Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is set to address residents Monday amid comments from President Donald Trump saying he will send the National Guard to Chicago to curb violence in the city.
Pritzker is expected to hold a news conference alongside city leaders and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, saying there is “no emergency” that requires Trump to send military deployments to the city.
Trump on Friday said he said he plans to send the National Guard to Chicago next as part of his attempts to curb violence in multiple U.S. cities, which began with similar measures taken in Washington D.C.
Here’s what to know:
What time is Pritzker speaking?
The press conference is set to take place at 3 p.m. CT in downtown Chicago, according to a press release.
How to watch it live
The press conference will be streamed live on both NBC Chicago and Telemundo Chicago.
The stream will appear in the player above as soon as it begins. It will also be available on television on NBC Chicago as well as the NBC 5 Chicago 24/7 streaming channel.
What did Trump say?
Trump’s Friday comment followed a visit with troops in D.C., where he deployed them in what he described as an attempt to “rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor.”
“To me D.C. is very exciting and a lot of people say, ‘Whoa, where’s he going from there?’ Well, I have calls from politicians begging me to go to Chicago, begging me to go to New York, begging me to go to Los Angeles,” the president told reporters Friday morning.
Then, later from the White House, Trump said he thinks “Chicago will be next.”
“Chicago is a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent, and we’ll straighten that one out probably next,” Trump said. “That’ll be our next one after this, and it won’t even be tough. And the people in Chicago … are screaming for us to come … so I think Chicago will be our next and then we’ll help with New York.”
Trump did not give any indication on timing other than saying it will begin “when we’re ready.”
The Washington Post reported Saturday that the Pentagon has spent weeks preparing for an operation in Chicago that would include National Guard troops and potentially active-duty forces.
What has Pritzker said?
Pritzker responded to Trump’s statement, calling the move an attempt to “manufacture a crisis” and an abuse of power.
Read his full statement below:
“As Donald Trump attempts to create chaos that distracts from his problems, we will call it out for what it is. Trump and Republicans are trying to distract from the pain they are causing working families–from tariffs raising the prices of everyday goods to stripping away healthcare and food from millions of Americans.
“After using Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. as his testing ground for authoritarian overreach, Trump is now openly flirting with the idea of taking over other states and cities. Trump’s goal is to incite fear in our communities and destabilize existing public safety efforts — all to create a justification to further abuse his power. He is playing a game and creating a spectacle for the press to play along with.
“We don’t play those games in Illinois. Our commitment to law and order is delivering real results. Crime rates are improving. Homicides are down by more than 30% in Chicago in the last year alone. Our progress in lowering crime has been made possible with community violence intervention programs that the Trump Administration is defunding.
“Our state and local law enforcement partners know our neighborhoods and our streets because they live here too. They are not asking for this and we will continue to listen and coordinate with them, as we always do. The safety of the people of Illinois is my highest priority, so we will follow the law and stand up for the sovereignty of our state.”
Chicago mayor has ‘grave concerns’ as Trump threatens to send in National Guard
Chicago’s mayor Brandon Johnson also responded to Trump on Friday, saying the city is taking Trump’s comments “seriously,” but it “has not received any formal communication from the Trump administration regarding additional federal law enforcement or military deployments to Chicago.”
“Certainly, we have grave concerns about the impact of any unlawful deployment of National Guard troops to the City of Chicago,” Johnson said in a statement Friday afternoon. “Unlawfully deploying the National Guard to Chicago has the potential to inflame tensions between residents and law enforcement when we know that trust between police and residents is foundational to building safer communities. An unlawful deployment would be unsustainable and would threaten to undermine the historic progress we have.”
Can Trump send troops to Chicago?
It’s not the first time Trump has mentioned sending the National Guard to Chicago, citing violence.
He previously called out the city and Illinois for its “no cash bail” policy, while decrying “out-of-control crime” in Democratic-led cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. He did not, however, mention Memphis, St. Louis, Birmingham and New Orleans — all cities in red states with the highest murder rates, according to the FBI.
“And if we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster. We have a mayor there who’s totally incompetent. He’s an incompetent man. And we have an incompetent governor there. Pritzker’s an incompetent,” President Trump told reporters earlier this month.
A statement from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office at the time read, in part, that “if President Trump wants to help make Chicago safer, he can start by releasing the funds for anti-violence programs that have been critical to our work to drive down crime and violence.”
“Sending in the National Guard would only serve to destabilize our city and undermine our public safety efforts,” Johnson said.
But there have been questions over whether Trump can send troops to Chicago.
“It’s clear to me he does not have the legal right or ability to do that. Since I was first elected, I have talked about that, the Nazis in Germany tore down a constitutional republic in just 53 days,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a vocal Trump critic, said earlier this month. “It does not take much, frankly, and we seem to have a president who is hellbent on doing just that.”
The governor said that a law known as the PosseComitatus Act – put into place after the Civil War to ensure the military does not act as police against civilians – precludes the president’s actions.
But the Army said in a previous statement that the president is acting under Title 32, which deals with the role of the National Guard and the ability for governors or the president to call up the guard under certain circumstances.
What’s happening in D.C.?
In D.C., Trump said in a recent social media post he was considering “a complete and total Federal takeover.” He’s already seized control of the local police department for 30 days, which could be extended with congressional approval.
Trump has claimed the city is in the midst of a crime crisis despite statistics showing a declining problem. The U.S. attorney in Washington has opened an investigation into the numbers, the latest pressure point in a tug of war between the administration and D.C. government.
“Mayor Muriel Bowser must immediately stop giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures, or bad things will happen,” the president wrote.
And it comes as nearly 2,000 National Guard members are stationed in D.C., with the arrival this week of hundreds of troops from several Republican-led states.
The Pentagon and Army said last week that troops would not carry weapons. However, a Defense Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly said some units on certain missions would be armed — some with handguns and others with rifles, according to a report from The Associated Press.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
