Mayors and governors are sending a unified and urgent message to the White House: Federal forces are unwelcome and uninvited in their cities. Still, President Trump remains undeterred, threatening to send the military to more than half a dozen Democratic-led cities, saying it’s necessary to combat a “war ... from within,” and vowing to “straighten them out one by one.”
On Monday, he said he would consider invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy troops if the courts blocked his deployments to Chicago and Portland.
While the official line from the Trump administration is that the National Guard and Marine deployments are needed to clamp down on protests and combat crime, Trump has explicitly spoken about using American “cities as training grounds for our military,” and, on the ground, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies are acting like they, too, are the military, using Black Hawk helicopters, drones, explosives, chemical weapons. and unmarked cars in their operations.
The aggressive actions DHS — and especially ICE — are taking in American cities should not be viewed as a sideshow to the military deployments; they are a grave warning of how the administration expects all federal forces, including soldiers, to operate. As Trump recently encouraged troops to use excessive force against protesters: “If they spit, we hit.”
These operations do not de-escalate with the presence of military force; the presence of the military sharpens this threat by layering combat-trained soldiers into volatile situations that demand restraint.
In his crackdown on blue cities, Trump is dangerously and perversely fusing the roles of the U.S. military and domestic agencies. The U.S. military is trained and equipped to confront foreign adversaries, operating under rules of engagement designed for war. Agencies like DHS and ICE are constrained by the U.S. Constitution and are supposed to protect constitutional rights. What we are seeing now is the worst of both worlds: domestic agents adopting military tactics, and the military itself being drawn into domestic political conflicts. Neither the military nor federal agents are trained or legally intended to perform each other’s roles.
Trump’s meme-generated warning to Chicago was ominous. His post, styled in the form of an Apocalypse Now movie poster as “Chipocalypse Now” depicted Trump as the amoral warmonger Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore. It included the quote, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” and a message that Chicago was “about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
The situation is playing out accordingly:
ICE recently conducted an overnight operation in Chicago, where agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter and surrounded a building before breaking down doors to detain and question residents, which included U.S. citizens and children who were restrained with zip ties. Neighbors reported seeing unclothed children herded into U-Hauls without their parents. Rodrick Johnson, 67, was one of the American citizens detained. “I asked [agents] why they were holding me if I was an American citizen, and they said I had to wait until they looked me up,” Johnson told the press. “I asked if they had a warrant, and I asked for a lawyer. They never brought one.”
This echoes similar events in Huntington Park, California, where armed agents used explosives to blow up the front door of a residence of U.S. citizens before sending in a drone to search the house for a man accused of a traffic violation. “If they would’ve knocked on my door I would have opened the door, but they blew up the window and door first,” said Jenny Ramirez. “There didn’t have to be that violence to enter my house … They didn’t knock on the door, they didn’t let me know they were them, they just blew up my window and my door and a drone came in.”
When these agents engage in such needless violence and reckless invasions of privacy, their presence surrenders any legitimacy as a mission of ensuring the public’s safety, which is precisely why this mission should not be reinforced with the U.S. military.
Read more: Eight things to know about the National Guard in Washington, D.C.
To understand why all of this is happening — and why the unjustifiable military deployments must be stopped — it’s essential to ask four key questions.
First, who wants this, and under what authority? The administration claims these deployments are a necessary response to crime, but courts find that Trump’s narratives about “war-ravaged” cities collapse under scrutiny. The Trump-appointed Judge Karin Immergut has stated, for example, that Trump’s assessment of conditions in Portland is “simply untethered from the facts.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller is frank about his desire to use troops to suppress political opposition, declaring the Democratic Party is “not a political party, it is a domestic extremist organization” and stating that “the only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle” their networks.
On Saturday, Judge Immergut blocked the administration from deploying Oregon National Guard troops in Portland. Flouting the judge’s order, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth then authorized hundreds of Texas National Guard soldiers to deploy to both Portland and Chicago on the same day, escalating the administration’s clash with the judiciary and the rule of law itself. The federal judge then issued a second order blocking the administration from deploying any troops in Portland to “help” in this way.
Second, who is in charge? The National Guard is a hybrid force, typically under the command of a state’s governor. In our nation’s history, the extraordinary federal power to override a governor has been a last resort in moments of true crisis, such as when enforcing desegregation in Little Rock or quelling an actual insurrection.
But that’s not what’s happening here. The White House is sending troops from Texas to Chicago, not to address a genuine emergency, but to override political opposition. In sending troops from red states to police blue states who object to their presence, the White House is bypassing that structure and overriding the will of the states.
The troops being sent to Chicago from the Texas National Guard represent an express end run around Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, who stated the deployment is a symbol of “gubernatorial authority being trampled, state sovereignty being ignored, and the constitutional balance between states being attacked.” The United States cannot remain a federalist system when soldiers from one state are sent to police another state against the explicit wishes of its elected leaders and when the justification for it is a lie.
Third, what are these troops doing? The missions being assigned to these soldiers represent a misuse of their skills. Soldiers are trained for lethal combat and life-saving disaster relief, not the nuanced work of policing their fellow citizens. Additionally, the budgets that support them are being diverted and degraded, leaving fewer resources to fight wildfires, respond to hurricanes, or aid in flood relief.
Finally, what does this mean for democracy? The long-term damage is the most alarming. Using soldiers to enforce civilian law blurs the line between the police and the military, conditioning Americans to accept armed troops on their streets as normal. It creates loyalty tests for mayors and governors, undermines the nonpolitical standing of our military, and shreds the checks and balances that protect our freedom. This is a hallmark of tyranny, which our Founders recognized clearly when the king’s soldiers patrolled the streets of colonial America, intimidated opponents of the monarchy, and suppressed their speech.
Taken together, the answers to these questions reveal a deliberate pattern of abuse against the rule of law and the rights of citizens, which includes an acute threat to free speech rights.
In response to the events in Broadview, Illinois, and the greater Chicago area, a broad coalition of media organizations, clergy, and private citizens, represented in part by Protect Democracy, filed a lawsuit against the administration for violating their First Amendment rights. The lawsuit details the kind of violence the president’s ‘war’ rhetoric encourages: federal agents striking an ordained minister in the head with pepper balls as he prayed, shooting at clearly identifiable journalists with crowd-control munitions, and arresting reporters for simply documenting their actions. This legal challenge follows a recent federal court ruling in a similar case, which found that such tactics “undoubtedly chill” the media’s ability to cover events and citizens’ rights to protest.
In a democracy, vigorous reporting and public protest are the primary means by which we hold power accountable. By targeting journalists and protesters, the administration aims to silence dissent, obscure its actions, and entrench its own power.
Normalizing the sight of troops on our streets paves the way for their use in the political arena. Such a scenario is hardly out of the realm of possibility. Trump has sought to prime them for political use in speeches and rallies, and in explicitly partisan speeches to military audiences, he framed his domestic political opponents as enemies. His message to our armed forces is unmistakable: Trump’s critics are not people to be protected, but adversaries to be subdued.
Read more: Not his military
The intimidation of the media and protesters we are seeing today could be a preview of the intimidation of voters tomorrow. If federal forces can make citizens afraid to exercise their First Amendment rights on the street, they can make them afraid to attend a rally, support an opposing candidate, or cast a ballot in upcoming elections.
The president warns of threats to our system of government and to our future elections. But with its steady escalation of military force against its own citizens, this administration proves that the most immediate threat to our constitutional order is not on the streets.
It is coming from inside the White House.
Makes me want to throw up Amanda. I am a proud Chicagoan. Feeling powerless. Plan to be on the street for Oct 18 No Kings.
The White Supremacy of Trump has created his own KKK, his own slave patrols.
My own Republican Representative has even run ads telling us that he is helping Trump protect our women from immigrants.