Illinois leaders on Monday pushed back firmly against President Donald Trump’s threat to bring military troops to fight crime in Chicago, arguing the plan was both unnecessary and an authoritarian attempt to punish the president’s rivals and silence his critics.
“Do not come to Chicago,” Gov. JB Pritzker said during a press conference near the base of a Trump-branded tower in downtown Chicago.
Pritzker, a Democrat, said no one from the Trump administration had been in touch with state or local leaders about the threatened Chicago deployment, and accused the president of carrying out an “authoritarian” shock campaign to “circumvent democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections.”
“We are being targeted because of what and whom we represent,” added Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Rather than sending the National Guard to stop crime, which has sharply declined in Chicago following a massive pandemic-era spike, Johnson argued the president wanted to take control of the state’s National Guard to punish a large, diverse, Democrat-run city with a substantial immigrant population.
The alarm from Illinois leaders comes after Trump said last week Chicago was likely the “next” city where the administration will send scores of National Guard troops, following highly controversial deployments in Washington this month and Los Angeles earlier this summer.
