President Trump is doubling down on his crackdown on crime in major cities. After highlighting the deployment of more than 2,200 National Guard members in Washington, D.C., he singled out Chicago as the next city he plans to “make safe.”
While he acknowledged that no concrete steps have been taken yet, Trump warned: “We’ll go in and we’ll straighten out Chicago, just like we did D.C.”
Both Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson hit back at Trump in comments Friday, with the governor accusing the president of attempting to “create chaos.”
“There are many things the federal government could do to help us reduce crime and violence in Chicago, but sending in the military is not one of them,” Johnson added.
The threat comes as part of a broader plan to send Guard troops to more than a dozen states. We take a closer look at the rollout below.
Why is Trump zeroing in on Chicago now?
Trump has long painted major U.S. cities like Chicago as unsafe and lawless. In his 2017 inaugural address, he spoke of “American carnage” in urban areas, pointing to crime and poverty, particularly in places led by Democrats. Now, that theme has carried into his second term — and escalated.
On Friday, Trump called Chicago “a mess,” insisting its residents are “screaming” for help — and going so far as to suggest that members of the city’s Black community want him to step in. “African American ladies, beautiful ladies, are saying, ‘Please, President Trump, come to Chicago, please,’” he said Friday. One of the women he appears to be referencing is Danielle Carter-Walters, a fitness trainer and co-founder of the Trump-supporting group Chicago Flips Red. Carter-Walters has publicly called for the National Guard to patrol Chicago’s streets. “We knew he had been listening to us,” she told the Chicago Sun-Times, noting that she and her small group have been “asking for it in our videos” — and, she believes, their voices are now reaching the Oval Office.
While no date has been set, The Washington Post has reported that a deployment could come as soon as September.
It’s no secret that the Windy City has struggled with violent crime: In 2024, the city’s violent crime rate was about 540 per 100,000 residents, compared with a national average of roughly 359 per 100,000. Still, homicides and shootings have steadily declined in recent years and continue to fall in 2025.
There is no emergency that warrants the President of the United States federalizing the National Guard.
JB Pritzker
That drop is part of a broader national trend. FBI data shows that, as of April 2025, violent crime was down 6.6 percent and property crime down 11.2 percent compared with the same period in 2024.
Yet the push to deploy troops isn’t only about crime. The Pentagon’s planning comes as the Trump administration pressures state and local officials to help ramp up immigration enforcement. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently sent letters to more than 30 cities and states — from California to Minnesota — demanding they end their sanctuary policies, which limit local cooperation with federal authorities.
How are Democrats responding?
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker called Trump’s move an abuse of authority, insisting, “there is no emergency that warrants the President of the United States federalizing the National Guard.”
In a lengthy thread Friday, the Democratic governor also accused Trump of trying “to incite fear in our communities and destabilize existing public safety efforts — all to create a justification for further overreach.”
Pritzker wrote in another post, “We don’t play those games. Our commitment to law and order is delivering results.”
Top Democrats have echoed that concern. Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Trump’s threats to crack down on Chicago without a state request “an effort to manufacture a crisis and create a distraction.” Democrats also point to the bigger picture: National crime rates have been falling, making Trump’s framing of urban “lawlessness” even more suspect.
Jeffries pushed back on the notion that Democrats’ opposition to National Guard deployments meant the party isn’t serious about safety.
“As Democrats, we want safer communities,” he told CNN. “We want to continue to make sure that crime can go down as it’s doing in Chicago, in New York, in Washington, D.C., and other places. And to do that, we should support local law enforcement. We should make sure that the flood of guns into these communities is cut off.”
Can Trump legally deploy the National Guard to Chicago?
Recent events have once again reignited the national conversation about the president’s power to deploy troops inside the U.S.
We have a tradition in the United States, which is more a norm than a law, that we want law enforcement to be conducted by civilians, not the military.
Ordinarily, a state’s governor controls its National Guard. But under Title 10 of federal law, the president can “federalize” the Guard and deploy troops even over a governor’s objections. Title 10 lays out the organization and powers of the Armed Forces and permits presidential orders if there is a “rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the government.” Trump invoked this authority during protests in Los Angeles in June, citing “incidents of violence and disorder” tied to ICE operations. That move triggered a legal challenge: Gov. Gavin Newsom and other officials argued the orders violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits U.S. troops from engaging in civilian law enforcement. A federal judge agreed, but the ruling was ultimately put on hold by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Title 10 isn’t the only option available. A president can also invoke the Insurrection Act to send active-duty troops into U.S. cities for law enforcement, but doing so would be politically explosive and likely to raise concerns at the Pentagon. Trump publicly floated the idea in 2020 after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis.
Both laws are more than a century old and rarely tested in modern times. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was meant to prevent the federal government from using the military as a domestic police force after Reconstruction — a shift that, in practice, cleared the way for segregation in the South. “We have a tradition in the United States, which is more a norm than a law, that we want law enforcement to be conducted by civilians, not the military,” national security law expert William Banks told the AP. That principle, reinforced in National Guard training, gives the law its weight even with limited use.
Still, the boundaries remain blurry, with no authoritative precedent on exactly where the lines are — which is why, as Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck noted to the AP, the military’s own interpretation has carried so much weight over the years.
Why is Trump mobilizing the National Guard in 19 states?
The Trump administration reportedly plans to mobilize up to 1,700 National Guard troops across 19 Republican-controlled states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, and Georgia, in the coming weeks. Texas is expected to see the largest deployment, while most states would receive only a modest presence.
According to Fox News, the troops will support the administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, along with other law enforcement priorities.
Still, the White House insists the effort is unrelated to Trump’s push to extend Washington, D.C.’s federal crime crackdown in major cities like New York. Trump also suggested sending troops to Baltimore after a spat with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who has pointed to falling crime rates and accused the president of using racially charged scare tactics for political gain.
Whether this proves to be a temporary show of force or the start of a broader, longer-term presence remains unclear.
