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WASHINGTON (CN) — President Donald Trump plans to send National Guard soldiers to patrol Chicago and Baltimore, he said Tuesday, signaling that he would follow through on weeks of threats against the two cities’ Democratic leadership.
The president’s comments come near the one-month mark of the White House’s unprecedented federal takeover of Washington and just hours after a federal judge ruled that the administration’s recent use the National Guard in California violated the law.
Speaking in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon, Trump said he plan to send troops into Chicago without consulting Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.
“If the governor would call me up, I would love to do it,” he said. “Now, we’re going to do it anyway, we have the right to do it, because I have an obligation to protect this country — and that includes Baltimore.”
Trump has repeatedly criticized high violent crime and homicide rates in both Chicago and Baltimore, which he said Tuesday was one of the most “unsafe places anywhere in the world.” And’s he’s slammed Pritzker and Maryland Governor Wes Moore, both Democrats.
According to FBI data, Jackson, Mississippi, had the highest homicide rate in 2024, followed by Birmingham, Alabama, and St. Louis, Missouri. Baltimore ranked fifth.
Still, Trump insisted that his laser focus on Chicago and Baltimore was not motivated by politics.
“This isn’t a political thing,” the president told reporters, citing crime statistics in Chicago. “I have an obligation when 20 people are killed over the last two and a half weeks, and 75 are shot with bullets.”
Trump pointed to what the White House has framed as its successful federal intervention in D.C., where he federalized local police, called in hundreds of federal agents and mobilized the National Guard to crack down on crime.
“It’s now a safe zone,” he said. “We have no crime, we’re in great shape.”
Though the presence of federal law enforcement in D.C. has resulted in more than 1,500 arrests and deterred crime, the capital city had been in the midst of a 30-year low in violent crime prior to Trump’s August takeover.
Trump did not give any sort of timeline for when he might deploy National Guard troops to either Chicago or Baltimore, simply telling reporters that the military would be “going in” at some point.
In Congress, which has only just returned from its annual August recess, lawmakers slammed the White House’s proposed crackdown. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin said on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon that the decision to send the National Guard into Chicago would be “another dangerous, illegal and unconstitutional abuse of power.”
“The president claims his actions are meant to drive down crime and restore order, but all they have done is create a political spectacle,” said Durbin, adding that the Constitution grants states the authority to maintain their own law and order.
“The only thing that matters to him are the optics — continuing to push the limits of our Constitution and the rule of law as he abuses his office,” the Illinois Democrat said.
But even as Trump toys with the idea of deploying the National Guard to yet another U.S. city, his administration was handed a crucial loss in its push to commit federal resources to state-level law enforcement.
A federal judge on Tuesday ruled the Trump administration’s move to deploy roughly 4,000 troops to Los Angeles in June ran afoul of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the government from using federal troops in local law enforcement. The Trump administration, though, has said that it would keep the military in California despite the ruling and argued that soldiers had not been used to enforce the law.
The president in early June deployed the National Guard and roughly 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to quell immigration protests. The White House quickly faced a legal challenge from California Governor Gavin Newsom.
It’s unclear yet whether Pritzker or Moore will sue to block Trump from bringing federal troops into their states. The White House has yet to formally order the National Guard into either Chicago or Baltimore.
Meanwhile, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Tuesday issued an order establishing a joint emergency operations center aimed at coordinating the municipal government with a host of federal law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Park Police. The move appears aimed at preparing the nation’s capital for a long-term or even indefinite federal presence.
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