country, according to the movement’s website.

A flagship march and rally is planned for Philadelphia, but no protests are scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C., where the military parade will be held. Participants are expected to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation, organizers say.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has put 5,000 National Guard members on standby in cities where demonstrations are planned. In other Republican-controlled states, governors have not said when or how they may deploy troops.

A group of Democratic governors in a statement called Trump’s deployments “an alarming abuse of power.”

The military parade in Washington will also feature concerts, fireworks, NFL players, fitness competitions and displays all over the National Mall for daylong festivities. The celebration Saturday also happens to be Trump’s birthday.

The Army expects as many as 200,000 people could attend and says putting on the celebration will cost an estimated $25 million to $45 million.

Saturday is also Flag Day, which celebrates the adoption of the U.S. flag in 1777.

California Democratic state Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas turned an American flag on her desk upside-down in protest of the federal immigration crackdown in Los Angeles during a Friday legislative session honoring the holiday.

“What is happening in this country, what is happening in my city makes me feel distressed as an American,” said Smallwood-Cuevas, who represents downtown Los Angeles.

Taxin reported from Santa Ana, California. Baldor contributed from Washington.

A U.S Marine adjusts their radio and outside of a federal building Friday, June 13, 2025, in Los Angeles (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

U.S Marines guard a federal building, Friday, June 13, 2025, in Los Angeles (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

U.S Marines work next to members of the California National Guard outside of a federal building, Friday, June 13, 2025, in Los Angeles (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

A U.S Marine guards a federal building, Friday, June 13, 2025, in Los Angeles (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

U.S Marines work outside of a federal building, Friday, June 13, 2025, in Los Angeles (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Protesters are loaded onto Los Angeles Police Department buses during a protest on Wednesday, June 11, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., is pushed out of the room as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem holds a news conference regarding the recent protests in Los Angeles on Thursday, June 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Etienne Laurent)

Los Angeles Metro police on horseback disperse protesters on Wednesday, June 11, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

A man shouts into a megaphone outside City Hall during protests over federal immigration enforcement raids on Wednesday, June 11, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

Police confront a protesters outside City Hall during protests over federal immigration enforcement raids on Wednesday, June 11, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)