Posted on 10/04/25
| News Source: WSJ
President Trump plans to mobilize 300 members of the National Guard in Illinois, the latest development in a long-simmering confrontation between the White House and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker over crime and immigration policy.
“Amidst ongoing violent riots and lawlessness, that local leaders like Pritzker have refused to step in to quell, President Trump has authorized 300 National Guardsmen to protect federal officers and assets,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said Saturday evening. “President Trump will not turn a blind eye to the lawlessness plaguing American cities.”
A federal judge on Saturday temporarily blocked Trump from deploying the Oregon National Guard to Portland.
The Illinois governor said earlier in the day that the Trump administration demanded that he call in the Illinois National Guard, or the Defense Department would federalize 300 members.
“It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will,” Pritzker said.
Trump has increasingly used the military on U.S. soil to either participate in what he has called a crime crackdown—or to protect federal buildings and agents from Americans protesting his policies. Pritzker and Chicago officials have repeatedly touted violent-crime reduction in recent years.
Trump has long suggested that he is eager to send troops to Chicago as part of a crime crackdown that he has primarily directed at Democratic-led cities. “We’re going in,” he told reporters at the White House in early September.