Leading Democrats this weekend accused US President Donald Trump of ginning up a fake "crisis" in order to justify his proposed military intervention in cities including Chicago, as National Guard troops continued their occupation of Washington, DC against a backdrop of popular protests.
Trump said Friday that Chicago—which is experiencing a double-digit dip in violent crime and a historic drop in homicides—is "probably next" in line for federal intervention after Washington, DC. Around 2,000 National Guard troops are deployed in the nation's capital and the administration has taken over the Metropolitan Police Department amid threats by the president to oust Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser for pointing out that violent crime has decreased dramatically in the city.
The president also threatened to deploy federal forces under the pretext of combating crime in cities including Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, Oakland, and San Francisco. Violent crime is trending downward in all of those cities—with some registering historically low levels.
Responding to Trump's threats, Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement Saturday that "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."
"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," the governor added.
In a Sunday morning interview on CNN, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said that "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."
"I strongly support the statement that was issued by Gov. Pritzker making clear that there's no basis, no authority, for Donald Trump to potentially try to drop federal troops into the city of Chicago," Jeffries added.
Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to then-Vice President Kamala Harris, asserted on the social media site Bluesky that "there is no emergency that merits whatever Trump is plotting in Chicago with the military. None."
"It's another bullshit manufactured crisis from a desperate president who wants to extend his power and score cheap political points," Nellis added.
