Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker responded to President Donald Trump’s statement regarding plans to send the National Guard to Chicago to curb violence, calling the move an attempt to “manufacture a crisis” and an abuse of power.
“The safety of the people of Illinois is always my top priority,” Pritzker said in a statement Saturday. “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 activity duty military within our own borders.”
The statement came one day after President Donald Trump said he plans to send the National Guard to Chicago next as part of his attempts to curb violence in multiple U.S. cities, which began with similar measures taken in Washington D.C.
“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,” Pritzker said in the statement.
The Illinois Governor added that the state has not received any requests to the federal government asking if assistance is needed, nor have any requests for federal intervention been made by the state.
“We will continue to follow the law, stand up for the sovereignty of our state, and protect the people of Illinois,” Pritzker added.
Trump’s Friday comment followed his visit with troops in D.C., where he deployed them in what he described as an attempt to “rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor.”
“To me D.C. is very exciting and a lot of people say, ‘Whoa, where’s he going from there?’ Well, I have calls from politicians begging me to go to Chicago, begging me to go to New York, begging me to go to Los Angeles,” the president told reporters Friday morning.
Then, later from the White House, Trump said he thinks “Chicago will be next.”
“Chicago is a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent, and we’ll straighten that one out probably next,” Trump said. “That’ll be our next one after this, and it won’t even be tough. And the people in Chicago … are screaming for us to come … so I think Chicago will be our next and then we’ll help with New York.”
Trump did not give any indication on timing other than saying it will begin “when we’re ready.”
Chicago’s mayor Brandon Johnson responded to the statement on Friday, saying the city is taking Trump’s comments “seriously,” but noted it “has not received any formal communication from the Trump administration regarding additional federal law enforcement or military deployments to Chicago.”
“Certainly, we have grave concerns about the impact of any unlawful deployment of National Guard troops to the City of Chicago,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement Friday afternoon. “Unlawfully deploying the National Guard to Chicago has the potential to inflame tensions between residents and law enforcement when we know that trust between police and residents is foundational to building safer communities. An unlawful deployment would be unsustainable and would threaten to undermine the historic progress we have.”
It’s not the first time Trump has mentioned sending the National Guard to Chicago, citing violence.
He previously called out the city and Illinois for its “no cash bail” policy, while decrying “out-of-control crime” in Democratic-led cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. He did not, however, mention Memphis, St. Louis, Birmingham and New Orleans — all cities in red states with the highest murder rates, according to the FBI.
“And if we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster. We have a mayor there who’s totally incompetent. He’s an incompetent man. And we have an incompetent governor there. Pritzker’s an incompetent,” President Trump told reporters earlier this month.
A statement from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office at the time read, in part, that “if President Trump wants to help make Chicago safer, he can start by releasing the funds for anti-violence programs that have been critical to our work to drive down crime and violence.”
“Sending in the National Guard would only serve to destabilize our city and undermine our public safety efforts,” Johnson said.
But there have been questions over whether Trump can send troops to Chicago.
“It’s clear to me he does not have the legal right or ability to do that. Since I was first elected, I have talked about that, the Nazis in Germany tore down a constitutional republic in just 53 days,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a vocal Trump critic, said earlier this month. “It does not take much, frankly, and we seem to have a president who is hellbent on doing just that.”
The governor said that a law known as the PosseComitatus Act – put into place after the Civil War to ensure the military does not act as police against civilians – precludes the president’s actions.
But the Army said in a previous statement that the president is acting under Title 32, which deals with the role of the National Guard and the ability for governors or the president to call up the guard under certain circumstances.
Meanwhile in D.C., Trump said in a social media post Friday he was considering “a complete and total Federal takeover.” He’s already seized control of the local police department for 30 days, which could be extended with congressional approval.
Trump has claimed the city is in the midst of a crime crisis despite statistics showing a declining problem. The U.S. attorney in Washington has opened an investigation into the numbers, the latest pressure point in a tug of war between the administration and D.C. government.
“Mayor Muriel Bowser must immediately stop giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures, or bad things will happen,” the president wrote.
And it comes as nearly 2,000 National Guard members are stationed in D.C., with the arrival this week of hundreds of troops from several Republican-led states.
The Pentagon and Army said last week that troops would not carry weapons.
The city had been informed about the intent for the National Guard to be armed, a person familiar with the conversations said earlier this week. The person was not authorized to disclose the plans and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
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