Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker delivered a strongly worded message and warning to President Donald Trump Monday, following the president’s threat of sending the National Guard to Chicago to combat crime.
In his remarks, Pritzker warned the president not to come to Chicago and said, “if you hurt my people, nothing will stop me – not time or political circumstance – from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.”
Trump on Friday 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. The president has recently escalated his focus on public safety, particularly in Democratic cities.
“We will solve Chicago within one week — maybe less, but within one week, we will have no crime in Chicago, just like we have no crime in D.C.,” Trump told reporters Monday, while calling the city a “killing field.” “Chicago’s a disaster and the governor of Illinois should say, ‘President, will you do us the honor of cleaning up our city? We need help.’ They need help. They need help.”
Trump gave no indication on timing of such measures, saying only, “We may wait — we may or we may not. We may just go in and do it, which is probably what we should do.”
He went on to say he would prefer to be “asked” to call in the National Guard.
“I hate to barge in on a city and then be treated horribly by corrupt politicians,” Trump said. “The bad politicians, like a guy like Pritzker. He ought to spend more time in the gym actually, the guy is a disaster.”
Pritzker, flanked by prominent lawmakers and leaders including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Father Michael Pfleger, among others, responded to Trump’s request in his remarks.
“Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, ‘Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?’ Instead I say, ‘Mr. President, do not come to Chicago,'” Pritzker said in a press conference alongside Chicago and state leaders. “You are neither wanted here nor needed here.”
In his message, Pritzker called Trump’s plans to send in the National Guard “unprecedented,” “unwarranted,” “illegal,” “unconstitutional” and “un-American.”
“If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm. One that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country,” Pritzker said. “Over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning for quite a while now to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country’s founders warned against.”
Pritzker noted that no one from the Trump administration has reached out to city or state leaders about the move.
“This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals,” he said, adding there is “no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention.”
Pritzker, a vocal Trump critic, returned the president’s personal jabs by calling him an “arrogant little man” and a “dictator.”
He then issued a warning to residents, calling for peaceful protests should such measures come to fruition.
“Hopefully the president will reconsider this dangerous and misguided encroachment upon our state and our city’s sovereignty. Hopefully rational voices, if there are any left inside the White House or the Pentagon, will prevail in the coming days. If not, we’re going to face an unprecedented and difficult time ahead,” he said. “But I know you, Chicago, and I know you are up to it.”
The back-and-forth comes on the same day Trump signed an executive order targeting cities and states with cashless bail policies like Illinois.
But there have been questions over whether Trump can even send troops to Chicago.
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.
“None of the prerequisites for National Guard deployment exists here,” Raoul said Monday. “There is no emergency in the state of Illinois that requires the use of National Guard. There’s no foreign invasion. There’s no rebellion. My office has filed close to three dozen lawsuits fighting the unlawful overreach of the Trump administration. And we’re not afraid to do it again.”
Trump has long singled out Chicago in his rhetoric, with comments about the city a recurring theme on the campaign trail in both 2016 and 2024.
He has drawn controversial comparisons between the city and war zones like Afghanistan, and in 2017, vowed to “send in the feds” in response to gun violence — a move that came even as the city was experiencing a broader trend of declining violent crime.
Violent crime in Chicago dropped significantly in the first half of the year, representing the steepest decline in over a decade, according to city data. Shootings are down 37%, and homicides have dropped by 32%, while total violence crime dropped by over 22%.
Crime in Chicago also represents persistent, localized challenges, said Kimberley Smith, director of national programs for the University of Chicago Crime Lab. The neighborhoods with the highest homicide rates experience approximately 68 times more homicides than those with the lowest rates.
“We are a shining example of what happens when working people stand together,” Johnson said during the press conference. “The last thing that Chicagoans want is someone from the outside of our city, who doesn’t know our city, trying to dictate and tell us what our city needs. As the mayor of this city, I can tell you that Chicagoans are not calling for military occupation.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
