SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
brandon johnson
'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."
Oct 08, 2025
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."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Illegal... Unconstitutional... Dangerous... Wrong': Texas National Guard Troops Invade Illinois
"Illinois will not let the Trump administration continue on their authoritarian march without resisting," vowed Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker.
Oct 07, 2025
Defying objections from state and local leaders, Texas Army National Guard troops sent on orders from President Donald Trump began arriving in Chicagoland Tuesday, sparking widespread outrage and vows to resist.
Hundreds of federalized troops arrived at a military facility in suburban Joliet, Block Club Chicago reported. The Trump administration also announced plans over the weekend to federalize the Illinois National Guard and call up hundreds more troops for a mission to ostensibly support the president's anti-immigrant crackdown.
Officials including US Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson—all Democrats—have condemned the deployment.
"No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate,” Pritzker said in a statement ahead of the deployment. “We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s invasion. It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.”
President Trump and Governor Abbott have illegally sent the Texas National Guard into the sovereign state of Illinois over the objections of Governor Pritzker.This is a frightening and unconstitutional escalation.
— Senator Dick Durbin (@durbin.senate.gov) October 7, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Johnson—who on Monday signed an executive order establishing “ICE-free zones,” barring US Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel from using city-owned facilities—addressed the deployment during a Tuesday press conference.
"As far as what we are hearing, the National Guard—first of all, it’s illegal, unconstitutional, it’s dangerous, it’s wrong," the progressive leader of the nation's third-largest city told reporters. "This is not about deportation. This is not about safety for this president."
Illinois and the city of Chicago on Monday filed a pair of lawsuits seeking to block Trump's invasion. US District Judge April Perry subsequently refused to block the deployment, instead ordering the US Department of Justice to respond to the lawsuit within 48 hours. Perry set a Thursday hearing on the matter before she issues a ruling on the plaintiffs' request for a temporary restraining order to block the deployment.
Trump's Illinois deployment followed his federal invasion of cities including Los Angeles, California; Washington, DC; and Portland, Oregon. Judges have ruled that the LA and Portland deployments are illegal.
On Monday, Trump said he was open to invoking the Insurrection Act to put down future civil unrest in US cities, drawing sharp condemnation from legal experts and other critics, some of whom accused the president of trying to foment disorder he could cite to justify even more authoritarianism.
Officials and activists in Illinois vowed to continue resisting Trump's actions.
"Illinois will not let the Trump administration continue on their authoritarian march without resisting," Pritzker said Tuesday. "We will use every lever at our disposal to stop this power grab because military troops should not be used against American communities."
Keep ReadingShow Less
GOP Senator Calls ICE Comments by Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Criminal Incitements to Violence
The two Democratic leaders have strongly condemned "Operation Midway Blitz," in which immigration agents have violently raided homes and cracked down on peaceful protests.
Oct 07, 2025
Merely by describing the recent actions of federal immigration agents in Chicago, one Republican senator claimed at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, the city's mayor and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, both Democrats, were "inciting violence."
At the hearing, where Attorney General Pam Bondi testified on her leadership of the US Department of Justice since she was appointed by President Donald Trump, Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) recited a list of recent statements by Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, both of whom have expressed strong opposition to "Operation Midway Blitz."
The campaign has involved the deployment of more than 200 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other federal immigration authorities who have officially been directed to arrest undocumented immigrants with violent criminal records. More than 1,000 people have been arrested since ICE arrived in the nation's third-largest city in September. Nationally, the libertarian CATO Institute found in June that about 65% of people detained by ICE this year have not had any criminal conviction.
In Chicago over the past month, US citizens, immigrants with legal status, and children have been swept up in raids and violence. ICE agents have been filmed throwing a congressional candidate to the ground at a protest; a journalist reported being attacked with a pepper ball by a masked agent "absolutely unprovoked" outside a detention facility where she was covering protests; and body camera footage has cast doubt on the Department of Homeland Security's justification for the fatal shooting of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez.
In her comments on Tuesday, Moody claimed to be concerned about violence in Chicago—but as with Trump's signing of a presidential memo last month that mandates a "national strategy" to allow law enforcement to clamp down on left-wing organizers before they can commit "violent political acts," the senator reserved her alarm for violence that she claimed Pritzker and Johnson were inciting by talking about ICE.
Moody condemned Pritzker's description of "militarized [Customs and Border Protection] and ICE agents to the streets of Chicago" and his statement that "people are getting detained, they're getting arrested." She placed special emphasis on the words "US citizens," apparently to suggest the governor should not speak about the fact that citizens, including residents of an apartment complex where ICE agents broke down doors and dragged people out onto the street one night last week, have been detained.
Moody: Pritzker says they are using tear gas and chemical agents at peaceful protesters…. I am wondering if Pritzker and Johnson understand that there are federal laws that criminalize inciting violence pic.twitter.com/ffpN6xWRWQ
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 7, 2025
Moody also denounced Johnson's comments on "a rogue, reckless group of heavily armed, masked individuals roaming throughout our city" and for saying that the city "will use this as an opportunity to build greater resistance."
The senator appeared to suggest that, were it not for Johnson and Pritzker's expressions of outrage over Trump's deployment of federal agents and the National Guard in Chicago, residents would not be alarmed about Operation Midway Blitz.
"I am wondering if Pritzker and Johnson understand that there are federal laws that criminalize inciting violence," said Moody. "Any time you start pitting your own people against their own government, a government that's only there at its core to protect rights and the safety of its people, that is incredibly dangerous."
Without being pushed by Pritzker and Johnson, Chicago residents have engaged in nonviolent protests against Trump's anti-immigration agenda in recent weeks, with thousands marching in solidarity with immigrant communities before the deployment of ICE agents began.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular