Illinois Governor JB Pritzker spoke at a news conference, addressing reports Trump is planning to send the military to Chicago

 

I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in this city, and as a state, and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.

Over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning, for quite a while now, to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country's founders warned against, and it's the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances.

What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.

No one from the White House or the executive branch has reached out to me or to the mayor. No one has reached out to our staffs. No effort has been made to coordinate or to ask for our assistance in identifying any actions that might be helpful to us. Local law enforcement has not been contacted. We have made no requests for federal intervention. None.

We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did: We read a story in The Washington Post. If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor, or the police?

Let me answer that question: This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals.

This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities and end elections.

There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no inter- insurrection. There is no insurrection. Like every major American city in both blue and red states, we deal with crime in Chicago. Indeed, the violent crime rate is worse in red states and red cities. Here in Chicago, our civilian police force and elected leaders work every day to combat crime and to improve public safety, and it's working.

Not one person here today will claim we have solved all crime in Chicago, nor can that be said of any major American metro area. But calling the military into a U.S. city to invade our streets and neighborhoods and disrupt the lives of everyday people is an extraordinary action, and it should require extraordinary justification.

Look around you right now. Does this look like an emergency? Look at this. Go talk to the people of Chicago who are enjoying a gorgeous afternoon in this city. Ask the families buying ice cream on the Riverwalk. Go see the students who are at the beach after school. Talk to the workers that I just met taking the water taxi to get here. Find a family who's enjoying today sitting on their front porch and ask if they want their neighborhoods turned into a war zone by a wannabe dictator. Ask if they'd like to pass through a checkpoint with unidentified officers in masks while taking their kids to school.

Crime is a reality we all face in this country. Public safety has been among our highest priorities since taking office. We have hired more police and given them more funding.

We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stocks, and high-capacity magazines. We invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs. We listened to our local communities, to the people who live and work in the places that are most affected by crime and asked them what they needed to help make their neighborhoods safer. Those strategies have been working. 

Crime is dropping in Chicago. Murders are down 32% compared to last year and nearly cut in half since 2021. Shootings are down 37% since last year, and 57% from four years ago. Robberies are down 34% year over year. Burglaries down 21%. Motor vehicle thefts down 26%. So, in case there was any doubt as to the motivation behind Trump's military occupations, take note: 13 of the top 20 cities in homicide rate have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago.

Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois. Memphis, Tennessee, Hattiesburg, Mississippi all have higher crime rates than Chicago, and yet Donald Trump is sending troops here and not there? Ask yourself why.

If Donald Trump was actually serious about fighting crime in cities like Chicago, he, along with his congressional Republicans, would not be cutting over $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants nationally, including cutting $158 million in funding to Illinois for violence prevention programs that deploy trained outreach workers to deescalate conflict on our streets. Cutting $71 million in law enforcement grants to Illinois, direct money for police departments through programs like Project Safe Neighborhoods, the state and local Antiterrorism Training Program, and the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative, cutting $137 million in child protection measures in Illinois that protect our kids against abuse and neglect.

Trump is defunding the police. To the members of the press who are assembled here today, and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is.