California’s challenge of the Trump administration’s military deployment in Los Angeles returned to a federal courtroom in San Francisco on Friday for a brief hearing after an appeals court handed President Donald Trump a key procedural win.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer put off issuing any additional rulings and instead asked for briefings from both sides by noon Monday on whether the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits troops from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil, is being violated in Los Angeles.

The hearing happened the day after the 9th Circuit appellate panel allowed the president to keep control of National Guard troops he deployed in response to protests over immigration raids.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in his complaint that “violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is imminent, if not already underway” but Breyer last week postponed considering that allegation.

Vice President JD Vance, a Marine veteran, traveled to Los Angeles on Friday and met with troops, including U.S. Marines who have been deployed to protect federal buildings.

According to Vance, the court determined Trump’s determination to send in federal troops “was legitimate” and he will do it again if necessary.

“The president has a very simple proposal to everybody in every city, every community, every town whether big or small, if you enforce your own laws and if you protect federal law enforcement, we’re not going to send in the National Guard because it’s unnecessary,” Vance told journalists after touring a federal complex in Los Angeles.

Vance’s tour of a multiagency Federal Joint Operations Center and a mobile command center came as demonstrations have calmed after sometimes-violent clashes between protesters and police and outbreaks of vandalism and break-ins that followed immigration raids across Southern California earlier this month. Tens of thousands have also marched peacefully in Los Angeles since June 8.

National Guard troops have been accompanying federal agents on some immigration raids, and Marines briefly detained a man on the first day they deployed to protect a federal building. The marked the first time federal troops detained a civilian since deploying to the nation’s second-largest city.

Breyer found Trump acted illegally when, over opposition from California’s governor, the president activated the soldiers. However, the appellate decision halted the judge’s temporary restraining order. Breyer asked the lawyers on Friday to address whether he or the appellate court retains primary jurisdiction to grant an injunction under the Posse Comitatus Act.

California has sought a preliminary injunction giving Newsom back control of the troops in Los Angeles, where protests have calmed down in recent days.

Trump, a Republican, argued that the troops have been necessary to restore order. Newsom, a Democrat, said their presence on the streets of a U.S. city inflamed tensions, usurped local authority and wasted resources.

The demonstrations appear to be winding down, although dozens of protesters showed up Thursday at Dodger Stadium, where a group of federal agents gathered at a parking lot with their faces covered, traveling in SUVs and cargo vans. The Los Angeles Dodgers organization asked them to leave, and they did.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass lifted a downtown curfew that was first imposed in response to vandalism and clashes with police after crowds gathered in opposition to agents taking migrants into detention.

Trump federalized members of the California National Guard under an authority known as Title 10.

Title 10 allows the president to call the National Guard into federal service when the country “is invaded,” when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government,” or when the president is otherwise unable “to execute the laws of the United States.”

Breyer found that Trump had overstepped his legal authority, which he said allows presidents to control state National Guard troops only during times of “rebellion or danger of a rebellion.”

“The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of ‘rebellion,’ ” wrote Breyer, a Watergate prosecutor who was appointed by President Bill Clinton and is the brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

The Trump administration argued that courts can’t second-guess the president’s decisions. The appellate panel ruled otherwise, saying presidents don’t have unfettered power to seize control of a state’s guard, but the panel said that by citing violent acts by protesters in this case, the Trump administration had presented enough evidence to show it had a defensible rationale for federalizing the troops.

For now, the California National Guard will stay in federal hands as the lawsuit proceeds. It is the first deployment by a president of a state National Guard without the governor’s permission since troops were sent to protect Civil Rights Movement marchers in 1965.

Trump celebrated the appellate ruling in a social media post, calling it a “BIG WIN” and hinting at more potential deployments.

Newsom, for his part, has also warned that California won’t be the last state to see troops in the streets if Trump gets his way.

Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court on Monday weighed in on a flashpoint amid ongoing vote counting in the U.S. Senate election between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican David McCormick, ordering counties not to count mail-in ballots that lack a correct handwritten date on the return envelope.

The order is a win for McCormick and a loss for Casey as the campaigns prepare for a statewide recount and press counties for favorable ballot-counting decisions while election workers are sorting through thousands of provisional ballots.

McCormick’s campaign called it a “massive setback” for Casey.

The Democratic-majority high court’s order reiterates the position it took previously that the ballots shouldn’t be counted in the election, a decision that Republicans say several Democratic-controlled counties nevertheless challenged.

In a statement, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said a lack of legal clarity had surrounded the ballots, putting county officials in a position where they were “damned if they did and damned if they didn’t — likely facing legal action no matter which decision they made on counting.”

It comes amid a gust of fresh litigation in recent days filed by both campaigns, contesting the decisions of about a dozen counties over whether or not to count thousands of provisional ballots.

Casey’s campaign says the provisional ballots shouldn’t be rejected for garden-variety errors, like a polling place worker forgetting to sign it. Republicans say the law is clear that the ballots must be discarded.

The Associated Press called the race for McCormick last week, concluding that not enough ballots remained to be counted in areas Casey was winning for him to take the lead.

As of Monday, McCormick led by about 17,000 votes out of almost 7 million ballots counted — inside the 0.5% margin threshold to trigger an automatic statewide recount under Pennsylvania law.

Statewide, the number of mail-in ballots with wrong or missing dates on the return envelope could be in the thousands.

Republicans last week asked the court to bar counties from counting the ballots, saying those decisions violate both the court’s recent orders and its precedent in upholding the requirement in state law that a voter write the date on their mail-in ballot’s return envelope.

Stubbornly high warranty expenses and lagging cost-cutting efforts are holding back Ford Motor Co.'s profits this year, causing the company to lower its full-year earnings guidance.

That pushed the company’s stock price down 6% in trading after Monday’s closing bell.

The Dearborn, Michigan, automaker, which reported third-quarter earnings Monday, said its net profit tumbled nearly 26% as it took $1 billion in accounting charges to write down assets for a canceled three-row electric SUV.

Ford said it made $892 million from July through September, compared with $1.2 billion it made a year earlier.

But excluding the one-time items, the company made an adjusted pretax profit of $2.6 billion, or 49 cents per share. That beat analyst estimates of 46 cents, according to FactSet.

Revenue rose 5.5% to $46.2 billion, also beating Wall Street predictions. Ford reduced its full-year pretax income guidance to $10 billion, at the low end of the $10 billion to $12 billion it expected at the end of the second quarter, spooking investors.

“Cost, especially warranty, has held back our earnings power, but as we bend that curve, there is significant financial upside for investors,” CEO Jim Farley told analysts on a conference call.

Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said warranty costs were slightly below the third quarter of last year, but still high. The company wouldn’t give numbers until it files its quarterly report with securities regulators on Tuesday but said costs will be higher than a year ago.

Ford reported $800 million of increased warranty costs for the second quarter of this year.

Farley has been trying to get a handle on warranty costs for the past four years. In October of 2020, he said the company was working to cut quality-related repairs after glitch-prone small-car transmissions hit the automaker’s bottom line.

Ford has said that it has a $7 billion cost gap with competitors, and Lawler said Monday it has made progress on that figure. The problem is competitors, which he did not identify, are cutting costs too. “We’ve taken cost out, but we’re not doing it at a pace faster than our competition,” he told analysts.

Ford has removed $2 billion in material, freight and labor costs this year, but that was offset by warranties and inflation at its Turkish joint venture, he said.

He said Ford is focused on reducing warranty and other costs, which will show up in later quarters.

The company’s plans are working, as evidenced by 10 straight quarters of revenue growth, Lawler said.

Farley said Ford has restructured its operations in Europe, South America, India and China, which collectively lost $2.2 billion in 2018 but together are profitable now. For instance, China, including exports, has contributed over $600 million to pretax earnings this year, Farley said.