Trump ‘manufactured crisis’ to justify plan to send national guard to Chicago, leading Democrat says | Trump administration
Donald Trump “made a crisis” to justify the concept of sending federal national guard troops to Chicago then at the head of local leaders, a leading Democrat said on Sunday, while the White House has advanced plans to militarize more American cities.
Hakeem Jeffries, the head of the House minority and member of the New York Democrat Congress, accused the American president of “playing games with the life of the Americans” with his unprecedented domestic deployment of the military, who increased to include the armament of the troops who are currently patrolling Washington, DC – after having sent troops to Los Angeles in June.
The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, said that such a Trump plan was “the most blatant violation of our Constitution in the 21st century”.
On Friday, Pentagon officials confirmed to Fox News that up to 1,700 men and women in the National Guard were ready to mobilize in 19 mainly republican states to support Trump’s anti-immigration repression by helping the Immigration and Customs Application Agency (ICE) with “logistics and office support functions”.
Jeffries said he made a statement published by Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker, that Trump “abused his power” speaking about sending the National Guard to Chicago and distracted the pain he said that the president provoked American families.
The National Guard is normally under the authority of individual states, deployed at the request of the Governor of the State and federalized only – or deployed by the Federal Government – in the event of a national emergency and at the request of a governor.
Jeffries said in an interview with CNN on Sunday morning: “We should continue to support local police and not simply allow Donald Trump to play games with the life of the American people as part of his efforts to make a crisis and create a distraction because he is deeply unpopular.”
He continued: “I strongly support the statement published by Governor Pritzker, clearly indicating that there is no foundation, no authority for Donald Trump to potentially try to lay federal troops in the city of Chicago.”
The White House worked on plans to send the National Guard to Chicago, the third largest American city, dominated by democratic voters in a democratic state, to take a hard line on crime, roaming and immigrants, the Washington Post reported.
Pritzker published a statement on Saturday evening that began: “The state of Illinois currently has received no requests or awareness of the federal government to ask if we need help, and we have made no request for federal intervention.”
Trump argued that military repression was necessary in the national capital, and elsewhere, to repress what he said to be out of control of crime levels, even if the statistics show that serious and violent crimes in Washington, and many other American cities, in fact dropped.
Speaking of the journalists from the Oval Office on Friday, the president insisted that “the inhabitants of Chicago shout to come” when he exhibited his plan to send troops, and that they “would help later with New York”.
“When ready, we will start in Chicago … Chicago is a mess,” said Trump.
Johnson, during an appearance on MSNBC on Sunday, said the shots had dropped almost 40% in his city in the past year only, and he and Pritzker said that any plan of the White House to prevail over local authority and the deployment of troops would be illegal.
“The president has repeated this petulant presentation since he has assumed his functions. What he proposed at this stage would be the most blatant violation of our Constitution in the 21st century,” said Johnson.
California continued the federal government when it deployed the National Guard and the US Marines in some parts of Los Angeles in June for demonstrations against ice raids, but a court refused to block the troops.
The main target cities mentioned by Trump are not only the democratic majority in their vote, but also managed by black mayors, notably Washington, DC, Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Oakland.
Rahm Emanuel, a former member of the Congress of Illinois Democrat, chief of staff to former president Barack Obama, and a former mayor of Chicago, also appeared on Sunday on CNN exhorting people to reflect that Trump, in two mandates, had never deployed American troops in American cities, never abroad.
Emanuel said that if he was still mayor, he called on the president to act as a partner and, although the crime fell, to “work with us on public security” to fight against abriaurs, firearm crimes and gangs and not “come to act as if we can be an occupied city”.
He added about Trump’s agenda: “He delivered his speech in Iowa, he said” I hate “Democrats, and that can be a reflection of this.” The speech was in July, when Trump exposed the Democrats to the Congress who refused to vote for his only major bill, the flagship legislation of the second Trump administration which focuses on tax reductions for the rich and the massive increases in the anti-immigration agenda and the benefits of programs such as Medicaid, which provides health insurance to the American.
