SACRAMENTO – The deployment of California National Guard troops has been extended through February, a detail revealed in an amicus brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court by California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday.

The extension applies to about 300 National Guard troops still federalized in California, most of whom were sent to Portland, Ore., but have been waiting in limbo after a judge blocked them from being deployed on the streets. About 85 were still in the Los Angeles area as of earlier this month, according to a sworn declaration from a California Military Department lawyer.

President Donald Trump initially federalized about a third of the California National Guard – 4,000 troops total – over the summer to quell protests in Los Angeles, which have since calmed. Most of those National Guard members have been released from the mission, but 300 remain federalized.

Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta have been fighting in court for months to return the California National Guard troops to state control. The issue is playing out in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal in the case of the Los Angeles and Portland deployments.

The troops remain under Trump’s authority as California’s original lawsuit challenging the deployment plays out in court. Some of them have been sent to Illinois, where Trump has deployed hundreds of Texas National Guard soldiers to crack down on crime in Chicago, which Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson say is an egregious federal overreach.

The brief Newsom filed Monday in Trump v. Illinois asks the U.S. Supreme Court to rule against the president’s ability to federalize National Guard troops against governors’ objections.

“It has become clear that the federal government’s actions in Southern California earlier this summer were just the opening salvo in an effort  to  transform the  role of the military in American society,” lawyers for California write in the amicus brief. “At no prior point in our history has the President used the military this way: as his own personal police force, to be deployed for whatever law enforcement missions he deems appropriate.”

The lawyers for Newsom and California point to the extension of the California deployment through February as evidence Trump intends to use the National Guard members for whatever he wants, rather than in response to the protests that flared over the summer in Los Angeles.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to send National Guard troops to San Francisco in recent days. As of Monday afternoon, it was not clear when he would try to do so.

Late last month, Trump said he wanted to use liberal American cities as a “training ground for our military,” in a speech to military generals he summoned to Virginia on short notice.

“San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places,” Trump said. “And we’re going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within.”

This article originally published at California National Guard’s federalization has been extended through February, Newsom says.