President Donald Trump’s extraordinary moves to put troops on US soil appear to be following a familiar political script.
It goes like this: Trump seizes on an issue that’s one of his strengths and is also a major concern for many Americans in an effort to try to expand his power. But despite both of those factors, he appears to go too far for most Americans.
It happened with immigration and deportations; it now appears to be happening with Trump sending troops to major American cities to combat crime.
We’ve now got three new polls on the latter issue. They arrive as Trump threatens to send troops to a third city, Chicago, after previously sending them to Los Angeles (in response to protests against his immigration raids) and Washington, DC, (as part of a federal crackdown that is ostensibly about crime).
All three polls show Trump’s moves to dispatch troops are unpopular, even as Americans believe he’s addressing a very real problem and seem open to less drastic measures.
An AP-NORC poll showed 81% of Americans regarded crime in large cities as a “major problem.” But they opposed the federal government taking over local police departments – as Trump did in Washington, DC – by a wide margin, 55%-32%.
Similarly, a Reuters-Ipsos poll showed just 36% of Americans endorsed Trump’s takeover of the DC Metropolitan Police. And Americans also opposed deploying the National Guard, 46%-38%.
And a Quinnipiac University poll showed registered voters opposed Trump using the National Guard to combat crime in DC, 56%-41%.
The numbers echo what we saw after Trump’s first big move to dispatch troops to Los Angeles in June. Multiple polls showed his handling of the situation was double digits underwater, even as the guard and the Marines largely just protected federal property.
There is some nuance in the new polls, and the situation doesn’t seem to have hurt Trump overall thus far.
But the surveys still point to potential trouble ahead for the president’s nascent effort to militarize US soil.
For instance, the AP-NORC poll showed Americans were actually open to a limited role for troops on US soil. They said using the military and National Guard to assist local police was at least “somewhat acceptable,” 55%-37%.
The problem for Trump is that he has clearly gone beyond that threshold. And it’s hard to see how his designs on using the troops in the coming days, weeks and months would be limited to that.
Because DC, as the nation’s capital, is a federal district, Trump had more authority to call in the troops and control the situation by federalizing the police force. In Chicago and elsewhere, he doesn’t have the same authorities.
If he does send in the troops there, it will apparently be over the objections of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats. In that case, it would be difficult to see how the troops would merely assist local police – versus, say, conducting their own law enforcement or even, in the most drastic case, being part of another attempted police takeover.
The administration hasn’t detailed its plans, but Trump said Tuesday that he had “the right to do anything I want to do” in Chicago.
The question from there is whether all of this will dog the president politically – perhaps in a way that causes him to change course.
The evidence on that is mixed thus far.
The AP-NORC poll pegged Trump’s approval rating on crime at a relatively strong 53%. But the other two polls pegged it significantly lower, at 43% (Reuters-Ipsos) and 42% (Quinnipiac). Crime was his best issue in each poll, but that’s not saying much given how unpopular Trump is.
So we don’t yet know.
But returning to the immigration comparison: We’ve seen how situations like this can focus attention on something that Americans don’t like – and damage his numbers accordingly.
As it happens, that’s what happened the first time Trump called in the troops.
Trump’s biggest drop on the issue of immigration, in fact, coincided with his sending troops to Los Angeles amid protests of his deportation policies.
Data compiled by Nate Silver showed his net approval rating on immigration dropped about 8 points in a little more than a week – from 4 points positive to 4 points negative.
His numbers still haven’t recovered.
The Trump administration had been doing controversial things on deportations as far back as March – including depriving undocumented migrants of due process, trying to deport pro-Palestinian activists with legal status, and wrongfully deporting people – but it seemed to take Los Angeles to really drive it home. Indeed, polling at the time showed people who were paying close attention opposed Trump’s mobilization of troops a lot more than those who weren’t.
Could it be happening again, this time with crime? Time will tell.
But the concept of troops on US soil is something Americans have been uncomfortable with before. And Trump’s efforts to test their tolerance – yet again – appear to be going poorly.
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