President Donald Trump Friday recommended that federal troops may very well be deployed to Chicago amid his efforts to crack down on crime, repeating a menace that each Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson have stated could be unlawful.
Throughout a information convention Friday within the Oval Workplace, Trump stated Chicago may very well be subsequent to obtain federal intervention, much like Washington, D.C., the place almost 2,000 Nationwide Guard troops have been deployed to handle what his administration has described as a surge in violent crime, though D.C. officers say crime is falling of their metropolis.
“Chicago is a multitude, you will have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent, and we’ll straighten that one out subsequent,” Trump stated referring to Johnson. “That can be our subsequent one after this, and it received’t even be robust.”
In a press release Friday afternoon, Johnson stated deploying federal troops to Chicago could be towards the regulation and “undermine” town’s progress in lowering crime.
“We take President Trump’s statements critically, however to be clear the Metropolis has not acquired any formal communication from the Trump administration relating to extra federal regulation enforcement or navy deployments to Chicago,” the mayor stated. “Definitely, we now have grave considerations concerning the affect of any illegal deployment of Nationwide Guard troops to the Metropolis of Chicago.
“The issue with the President’s method is that it’s uncoordinated, uncalled for, and unsound,” Johnson added. “Unlawfully deploying the Nationwide Guard to Chicago has the potential to inflame tensions between residents and regulation enforcement after we know that belief between police and residents is foundational to constructing safer communities.”
Trump stated folks in Chicago are “screaming for us to come back.”
In a social media put up Friday, Pritzker wrote, “Issues Persons are NOT begging for: 1. An authoritarian energy seize of main cities.”
Issues Persons are Begging for:
1. Cheaper groceries
2. No Medicaid and SNAP cuts
3. Launch of the Epstein RecordsdataIssues Persons are NOT begging for:
1. An authoritarian energy seize of main cities https://t.co/uOksaPNYAr— JB Pritzker (@JBPritzker) August 22, 2025
Trump made comparable threats throughout a information convention final week, calling Chicago a “catastrophe” and each Johnson and Pritzker “incompetent.”
After Trump introduced his resolution Aug. 11 to deploy troops within the nation’s capital and warned Chicago may very well be subsequent, Pritzker dismissed the president’s warning, saying the president “has completely no proper and no authorized means to ship troops into town of Chicago.”
Pritzker cited an 1878 federal regulation referred to as the Posse Comitatus Act, which primarily prohibits the federal authorities from utilizing navy personnel to implement home coverage or take part in civilian regulation enforcement except explicitly licensed by regulation.
There isn’t any indication Trump will comply with by along with his menace. Nonetheless, if he sooner or later does, deployment of Nationwide Guard troops may come swiftly. The primary Nationwide Guard troops started arriving on the streets of Washington Aug. 12, a day after he introduced he would provoke the deployment to the capital and take over its police division.
ACLU of Illinois spokesperson Ed Yohnka stated Trump’s militarization of cities is “not about public security.”
“Donald Trump doesn’t know something about public security, and he doesn’t perceive something about policing, as he demonstrates each single time he talks concerning the concern,” Yohnka stated. “The reality is that public security is a critical concern that wants critical folks, and that isn’t somebody who believes that the reply is a militaristic invasion of our metropolis.”
Yohnka stated ramping up public security in cities requires entry to financial alternatives and social providers for his or her residents — packages that Trump’s administration has slashed.
“[Trump] has one software, power. It’s the solely factor that he’s ever seen,” Yohnka stated. “What folks in Illinois, what folks in Chicago have grappled with and know, is that we have to use numerous completely different instruments to method the difficulty of public security.
“As a result of each single resident of Illinois, and definitely each single resident of Chicago, needs their neighborhood and their neighborhood and their block to be protected. Sending in troops received’t try this.”