Donald Trump has been accused of “turning the military on American citizens” after a Pentagon official confirmed that planning is under way to send National Guard troops to Chicago.
Illinois attorney-general Kwame Raoul also told CBS News that the president’s actions are both “un-American” and “unwise strategically”.
Accusing the president of “turning our military on American citizens in his ongoing attempts to move our nation toward authoritarianism,” he added:
His actions are not just un-American. They are unwise strategically. Our cities are not made safer by deploying the nation’s service members for civilian law enforcement duties when they do not have the appropriate training.
To be clear: We have made no such request for the type of federal intervention we have seen in Los Angeles or Washington DC. There is no emergency in the state of Illinois.
I don’t think Illinois will roll over. Pritzker and the General Assembly have been on point. I’m very interested to see what the response is if Little t tries to send other states’ National Guard troops into Chicago. I feel pretty confident that Pritzker will not allow IL Nat Guard to be federalized for this purpose. Newsom didn’t authorize and yelled about it, but also didn’t really move to stop it in the moment.
To be fair, I don’t think Newsom and his administration thought they would go there, this quickly. Pritzker has the benefit of seeing how things went in LA, it’s no longer a hypothetical.
Yes, that’s definitely true. Other states now have California and DC as relevant examples, and can use that information to respond more firmly.