U.S. President Donald Trump wants to expand his highly controversial crackdown on crime in the capital, Washington, to the major cities of Chicago and New York, thereby placing more police stations in Democrat-governed areas under his direct control. “We’re going to make our cities very, very safe,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday (local time).
“I think Chicago will be next, and then we will help New York.” Trump had sent the National Guard to Washington on August 11 and placed the local police of the U.S. capital under federal control. The right-wing populist Republican justified his actions by claiming crime was supposedly out of control. He said he wanted to protect Washington from “crime, bloodshed, chaos, misery, and worse.” However, statistics show a significant decline in violent crime between 2023 and 2024 in the capital, following a spike during the coronavirus pandemic.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser emphasized that crime is at its lowest point in 30 years. Critics accuse Trump of right-wing populist agitation and of attempting to expand his power and control over Democrat-governed cities. Chicago Particularly in Trump’s Crosshairs On Friday, the president specifically targeted Chicago, which is governed by Democrat Brandon Johnson. The city in the northern United States is a “disaster” and is run by a “highly incompetent mayor,” said Trump, who was wearing a red cap with the inscription
“Trump was right about everything.” Residents of the Illinois city would literally be “screaming” for help from the government in Washington, he added. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, sharply rejected Trump’s statements. People do not want “an authoritarian power grab” by the Trump administration, Pritzker wrote on X. Trump, he said, wants to stir up “fear” among the population and “destabilize” existing crime-fighting measures in order to “create a justification for further abusing his power.”
Since Trump’s return to the White House in January, critics have denounced an increasingly authoritarian style of leadership and warned about an erosion of democracy in the United States. Among the questions raised is to what extent Trump could use federal police, national guardsmen, and even soldiers nationwide for his political interests. More than 1,900 National Guard members are now deployed in Washington.
They come from the capital itself, as well as from Republican-governed states such as West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee. On Friday, the U.S. Department of Defense said that National Guard members should “soon be deployed with their service weapons.” At the beginning of the National Guard deployment, it had been stated that
“weapons are available when needed,” but should remain stored in armories. In June, Trump had already mobilized the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles to end protests against his immigration policy. It was the first time in 60 years that a U.S. president had sent the National Guard against the will of local authorities. The city of Los Angeles and the state of California are both governed by Democrats.
