Chicago mayor blasts Trump’s threat to deploy National Guard : NPR

The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, attended a press conference in January. Johnson described the threat of President Trump on Friday to send the National Guard to Chicago “not coordinated, useless and unrelated”.

Scott Olson / Getty Images from North America

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Scott Olson / Getty Images from North America

Chicago’s political leaders slam a suggestion by President Trump at the end of last week that he could soon send troops from the National Guard to the Midwest Metropolis to fight crime.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, a Democrat, said in a statement on Friday that Trump’s approach was “not coordinated, useless and not solid” and that “illegally deploying” the National Guard in Chicago could “ignite tensions between residents and the application of the law”.

Speaking on MSNBC on Sunday, Johnson added: “The city of Chicago does not need a military occupation … It is clearly a violation of the Constitution, and we will remain firm and vigilant in our commitment to guarantee that our democracy is protected and that our humanity is guaranteed.”

According to data from the city mentioned by Mayor Johnson, Chicago has dropped to certain violent crimes in the past year, including a reduction of more than 30% of homicides, a 35% drop in flights and a drop of almost 40% of fire.

Earlier in August, Trump deployed hundreds of members of the National Guard in Washington, DC, as part of what he presented as an effort to reduce crime and eliminate homelessness. (It is despite the fact that the mayor Muriel Bowser said that the violent crimes at DC were at his lowest level in 30 years.)

Addressing journalists on Friday in the oval office, Trump said that he wanted to adopt this approach in other American cities, including New York and Chicago. “Chicago is in disorder. You have an incompetent mayor, very incompetent. And we will rectify it probably then,” said Trump.

Sunday morning, the president declared in an article on his social media network Truth Social that he could “send the” troops “” to Baltimore, in response to an invitation earlier in the week by the governor of Maryland Wes Moore so that Trump joined him during a public security march to “discuss strategies for an effective public security policy”.

Saturday evening, the Washington Post said the Pentagon has been planning military intervention in Chicago for weeks, including the mobilization of several thousand members of the National Guard and the possible use of troops in active service.

Federal officials have deployed the army on American soil. In June, the Trump administration sent around 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 navies to Los Angeles after several days of demonstrations against immigration application operations, a move of Californian officials called illegal.

Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker said in an article on X on Saturday that the “threat of Trump to bring the National Guard to Chicago did not concern security – it is a test of the limits of his power and a trial for a police state”.

He added: “Illinois has long worked with federal police to fight crime, but we will not let a dictator impose his will.”

Pritzker noted on Saturday in a separate declaration that the Illinois had not asked for any intervention from the federal government and that there was no urgency in the state which justified the deployment of the National Guard or the Military.

Chicago’s crime rate has dropped while the city and the federal government have invested in targeted violence intervention programs, Wbez Mariah Woelfel reported, but the Ministry of Justice recently reduced subsidy funding for such work.