'Serious, Ominous Stuff': Trump Calls to Jail Johnson, Pritzker After Texas Invasion
One critic accused Trump of "pitting armed soldiers from one state against the citizens of another."
President Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the imprisonment of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker hours after members of the Texas National Guard arrived to patrol the streets of the third-largest US city.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said that the "Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers" and then added, "Governor Pritzker also!"
Sam Stein, a reporter at The Bulwark, described Trump's call to jail Johnson and Pritzker "serious, ominous stuff" in a post on X, and then recommended an article written by his colleague, Jonathan Last, who warned that the Texas National Guard is being used "to impose the president’s will on the citizens of Illinois."
Last then listed actions by federal immigration enforcement officials that he described as a ratcheting up of "extralegal violence against both immigrants and citizens in Chicago" aimed at provoking an angry local response that will then be used as a justification for further escalation.
"He is setting not just the federal government against one of the states, but pitting armed soldiers from one state against the citizens of another," Last warned.
Trump's threats to jail Johnson and Pritzker came on the same day that former FBI Director James Comey was arraigned in federal court after Trump directly lobbied for his indictment last month, even going so far as to fire the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia because he did not think there was a legitimate criminal case against Comey.
Trump on Tuesday officially deployed Texas National Guard troops to Chicago, purportedly to assist local law enforcement and federal immigration officials working in the area.
Since the president launched "Operation Midway Blitz" in September, hundreds of federal immigration agents have been deployed to Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, where Pritzker has said they have caused "chaos" where none existed before they arrived—attacking a journalist and a priest with pepper balls at a protest outside an ICE facility; slamming a congressional candidate to the ground; dragging US citizens, including children, out of their homes during a raid in the middle of the night; and fatally shooting a man during a traffic stop.
In a speech delivered last week in front of hundreds of US generals, Trump laid out plans to use the American military to battle against a group of citizens whom he described as "the enemy from within."
"This is a war too," Trump said at one point during his speech. "It’s a war from within."
The president also said that he told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that "we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military," after he listed San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles as "very dangerous places" that "we’re gonna straighten... out one by one."
Trump for decades has spoken in approving terms of governments that use the military to crush internal dissent. In a 1990 interview with Playboy, for instance, Trump said that the Chinese government "almost blew it" when student protesters flooded into Tiananmen Square.
"Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength," Trump said of China. "That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak."
