Illinois and Chicago elected leaders worked Sunday preparing plans to counter President Donald Trump’s potential deployment of National Guard members in the city, the latest White House move to combat what it calls the “lawlessness” of Democratic policies, but one that Democrats described as an attempt to spread public fear by using an uninvited occupying military force on domestic soil.
The Washington Post reported late Saturday, and other news outlets confirmed Sunday, that for weeks the Pentagon has been working on plans for a massive deployment of the National Guard to Chicago — following on Trump’s use of troops in Los Angeles and most recently in Washington, D.C. — as he stakes out a law-and-order stance that Democrats say is an authoritarian power grab and an attempt to divert public attention from his unfulfilled promises to curb inflation, end the Ukraine-Russia war and release the Department of Justice files of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The Post reported the deployment mission to Chicago could begin as soon as next month, following Trump’s actions in Los Angeles in June when he activated 4,000 members of the California National Guard and 700 active-duty Marines despite the protests of state and local Democratic leaders there. The Post said sending Marines to Chicago as part of the mission was less likely to happen, according to sources the news organization did not identify.
The report also followed Trump’s comments on Friday that Chicago would be the next location for a federal troop deployment like the one occurring in Washington, which mirrored comments earlier this month from the president when, in announcing the federal troop deployment in Washington, he brought up Chicago by saying, “If we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster.”
Throughout his two terms as president, Trump has targeted Chicago for criticism over the city’s handling of crime, previously saying it was “worse than Afghanistan” or other war zones, despite the city being home to one of his namesake flagship hotel properties.
On Friday, he declared the city “a mess” as he belittled the leadership of Mayor Brandon Johnson and Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Pritzker, a potential 2028 White House aspirant, has been acutely critical of Trump’s leadership. The governor has pledged to protect the state’s “sovereignty” over Trump’s actions, while Johnson raised the specter of a court fight over a deployment.
Johnson, appearing Sunday on MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” said if the media reports were accurate, what Trump “is proposing at this point would be the most flagrant violation of our constitution in the 21st century. The city of Chicago does not need a military occupation. We need to invest in people to ensure that we can build safe and affordable communities.”
Homicides, shootings and robbery incidents in Chicago have dropped by more than 30%, Johnson noted.
“This is all, I believe, an attempt to frighten and to raise anxiety across America,” he said, adding that the city “will take up legal action if necessary, whether it’s my Department of Law or working with the governor” or Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.
Later Sunday, Johnson attended the Route 66 Festival and vintage car show in North Lawndale, a neighborhood that accounts for 12% of Chicago homicides this year — landing it fourth among the city’s 77 community areas. But, he said, the area has seen a “precipitous decline in violence” in recent years following community efforts such as employing 1,000 young people in summer jobs.
“That’s how you build safe communities, by stabilizing them with critical investments. It’s not through military occupation,” he said.
Johnson and Pritzker have said there have been no formal communications between the state or city and the Trump administration about federalizing the Illinois National Guard, with the mayor adding that Trump has “demonstrated that he doesn’t have a level of consciousness to understand what it takes to run cities, not to mention an entire country.”
Following the initial news report on Saturday night, Pritzker criticized the potential deployment and said the state had made no requests for “federal intervention.”
“There is no emergency that warrants the president of the United States federalizing the Illinois National Guard, deploying the National Guard from other states, or sending active-duty military within our own borders,” the reelection-seeking, two-term governor said in a statement.
“Donald Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis, politicize Americans who serve in uniform, and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he is causing working families,” he said. “We will continue to follow the law, stand up for the sovereignty of our state, and protect the people of Illinois.”
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat and a disabled combat veteran, has sharply criticized what she said were Trump’s attempts to politicize the nation’s military and use them to “intimidate Americans in their own communities.”
“It comes as no surprise Donald Trump is once again attacking Chicago, but that doesn’t change that Trump’s continuing pattern of politicizing and misusing our nation’s military for his own partisan gain and to crush dissent is deeply disturbing, is un-American and has no place in any of our cities,” Duckworth said in a statement on Sunday.
“We know this isn’t about ‘law and order’ because Trump is once again refusing to coordinate with state and local officials,” she wrote. “This is just another attempt to distract the American people from the price increases his own policies are causing and the various personal scandals he wants to change the subject from.”
Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, another potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender and a CNN commentator, questioned whether Trump was “going to try to put the National Guard around Michigan Avenue or downtown, or is he gonna go into Englewood or other parts of the city that do have a crime problem and do have to be approached?”
“And my guess is, when you look at what he did in D.C., he’s not gonna actually deal with crime,” Emanuel said. “This is an attempt to deal with cities that are welcoming cities, known as sanctuary cities, and deal with immigration.”
Emanuel said that if the federal government wanted to assist local law enforcement in curbing criminal activity, it could be lending “technology to deal with carjackings, prosecuting gangs and gun violence in the city, working on the issues of drugs and guns coming into the city and helping coordinate task forces that deal with confronting gangs throughout the city.”
“Those are the things that I would say right now: ‘Partner with us. Don’t try to come in and act like we can be an occupied city.’”
Trump has greater legal leeway in his deployment of the Guard in the nation’s capital, a federal district under the control of the federal government, than in states. As part of his moves in Washington, Trump has also placed the city’s metropolitan police force under federal authority.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview taped before news of the potential Chicago deployment, Vice President JD Vance said Trump’s actions in Washington demonstrate a distinction between Republican and Democratic leadership.
“My message to my fellow citizens here in D.C. or all across the country would be that allowing vagrants and armed robberies to take over your city, that’s a policy choice. What President Trump is showing is that if you just empower local law enforcement to arrest and prosecute the bad guys, we can take back American streets,” Vance said.
Criticizing Democratic municipal leaders for making “a policy choice to allow lawlessness to overrun our cities,” Vance said: “It matters a lot for D.C., but I think it matters more for the whole country to see that if we just make better choices, we can take back our cities.”
During the news conference Sunday in North Lawndale, Johnson said he’d use “every single tool” at his disposal “to keep the people and the city safe.”
Mayoral aides said they were studying a lawsuit filed by the state of California against Trump, alleging he illegally federalized the state’s National Guard without the consent of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to suppress June protests over immigration raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles. Newsom is also weighing running in the Democratic presidential primary in 2028.
The state’s lawsuit contended the deployment violated state sovereignty and federal law by bypassing Newsom’s authority as the Guard’s commander-in-chief and infringing on state rights and was a violation of the federal Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits members of the military from engaging in civilian law enforcement activities.
A three-day trial concluded on Aug. 14, but no ruling has yet been issued.
Tribune reporter Adriana Pérez contributed.
Originally Published: August 24, 2025 at 3:04 PM CDT