Illinois and Chicago sue the federal government for sending in the National Guard without being asked.

The Governor of Illinois and the Mayor of Chicago walked into federal district court on Monday and filed a lawsuit. The lawsuit asked the court to please tell the federal government to stop sending the National Guard into Chicago. The state of Illinois did not request the Guard. The mayor of Chicago did not request the Guard. The Guard, federalized by the President, is in Chicago anyway.

A senior aide at the White House went on the Sunday shows the day before and said the President has “plenary authority” to deploy the Guard wherever he wants, whenever he wants, regardless of what the Governor or the Mayor or the State Legislature has to say about it.

Hon. Plenary is a fancy word for the whole thing. The whole thing. No carve-outs. No exceptions. The federal government, in this account, can send soldiers into your city in the same way the city can send a sanitation truck. No permission slip required. The senior aide said this on television with a straight face.

The Constitution does not, in fact, work that way. The country was specifically designed to be skeptical of the federal government’s appetite for sending soldiers into cities. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 exists for this reason. The Tenth Amendment exists for this reason. The Insurrection Act, which is the statutory exception, was last used in 1992 in Los Angeles, and even then it was at the request of the Governor.

This time the Governor is the one suing.

Hon. The judge will sort this one out. By Saturday a federal appeals court told the administration the deployment was unlawful. By Monday the administration was appealing. That, by the way, is the system working. Three branches. The branches disagreeing. The disagreement appearing in writing.

The trouble is when one of the three branches keeps going on television to say the disagreement is itself illegitimate. That ought to concern you.