America’s next big showdown is brewing over Donald Trump’s zeal to impose unusual presidential power as he eyes big, Democratic-run cities to expand a crime crackdown that sent troops flocking onto the streets of Washington, DC.
Trump’s torrid rhetoric claiming that crime is out of control, which is often misleading, is a classic page from the playbook of strongman leaders. It could precipitate high tensions between the federal government and states over the limits of his constitutional and legal authority.
The president’s threats prompted alarmed Democrats on Sunday to warn that there would be no justification for him to dispatch troops to a city such as Chicago over local opposition.
“We should continue to support local law enforcement and not simply allow Donald Trump to play games with the lives of the American people as part of his effort to manufacture a crisis and create a distraction because he’s deeply unpopular,” House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
On Friday, Trump told reporters that “Chicago will be our next” target while he would “help” New York after that. Trump last week also name-checked Baltimore and Oakland, California, where he argued crime is “very bad.”
CNN reported Saturday that the Trump administration has been planning for weeks to send the National Guard to Chicago, according to two officials. It is not yet clear how many troops would be sent to Chicago, or when those deployments would start.
Trump on Sunday lashed out at Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a potential Democratic presidential hopeful in 2028, who had suggested the president walk with him through Baltimore to view local attempts to stem violent crime. The president slammed the city as “out of control (and) crime ridden” and said he wouldn’t go there until the “Crime Disaster” was cleaned up.
Trump’s critics argue his deployment of National Guard forces in the US capital and in Los Angeles in response to demonstrations earlier this year against his immigration policies are prototype operations for wider national crackdowns.
But the president has smaller legal leeway to surge federal troops into cities and to dictate law enforcement policies in the states than in Washington, a federal district.
The consequences are huge if Trump turns from Washington to other big cities
Sending troops or dedicating federal agents to police work into a major city such as Chicago or Baltimore against the will of Democratic state and city officials would create a new test of the presidential powers Trump incessantly seeks to expand and would threaten state sovereignty — which Republicans have historically sought to preserve.
Declaring yet another national emergency to federalize National Guard reserve troops normally commanded by a state governor would trigger legal showdowns over Trump’s preferred method of unlocking new and questionable executive authority. He suggested last week he might declare a national emergency in Washington, to get around a 30-day limit on troop deployments.
A crackdown in a place like Chicago would also offer Trump the chance to ramp up his mass deportation effort with a surge force at a time when it is increasingly appearing that this is his key goal in Washington. A CNN analysis of government data found that in the first week after the administration took control of the capital’s police force and deployed federal agents and troops on the streets, there was a moderate dip in reported crime while arrests of immigrants were up tenfold from typical ICE arrest tallies.
Choosing a big, Democratic city would also allow Trump to choreograph a new political extravaganza in a performative presidency built on televised spectacles from summits to bill signings and dealmaking. The substance often lags the political symbolism.
The risk would be that such moves could disrupt chains of command between local elected officials and police chiefs and upset community policing initiatives designed to stem violent crime. And it would reinforce a growing impression that Trump is seeking to normalize the anomalous use of soldiers in domestic settings to purse his political priorities.
As was the case in Washington, a Chicago crackdown would give Trump another opening to impose his conservative power and autocratic tendencies on a population that voted overwhelmingly for his opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, in 2024.
And it would enable him to put Democrats in a political vise, forcing them to walk a tightrope between rejecting federal takeovers and his hardline tactics while risking alienating voters who are concerned about violent crime and the impact of past lax border policies.
Then there is the question of paying for all this.
Trump’s growing zeal for using federal troops and agents will sooner or later raise the question of resources. Prolonged National Guard deployments are expensive. Redeploying federal agents from other duties could affect the FBI’s ability to target transnational crime or anti-terrorism investigations. The resource issue raises questions about the administration’s capacity to enact long-term reductions in crime since open-ended deployments are unsustainable.
Democrats push back as Trump depicts dystopian crime crisis
Trump’s warnings about supposedly lawless inner cities do not necessarily reflect the true picture of public order. For example, crime in Washington fell in 2024, and again so far this year. In Chicago, the police said Friday that homicides were down 31% this year, and shootings fell 36%. Still, that doesn’t mean people who live in big cities feel safe. Many would welcome seeing more police on the streets, and cities and states have been calling on the federal government for more partnerships and resources — but balk at Trump’s imposed solutions.
The president’s dystopian descriptions increasingly resemble an attempt to create a rhetorical crime emergency that he could then use to justify draconian methods that satisfy his desire to look strong and his attempts to push up deportations.
As Trump stokes a sense of crisis, Democrats are resisting
Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel told Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday, “I think everybody should take a step back and realize that, as a commander in chief over his two terms, he’s only deployed and put boots on the ground in American cities, never overseas. And just think about what that means as a country.”
Emmanuel, a CNN senior political and global affairs commentator, suggested that Trump’s true purpose was to redouble immigration enforcement in cities — like Chicago — that do not cooperate with federal authorities in crackdowns against undocumented migrants. “This will not be about fighting crime,” he said.
And Emmanuel, a former senior member of Democratic House leadership, White House chief of staff and ambassador to Japan, offered some advice for his party, which has sometimes struggled to connect with voters on crime. “We have a strategy for fighting crime: more police on the beat and getting kids, gangs and guns off the street.”
Jeffries, from New York, said on “State of the Union” that Democrats, like all Americans, want safer communities, but opposed Trump’s power grabs. “We should make sure that the flood of guns into these communities is cut off. We should make sure that we’re dealing with the mental health crisis that exists all across the United States of America, and, by the way, which Donald Trump is exacerbating by cutting funds to actually help people who are dealing with emotional distress.”
Democratic local leaders are trying to discredit the president’s claim that crime is so out of control in cities as to merit such a crackdown.
On Saturday, JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, issued a statement pointing out that his state had received no requests or outreach from the federal government asking whether it needs help, after Trump named Chicago as a future venue for his surge of military and federal personnel. “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,” he said.
And Pritzker signaled that he’d do everything he could to push back against outside, federal power. “We will continue to follow the law, stand up for the sovereignty of our state, and protect the people of Illinois,” he said.
On Sunday, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul told CNN’s Isabel Rosales that his office sought to work with federal entities including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the Secret Service. He said those agencies were trained to combat crime, while the National Guard is not.
Trump is “operating as a dictator,” Raoul said. “Turning the military against these American citizens in cities on American land is unprecedented.”
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