This week Trump announced that he would not be sending National Guard divisions to Chicago after all. Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed as much.
This was a striking reversal. This weekend Trump posted an ugly meme referencing the Vietnam war film Apocalypse now and suggesting that the federal government was going to invade and wage war on Chicago. Now, suddenly, he’s given the whole idea up. What changed?
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Trump fears resistance
We can’t know for sure what Trump is thinking because he lies all the time, changes his mind on a whim, and is barely sentient enough to have actual motivations. But to the extent he explained himself, he seems to have decided that he would prefer to send troops to places where he’s going to get more support from elected officials.
“We’re going to be announcing another city that we’re going to very shortly, working it out with the governor of a certain state who would love us to be there, and the mayor of a certain city in the same state that would love us to be there,” he said this week.
Bondi was even more explicit. “[Chicago is] a progressive city and they don’t want the president’s help. That’s on them,” she said. “Chicago should be begging Donald Trump for help to keep Chicago safe — yet they aren’t. So we’re going to a city who wants us there.”
Bondi makes it sound like she kindly offered assistance politely and was rebuffed. But of course that is not at all what happened. The Trump administration did not reach out to Illinois officials about federal aid. Rather, the media reported that Trump was planning to flood Chicago with National Guardsmen—possibly National Guardsmen from Texas, to get around the legal rebukes Trump suffered after federalizing the California National Guard and sending it to patrol Los Angeles.
After seeing the media reports, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and other Illinois officials made a concerted, coordinated effort to tell the media and the public that Trump was making a deliberate effort to violate state sovereignty. “You are not wanted here nor needed here,” Pritzker said. Johnson added that Trump “wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution. We must defend our democracy from this authoritarianism by protecting each other and protecting Chicago from Donald Trump.”
Johnson also issued an executive order barring federal agents in Chicago from wearing masks and requiring them to wear badges and identify themselves. Pritkzer urged Chicagoans to film federal agents making arrests in the city.
Initially Trump insisted that he didn’t care about opposition from Democrats. “We’re going in,” he declared as recently as the beginning of this month. Based on those statements, and on Trump’s general disregard for the law and for Democrats, the conventional wisdom was that he would in fact find some way to send federal troops to Chicago.
Instead, he appears to have backed down. The exact reasons are again somewhat uncertain. But it seems likely that he was worried that the unified public opposition would lead to losses in court.
More, it’s very possible that he (or people in his orbit) had operational concerns about sending federal troops into a situation where they would face open, enthusiastic opposition not just from the public, but from officials. Johnson’s executive order was seen as largely symbolic—but it did create the possibility that federal agents could be prosecuted under Chicago ordinances.
In Washington DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser has rushed to comply and collaborate with federal troops. Trump pushed hard for that collaboration, which suggests that federal troops do in fact need the resources and support of local authorities and police in order to sustain deployments. Chicago made clear it would not be complying, and someone—Trump, Bondi, National Guard officials—decided that this made the deployment risky and/or impossible.
Maybe fighting works
Pritzker, Johnson, and Chicago have not completely deterred Trump. Trump has ordered an ICE surge in the city, targeting immigrants and Latinos. The federal attack on Chicago communities has made people, “afraid to come out of their homes,” Pritzker said. “They're afraid to go shopping, they are afraid to take their own children to school because they have mixed-status households.”
The ongoing federal assault is awful, ugly, and evil. But it’s important to underline that this assault is not all that Trump threatened, and not all he was hoping for. Chicago put together a plan of resistance—strong, coordinated public statements, declarations of solidarity with citizens, laws designed to hold federal authorities accountable. And that plan of resistance worked. Trump (reluctantly, churlishly) backed down.
There are lessons here. Often, Democrats have tried to undercut or weaken the right by compromising in advance. As Daniel Denvir explains in All-American Nativism, Democrats before and during the Obama administration tried to outflank anti-immigrant Republicans by ramping up enforcement and deportations in hopes that this would create space to legislate a path to citizenship for many undocumented people. Instead, as Denvir writes, “Protecting some immigrants by demonizing others… sows the seeds of its own opposition.” When Democrats concede that immigration is a problem that must be crushed, it just cements hatred of immigrants and creates more momentum for extremism. Rushing to compromise with fascism legitimizes fascism.
But Pritzker and Johnson did not compromise. They said clearly that Trump’s attack on the city was a partisan fascist assault on the people of Chicago, and they said they would not be a part of it. Without legitimacy and facing difficult logistical hurdles, Trump gave up.
Trump giving up here may not be widely reported; a dog not barking isn’t usually seen as a headline. But even though everything broadly remains horrible, I think it’s important to highlight these wins and to celebrate them. Chicago and Pritzker remind us that Trump triumph is not inevitable, and that his power has real logistical limits. He depends on people caving; he depends on people compromising. If you don’t, he folds. One victory isn’t winning the war. But it reminds us what winning the war might look like.
Yes . . . And no cause for Chicagoans to get complacent. We have our whistles and are driving down to Pilsen next week to eat and frequent delightful Latino-owned markets and shops. ICE is still menacing our neighbors. In a weird way, the external threats are forcing neighborhoods to become more interconnected. Usually, people shop and socialize within the few neighborhoods adjacent to where they live. Not these days. Some of us have cars and are willing to go further, in solidarity. Taking our friends along for the ride.
Thanks for this wonderful, concise synopsis of what just happened!
This is something we can pass on at the neighborhood and city level, feel informed and all benefit.
Very grateful!