In the wake of his successful deployment of federal troops to Washington, D.C., to fight crime in the District of Columbia, President Trump says he wants to do the same thing in other major American cities where violent crime has degraded residents’ quality of life. Trump has indicated that one city on his list is Chicago.
It’s easy to see why Chicago would take priority. Although Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker tout how much safer Chicago has become compared to last year, the 12 months to June 2025 saw 498 homicides in the city, a rate of more than 40 per month. Fifty-three people were shot in Chicago over this Labor Day weekend, eight of them fatally. That includes victims of two mass shootings.
Pritzker doesn’t see a problem here. The Monday before Labor Day, Pritzker told a news conference, “Not one person here today will claim we have solved all crime in Chicago, nor can that be said of any major American metro area. But calling the military into a U.S. city to invade our streets and neighborhoods and disrupt the lives of everyday people is an extraordinary action and it should require extraordinary justification.” He declared, “What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.”
This is not true. If Trump were to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, it would actually not be unprecedented. In 1957, President Eisenhower Dwight Eisenhower deployed troops from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock in order to protect civil rights. He was responding Gov. Orval Faubus’s (D) attempted insurrection — the use of his state’s own National Guard to prevent integration of Black students into Little Rock Central High School.
In September 1962, President John F. Kennedy sent federal troops to Oxford, Miss., to integrate a Black student into the University of Mississippi, sparking riots that caused two deaths. The troops were still in Oxford the following June when Kennedy sent troops to Tuscaloosa, Ala., to pull Alabama Gov. George Wallace out of a schoolhouse door and let Black students enter.
Eisenhower and Kennedy used the military to defend the right of African Americans to participate fully in the American educational system. If Trump were to deploy federal troops to Chicago, it would be to defend the right of African Americans to remail alive.
The racial disparity in Chicago homicide rates is astonishing. Only 2.5 whites are killed per 100,000 residents, but 14.2 Latinos and 55 Blacks per 100,000.
If Pritzker does not recognize this de facto racial injustice as an extraordinary justification for extraordinary action, then he is acquiescing to a federal intervention. The senseless loss of dozens of Black lives per month is a far greater disruption to the lives of ordinary citizens than the presence of federal troops would be on Chicago’s streets.
Pritzker’s rhetoric evokes the spirit of George Wallace blocking the schoolhouse door. “Mr. President, instead I say: Do not come,” Pritzker said. “You are neither wanted nor needed here.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson echoed that sentiment: “As the mayor of this city, I can tell you that Chicagoans are not calling for military occupation. They are calling for the same thing that we’ve been calling for some time, and that’s investment.”
But many Chicagoans do want Trump’s help to quell violent crime. One is Pastor Corey Brooks, CEO of Project HOOD, an organization dedicated to reducing violence and creating opportunity.
Brooks says, “We still have mothers who are burying young boys, and their sons are dying prematurely. That is a serious issue.” Brooks wants the mayor and governor to prioritize saving Chicagoans’ lives over political posturing.
Trump would need to declare a federal emergency or receive a request from Pritzker to deploy National Guard troops in Chicago. However, he already has the authority to surge Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into Chicago unilaterally.
On CBS’s “Face The Nation,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, “We’ve already had ongoing operations with ICE in Chicago … but we do intend to add more resources to those operations.”
Johnson, who finds ICE agents as disgusting as federal troops, signed an executive order instructing police officials in Chicago not to cooperate with federal agents on immigration enforcement. That may backfire if it leaves ICE agents vulnerable to violent protests as happened in Los Angeles. That will allow Trump to declare an emergency and send in federal troops.
No matter how hard they try, Pritzker and Johnson probably won’t succeed in preventing Trump from using federal troops to save Black lives in Chicago. The real mystery is why they want to stop him so badly.
Stuart Creque is a technology marketing executive and screenwriter of “The Last Earth Girl.”
