Not that long ago, critics’ warnings that Donald Trump would one day start deploying federal troops against politically unfriendly American cities spawned scoffs of Trump Derangement Syndrome! from his most fervent supporters. Now that that exact scenario has started unfolding, he and they are trying to gaslight it as normal and rational. This is how Trump historically has gotten away with his increasingly abnormal and irrational abuses of power.
Democratic political leaders have been sadly ineffectual in challenging these patterns. But in an encouraging exception, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Monday laid out the constitutional and philosophical case against Trump’s militarization of our cities to devastating effect. It’s a speech that should serve as a wake-up call to Americans of all political stripes: What this president is doing on this front is deeply un-American.
“I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis — not the manufactured one — that we are facing in this city, and as a state, and as a country,” Pritzker began during his , which was in response to reports Trump is planning to send National Guard troops into Chicago under the patently phony justification of fighting local crime.
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“I am ringing an alarm,” said Pritzker. “ ... Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here.”
It’s an alarm that’s long overdue.
Trump himself has for years signaled his yearning to break with constitutional norms by militarizing America’s streets, using crime-fighting, immigration enforcement and any other handy excuse as justification to harass urban areas that tend to oppose him politically. Like so much of what Trump says all the time, his militarization musings have long been dismissed by supporters and critics alike as typical Trumpian bluster. Take him seri goes the now-familiar advice on how to deal with this president.
As it turns out, taking him literally was called for in this case. Trump deployed National Guard and Marine troops to Los Angeles in June, ostensibly to confront disorder that arose during immigration enforcement roundups there. In fact, the isolated instances of violent protest were nothing that required federal intervention, as Los Angeles’ Democratic mayor and California’s Democratic governor have said repeatedly. Trump just wanted to send in the troops.
Ditto with Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., supposedly to confront crime there. D.C.’s crime issues are real but aren’t the escalating crisis Trump claims; like Chicago, St. Louis and most other cities, Washington has actually seen a decrease in violent crime in the past few years.
The Washington Post last week that Chicago may be next on Trump’s list. Citing administration sources, the newspaper revealed that military officials are, on Trump’s orders, compiling plans to deploy thousands of National Guard troops and possibly active-duty military to the Windy City. The White House hasn’t denied the report.
In his speech to an outdoor crowd near the Chicago River on Monday, Pritzker methodically destroyed the argument that the city is so crime-wracked that a federal military incursion is merited against the wishes of both the mayor and governor.
“[I]n case there was any doubt as to the motivation behind Trump’s military occupation, take note: 13 of the top 20 cities in homicide rate (are within states that) have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago,” Pritzker said. “Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.”
Those stats, easily confirmed by the federal government’s own data, show that in fact cities like St. Louis — which is anti-Trump in its politics but sits within a solidly Republican-controlled state — have higher violent-crime rates than Chicago.
If Trump decides to send federal troops down Market Street in St. Louis, you can bet he will at least give Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe a heads-up. Pritzker noted that no such coordination was offered to his Democratic administration, nor to Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
“We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did,” Pritzker told his Chicago audience: “We read a story in The Washington Post.”
Importantly, Pritzker didn’t merely expose the anti-factual nonsense behind Trump’s threats toward Chicago and other cities. He also put it all in the context of a growing pattern of abuse of power by a “wannabe dictator.” He called out “public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man.” He warned of “authoritarian creep” in the administration’s increasingly brazen use of the military on domestic soil.
“What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American,” said Pritzker. “... This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals.”
He added: “Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish dissidence, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.”
Pritzker’s speech should be for other Democrats, for Republicans of conscience — and for any regular Americans who still don’t recognize the dark path down which this rogue president is dragging America’s democracy.
