US Politics
Trump says he’s dropping his push for the National Guard to patrol Chicago, LA and Portland
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Donald Trump has announced he is, for now, dropping his push to deploy National Guard troops in major Democrat-run cities, including Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles.
“We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact,” the president wrote on Truth Social Wednesday evening.
“Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago were GONE if it weren’t for the Federal Government stepping in. We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again – Only a question of time!”
Despite the president’s claim that the withdrawals were due to a drop in crime, the administration has been hit with multiple legal challenges over the presence of the guardsmen.
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Troops had already left Los Angeles after the president deployed them earlier this year as part of a broader crackdown on crime and immigration. They had been sent to Chicago and Portland but were never on the streets as legal challenges played out.
Guardsmen were removed from the streets of LA by December 15 after a court ruling. But an appeals court had paused a separate part of the order that required control of the Guard to return to Governor Gavin Newsom.
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Reacting to the president’s announcement on Wednesday, Newsom wrote: “And with that, we close year 2025. Onward.” In a separate post on X, the governor’s office wrote: “We won in court and forced him to.
“Trump’s rambling here is the political version of ‘you can’t fire me, I quit.’”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the development a “major litigation victory” in a statement on Wednesday.
“For six months, California National Guard troops have been used as political pawns by a President desperate to be king,” Bonta said. “There is a reason our founders decided military and civilian affairs must be kept separate; a reason that our military is, by design, apolitical.”
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Crackdown on crime in cities has formed a major pillar of Trump’s second term – and he has toyed with the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act to stop his opponents from using the courts to block his plans.
He has said he sees his tough-on-crime approach as a winning political issue ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Last month, in a sign that the president’s drive seemed to be waning, U.S. Northern Command had said it was “shifting and/or rightsizing” operations in Portland, Chicago and Los Angeles, but there would be a “constant, enduring and long-term presence in each city.”