In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has ramped up his threat to dispatch National Guard troops into American cities — with Chicago and Portland, Oregon, being the most recent examples.
Unlike the deployment of the National Guard either at the order or request of a state’s governor, Trump has sought to federalize the Guard against the will of the governors of Illinois and Oregon. And in both cases, Trump is seeking to deploy National Guard members from other states.
Under U.S. law, the Guard can be called to active duty by a president in such cases as invasion by a foreign country, rebellion against the federal government or being unable to execute federal laws. But in doing so, troops are limited to protecting federal buildings and federal personnel unless the president invokes the Insurrection Act, which he has not done.
Justifications from the administration have varied, from tamping down on crime to protecting federal buildings and Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations to claims that protestors are trying to “overthrow the government.” State and local lawmakers have pushed back on the administration’s characterizations of conditions on the ground, suggesting the troop mobilizations are merely pretext for a “power grab” and part of an “authoritarian march.”
‘War zone’
On Wednesday, Trump appeared to echo his previous statements on using the National Guard for crime prevention purposes in cities such as Chicago, a city that he has described as a “war zone.”
“They’ve had 60, 70 murders over a short period of time,” Trump said on Wednesday.
“Chicago’s a very unsafe city,” Trump added.
Violent crime in Chicago has dropped significantly in the first half of the year, according to official data released by the city, with shootings down 37% and homicides decreasing by 32% compared to the first half of 2024, according to crime statistics.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the president’s decision on Monday to send the National Guard into Portland and Chicago, saying “anarchists” have been “disrespecting law enforcement” and “inciting violence” at the ICE facility in Portland.
“We saw a guillotine rolled out in front of this federal building. The president wants to ensure that our federal buildings and our assets are protected. And that’s exactly what he’s trying to do,” Leavitt said during a press briefing on Monday.
“You guys are framing this like the president wants to take over the American cities with the military. The president wants to help these local leaders who have been completely ineffective in securing their own cities,” Leavitt told the media.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser, gave what appeared to be a different justification on Monday, saying demonstrators are “trying to overthrow the core law enforcement function of the federal government.”
“This is the textbook definition of domestic terrorism, using the actual imminent threat of violence to keep federal officials from doing their jobs,” Miller said on CNN.
Local leaders, on the other hand, continued to push back on the administration’s justifications and the administration’s characterizations of violence in their cities. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said on Wednesday that Trump’s actions “are an effort to occupy and incite cities and states that don’t share his politics” and she said she believes that “we should expect him to continue to push the limits of his authority.”
On Sunday, Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden shared a video on X showing “a beautiful Sunday in Portland.”
“Farmer’s markets, the Portland Marathon, peaceful protests, and some views of Mt. Hood. This city is vibrant, peaceful, and resilient. We do not need a federal occupation, and we sure as hell don’t want one,” Wyden said.
Trump’s ‘war from within’ rhetoric
In what some viewed as a surprising statement, Trump last week told an audience of top American military general brass that there was an enemy already on U.S. shores.
“It’s a war from within,” the president said. “We’re under invasion from within.”
He has since continued to ramp up the rhetoric regarding alleged violence in Portland and Chicago, saying repeatedly that Portland is “burning to the ground,” and that Chicago is the “murder capital of the world.”
“It’s insurrectionists all over the place,” Trump said recently said of Portland.
Over the weekend, the administration made the decision to deploy some 200 National Guard personnel from California to Portland to begin protecting federal buildings, a U.S. official told ABC News. The justification offered was to protect ICE agents and other federal workers and protect federal property.
But a federal judge later said the administration’s attempt to deploy members of the California National Guard to Portland was in “direct contravention” of a court order that concluded the conditions in the city were “not significantly violent or disruptive” to justify a federal takeover of the National Guard after she had blocked deployment of the Oregon National Guard on Saturday.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, argued that the president’s claims about the city were “simply untethered to the facts.”
In response to Immergut’s decision, Trump said it’s “too bad I appointed that judge” and that he “wasn’t served well by the people that picked judges.”
On Monday, Leavitt called the judge “untethered in reality.”
Miller called Immergut’s decision “legal insurrection,” saying the president “is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge” and that local law enforcement has “refused to aid ICE offices facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life.”
“This is an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers, and the deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself,” Miller said in a post on X on Saturday.
The Trump administration appealed Immergut’s order from Saturday to the Ninth Circuit, which temporarily lifted a lower court’s order blocking the deployment of Oregon National Guard troops to Portland on Wednesday — but the order prohibiting any state’s National Guard from entering the city remains in effect.
Both Portland’s mayor and the state’s governor emphasized that they did not request the troops and objected to Trump’s action.
Similarly in Chicago, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Sunday pushed back on the Trump administration’s decision to federalize 300 members of the state’s National Guard and deploy them to Chicago — a decision that is creating a “war zone,” according to Pritzker.
“He’s saying that Chicago is a war zone. None of that is true. They’re just making this up. And then what do they? They fire tear gas and smoke grenades, and they make it look like it’s a war zone,” Pritzker added.
In a memo to Secretary Pete Hegseth on Oct. 6, Trump did not cite reducing crime as a justification for dispatching the guard to Chicago, instead saying “federal facilities in Illinois…have come under coordinated assault by violent groups intent on obstructing Federal law enforcement activities.”
On Wednesday, after Trump said Pritzker “should be in jail for failing to protect ICE officers,” the governor called the president “demented” and “so insecure that he lashes out pretending that he can come arrest people for no reason at all.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said on Tuesday that Trump is “intentionally fomenting chaos.”
“Donald Trump declared war on Chicago. That’s what he did. What the Trump administration is doing is intentionally fomenting chaos,” Johnson said on Tuesday.
Secretary Kristi Noem posted a video shared on X on Saturday, showing law enforcement in military uniforms raiding homes and arresting individuals, with the caption saying “Chicago, we’re here for you.” The Homeland Security chief has also criticized Pritzker “actively working against law enforcement” and called Chicago a “war zone.”
Along with posting videos of law enforcement in Chicago, Noem also made a high-profile visit to an ICE facility in Portland on Tuesday, a site that has been the location of nightly demonstrations over the administration’s immigration crackdown for several months.
Trump, while celebrating the Navy’s 250th anniversary aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush on Sunday, said Pritzker “thinks it’s wonderful when 50 people in a short period of time were murdered in Chicago, over 200 people were hit.”
“And so, we send in the National Guard,” he said.
Trump said it “took 12 days to solve the problem” in Washington, D.C., in August, and his administration is “going to do that in Chicago” and “we’re going to do that in Portland.”
On Monday, the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago filed a lawsuit seeking to block Trump’s federalization and deployment of the National Guard, saying there is “no insurrection in Illinois.”
“There is no insurrection in Illinois. There is no rebellion in Illinois. The federal government is able to enforce federal law in Illinois. The manufactured nature of the crisis is clear,” according to the 69-page complaint.
ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Selina Wang and Peter Charalambous contributed to this report.