The Trump administration branded Chicago a “war zone” Sunday as a justification for deploying soldiers against the will of local Democratic officials, while a judge blocked the White House from sending troops to another Democrat-run city.
An escalating political crisis across the country pits President Donald Trump’s anti-crime and migration crackdown against opposition Democrats who accuse him of an authoritarian power grab.
In the newest flashpoint, Trump late Saturday authorized deployment of 300 National Guard soldiers to Chicago, the third-largest city in the United States, despite the opposition of elected leaders including the mayor and state Governor JB Pritzker.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the move on Sunday, claiming on Fox News that Chicago is “a war zone.”
But Pritzker, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” show, accused Republicans of aiming to sow “mayhem on the ground. They want to create the war zone, so that they can send in even more troops.”
In a statement, the governor called the proposed deployment “Trump’s invasion,” saying “there is no reason” to send troops into Illinois or any other state without the “knowledge, consent, or cooperation” of local officials.
A CBS poll released Sunday found that 58 percent of Americans oppose deploying the National Guard to cities.
Trump — who last Tuesday spoke of using the military for a “war from within” — shows no sign of backing off his hardline campaign.
On Sunday, he claimed falsely that “Portland is burning to the ground. It’s insurrectionists all over the place.”
Key ally Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, echoed the president’s rhetoric Sunday, telling NBC that National Guard troops deployed in the US capital Washington had responded to a “literal war zone” — a characterization at odds with reality.
Trump’s campaign to use the military on home soil hit a roadblock late Saturday in Portland, Oregon, when a court ruled the deployment was unlawful.
Trump has repeatedly called Portland “war-ravaged,” but US District Judge Karin Immergut issued a temporary block, saying “the president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”
“This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” Immergut wrote in her ruling.
Although Portland has seen scattered attacks on federal officers and property, the Trump administration failed to demonstrate “that those episodes of violence were part of an organized attempt to overthrow the government as a whole” — thereby justifying military force, she said.
