President Donald Trump and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker are each the type of foe the other loves to hate.
On one level, their escalating showdown over the president’s threat to send the National Guard onto the streets of Chicago is a convenient political feud.
Trump thrives when he has an enemy to target. His political appeal is based on the premise that he is stronger than anyone who tries to challenge or restrain him.
Pritzker is a potential Democratic presidential hopeful. His party is pining for someone to show defiance to Trump. And since one of his possible rivals for the 2028 Democratic nomination, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, is leading the fight back, it’s good politics to show he’s just as tough.
But this clash runs deeper than a short-term political spat. It might develop into a full-blown crisis between a Republican White House and a major Democratic-run city and state. Likely legal challenges could turn on core values of republicanism in a dispute between a president with a monarchical sense of power and a state that rejects federal duress.
When Pritzker on Monday told Trump, “Do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here,” he was echoing tensions fundamental to the American system of governance that were stirred at notable moments of US history — for instance, in the run-up to the Civil War and around federal enforcement of civil rights laws.
Chicago has long been a target for Trump
Trump has made no secret that he’s eyeing Chicago as his next test case for a law-and-order crackdown in which he dispatched troops onto the streets of Los Angeles and Washington, DC, with the performative zeal of a demagogue.
“They say … ‘He’s a dictator. He’s a dictator,’” Trump said Monday. “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’ I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator,” Trump added in remarks unlikely to ease concern over what he plans next.
The president’s determination to deploy the National Guard in the Windy City feels like a calibrated escalation in his testing of the limits of executive power and a way of normalizing the idea of khaki-clad soldiers conducting domestic law enforcement.
When he sent the Guard into Los Angeles in June, Trump at least had the patina of an excuse that he was protecting federal buildings following demonstrations that erupted in June against his deportation sweeps. Washington, DC, is a federal district, and affords Trump significant leeway — within limits he may soon test — to wield power.
But a decision to defy Pritzker, who commands the Illinois National Guard, and to federalize reservists in the absence of an unusual emergency would represent another step toward strongman rule. It would draw vigorous legal challenges from state and city authorities.
“What the president is proposing is military occupation of the city of Chicago and cities across America,” Brandon Johnson, the city’s mayor, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday.
Generally, the president has the authority to deploy the National Guard over the objections of a state governor only in the rarest of situations. Title 10 of the US Code allows the president to deploy the reservists in the case of invasion, to suppress rebellion or to execute the laws of the United States. None of those conditions seem to accurately describe the current situation in Chicago, Baltimore or Washington, DC.
California has already challenged Trump’s June federalization of the National Guard in a critical case that could have implications for other states but has yet to reach a final resolution. In his other claims of vast executive power, Trump has shown himself adept at taking steps to do exactly what he wants in a way that outraces the laborious process of litigating major constitutional questions.
On Monday, he announced that he’d signed an executive order designed to create a trained National Guard rapid response force that can be mobilized to ensure “public safety and order.” This envisages a far broader role for the Guard on domestic soil than has been the custom for a force mostly deployed during national disasters. While the president can federalize the guard — and assume command — Trump’s actions raise the question of whether he’d do so for political reasons and to flex personal power.
This is especially relevant since Trump has declared a myriad of national emergencies to unlock extra executive powers — for instance to wage trade wars by imposing tariffs, impinging on policy that is normally reserved by the Constitution for Congress.
Trump has long demonized Chicago — he mentioned the city’s murder rate in his 2016 Republican National Convention speech — and has frequently portrayed it in the most sinister terms. “As you all know, Chicago’s a killing field right now,” Trump told reporters Monday. A federal operation to use the military in local law enforcement would therefore fulfill a long-held political ambition. And it would be a strong fit with the image of a fix-it tough guy that is so appealing to his political base.
Democrats’ challenge in pushing back
Democrats are pushing back hard against Trump, who seems keen to deploy troops to several Democratic-run states. Newsom has accused the president of using the military as a “private army.”
And Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore accused Trump of seeking to attack the country’s largest cities from “behind a desk.” Trump responded on Monday by blasting Baltimore, Maryland’s largest metropolis, which has long suffered serious violent crime, as a “horrible death bed.”
Johnson argued that Chicago was not in the 20 most dangerous cities in the United States.
But Trump doesn’t care. He senses political leverage. As he so often does, the president explained his thinking in his voluminous public comments. “I think this is another men-in-women’s-sports thing. I think this is one of those — you know, they call them 80/20 issues; I call them 97/3. I think the Democrats better get smart,” he said Monday.
In other words, Trump thinks he can exploit public perceptions that Republicans are tougher on crime while mining a seam to expand his own power.
GOP presidents dating back at least as far as Richard Nixon, and including Ronald Reagan, have also used this trump card. Polls consistently explain why. A CNN/SSRS survey conducted in May, for example, showed that 27% of Americans saw the Democratic Party as closer to their own views on crime and policing, while 40% said the GOP was a better match for their views.
By forcing Democrats to argue that his actions are unconstitutional or breach the law, the president can characterize them as more concerned with technicalities than with the experiences of millions of Americans. He’d rather be seen as the president who closed America’s borders and waged a battle against criminals than play by the rules. The conundrum for Democratic governors such as Newsom, Moore and Pritzker is to portray Trump’s power grabs for what they are without looking soft on crime.
Their task is complicated because crime statistics can show one thing while people’s life experiences suggest another.
While data shows that crime has been falling in cities like Washington, DC, and Chicago, there have still been 101 homicides in the capital and 262 in the Second City this year. It’s not surprising that many people don’t feel safe. Some may welcome a crackdown.
“How much of an emergency do you need after years and decades of the high crime and danger in these cities?” Minnesota’s former Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty asked on CNN’s “OutFront” with Erin Burnett on Monday. “Yes, crime is down a little compared to a high base from a couple of years ago, but still in our major cities across this country, public safety and not backing law enforcement is a major concern.”
Radical answers to reasonable questions
A characteristic of Trump’s political career is that he often raises vital questions that concern voters that many other political leaders have ignored, like the tide of undocumented migration or the toll of globalization in the Rust Belt. Crime may turn out to be another example.
And with his crackdown, he’s implicitly asking residents of Washington, Chicago and other cities this question: Have they really been well served by Democratic leaders after high rates of crime and homelessness for decades?
But his motives might raise fewer questions if he were also targeting violent cities in GOP-run states. Indeed, CNN’s Marshall Cohen reported that at least 10 cities in states whose GOP governors sent Guard troops to Washington had higher rates of violent crime and homicide than the nation’s capital last year.
But then, Trump often proposes radical solutions to reasonable questions that call into doubt his respect for the law and the Constitution.
His crime crackdowns look likely to take the country up to that line again.
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