{"id":46551,"date":"2025-08-25T02:02:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T07:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=46551"},"modified":"2025-08-25T04:24:55","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T09:24:55","slug":"mayor-blasts-trumps-threat-to-deploy-national-guard-to-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=46551","title":{"rendered":"Mayor blasts Trump’s threat to deploy National Guard to Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CHICAGO \u2014 Chicago’s mayor is defying President Donald Trump’s <\/strong>threat to deploy the National Guard to the Windy City to combat crime and scoping out legal avenues to prevent soldiers from overtaking the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, Trump talked about his controversial deployment of the National Guard to Washington, D.C.,<\/a> and said Chicago and New York City would be next. He has described the deployment in the nation’s capital as a bid to clean up crime, but critics dismiss the move as little more than political overreach.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe guard is not needed,\u201d Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson <\/strong>told NBC News. \u201cThis is not the role of our military. The brave men and women who signed up to serve our country did not sign up to occupy American cities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson also noted the city’s decline in murders, shootings and car thefts. Chicago police crime data<\/a> from earlier this month show murders are down 31% from the same time last year, shootings have dropped by 36% and vehicle thefts are down 26%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe things that we\u2019re doing in Chicago by investing in people, youth employment, mental health care, services, building more affordable homes, making sure that our detectives bureau has all the resources that it needs … that\u2019s why we\u2019re seeing the results that we are experiencing right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOccupying our cities with the military \u2014 that\u2019s not how we build safe and affordable communities,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson on Sunday further questioned why Trump slashed federal investments in violence prevention and reduced the budget for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid<\/a> if he wanted to drive down violence in big cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe National Guard is not going to put food on people\u2019s table. The National Guard is not going to reduce unemployment,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mayor’s office said in a statement Saturday that it was working with Illinois’ governor and Cook County, which is home to Chicago, in \u201cevaluating all of our legal options to protect the people of Chicago from unconstitutional federal overreach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edwin Yohnka, director of communications and public policy for the Illinois branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Trump will face legal challenge if the guard is deployed in Chicago without a valid reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There\u2019s a higher barrier for the president to send National Guard into Chicago [than into D.C.], because there has to be a reason or he has to have the agreement of the governor of the state of Illinois. And clearly, from what we see, he\u2019s not going to have that. He\u2019s going to have to articulate a reason for doing it. I think that reason will be challenged by the state of Illinois,” Yohnka said in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the ACLU of Illinois will also be \u201con the lookout\u201d for how troops, if deployed, behave on the streets and challenge any arrests, detention sweeps or use of excessive force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking Friday at the Oval Office, Trump said he hadn\u2019t made any concrete plans with regard to Chicago and hadn’t spoken to Johnson about any troop deployment.<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He claimed, however, that people in the city “are screaming for us to come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we\u2019re ready, and we\u2019ll go in and we\u2019ll straighten out Chicago, just like we did D.C. Chicago is very dangerous,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker accused Trump on X<\/a> of \u201cattempting to manufacture a crisis, politicize Americans who serve in uniform, and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he\u2019s causing families.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chair of the Chicago City Council\u2019s Public Safety Committee spoke to NBC Chicago about the need to reduce crime in the city but said Trump’s National Guard threats are misguided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe still see an unacceptably high number of robberies, carjackings, burglaries, break-ins. We have work to do, but we need help that makes sense,” Alderman Brian Hopkins said. “The federal National Guard isn\u2019t going to make a difference in carjacking in Chicago. If he really wanted to help, we\u2019re short 2,000 police officers. Unfortunately, that is not what Trump is talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump has also threatened to deploy the guard to Baltimore <\/a>and has attacked Maryland Gov. Wes Moore on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moore said in a statement that Trump \u201cwould rather attack his country\u2019s largest cities from behind a desk than walk the streets with the people he represents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump has been using the National Guard in unconventional ways compared to past presidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Typically, the guard is called upon for crises, including natural disasters and civil unrest. In June, Trump deployed thousands of guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles <\/a>amid protests against immigration raids, against the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current D.C. deployment has raised eyebrows, as well. While it is touted as being a stand against crime, the numbers show violent crime in the nation\u2019s capital was down<\/a> 26% compared with last year, according to D.C. police data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO \u2014 Chicago’s mayor is defying President Donald Trump’s threat to deploy the National Guard to the Windy City to combat crime and scoping out legal avenues to prevent soldiers from overtaking the city. On Friday, Trump talked about his controversial deployment of the National Guard to Washington, D.C., and said Chicago and New York City would be next. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":46552,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1666,1219,1230],"class_list":["post-46551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-guard","tag-national","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46553,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46551\/revisions\/46553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}