Top Illinois leaders on Tuesday condemned President Donald Trump’s assertion that cities, including Chicago, should serve as military “training grounds,” even as they maintained there’s little they can do in their official capacities to push back against such an incursion.
“Thinking that that’s some sort of proving ground for war, or that indeed there’s some sort of internal war going on in the United States, is just frankly inane, and I’m concerned for his health,” Gov. JB Pritzker said of Trump, adding that the tactics echoed those of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Pritzker’s comments in Englewood came shortly after the president told top military brass on Tuesday that American cities run by Democrats should serve as “training grounds” for troops, as the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a highly anticipated meeting with more than 800 leaders in Virginia.
“I told Pete,” referring to Hegseth, “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” Trump said. “The ones that are run by radical left Democrats — what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. They’re very unsafe places and we’re gonna straighten them out one by one. This is gonna be a major part for some people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s war from within.”
The president has demonstrated an eagerness to deploy troops against U.S. citizens, including deployments of the National Guard and active-duty Marines to Los Angeles earlier this year.
During his speech, Trump said, “we’re going into Chicago very soon,” something he’s threatened before without acting on.
Pritzker on Monday said he had received a report that the Trump administration was looking to send 100 military troops to Illinois, a move that he and other top Democratic elected officials strongly opposed.
The governor on Tuesday maintained that he did not know whether the federal government wanted to deploy troops from the Illinois National Guard or some other branch of the military. He could not say when troops would arrive or where they might go and added that Trump’s government must still take steps before deploying troops.
Standing alongside the governor, Mayor Brandon Johnson told reporters “that American cities are not a training ground for the military.” He called Trump “unstable” and his comments “appalling.”
“In no way will we tolerate the mere suggestion,” Johnson said. “We are going to use every single tool that’s available to us. Let’s be clear, we are talking about unprecedented behavior from an individual who has demonstrated he is double-minded and unhinged.”
Johnson touted lawsuits, legislation and protest as ways to oppose the troop arrival.
Pressed further about what can be done, Pritzker said he was prepared to potentially go to court against the administration.
“There is nothing that we can do in terms of putting people who are law enforcement in the way of federal law enforcement when they are carrying out wrong but accurate federal laws,” Pritzker said. “What we can do when it comes to troops being sent to Chicago and to the state of Illinois is immediately go to court.”
To get to that point, Pritzker said, “we’ve got to see those troops. They have not been called yet to the state of Illinois, to the city of Chicago.”
Pritzker also alleged that Trump has dementia and called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked to remove him from office.
The Tribune obtained a copy of the Monday Trump administration memo, which — using Trump’s changed name of the U.S. Department of Defense — requests deployment of “DoW (Department of War) personnel, trained and equipped for mission security in complex urban environments. The troops would serve “in direct support of federal facility protection, access control, and crowd control measures,” the memo states.
Pritzker told reporters about the memo a day after federal immigration agents carried out a show of force in downtown Chicago. Agents gathered near many of the city’s most iconic locations — from Millennium Park to Tribune Tower, and even on a boat in the Chicago River — carrying out several arrests while wearing masks and camouflage and holding assault-style weapons.
Elected officials including the governor, mayor and the two aldermen who represent downtown Chicago have condemned the parading groups of camo-clad agents as unnecessary and intimidating to residents and tourists.
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The Trump administration’s moves were in the midst of what Trump’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is calling its “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has sown fear throughout immigrant communities in Chicago and its suburbs. Officials escalated a promised surge in immigration enforcement in the area over the last two weeks, with arrests reported and federal agents sighted near local schools, courthouses and workplaces. ICE claimed last week it had made 550 arrests during the first two weeks of the mission.
An ICE agent also fatally shot a man earlier this month after allegedly being dragged by the man’s fleeing vehicle, and federal authorities have also used force against protesters and journalists at the agency’s facility in Broadview.
Authorities in Broadview had requested equipment from the state, Pritzker said Tuesday, such as gas masks and other items that local police departments may not have, “some of which we can provide.”
Republicans in the Illinois General Assembly’s super minority on Tuesday criticized Pritzker’s response to the federal law enforcement presence, including his remarks Monday when he referred to ICE agents as “acting like jackbooted thugs” for detaining one journalist and firing chemical munitions at a CBS Chicago reporter’s car.
“These remarks have only deepened tensions between federal agents who are doing their jobs and their local communities,” said House Republican leader Tony McCombie of Savanna. “Passionate debate should never become a spark for harm.”
Republican state Rep. C.D. Davidsmeyer of Jacksonville implied Pritzker was being hypocritical for allowing National Guardsmen to be present on standby in Chicago during last year’s Democratic National Convention “to protect Democrat bigwigs” only to oppose their presence now.
Separate from the memo Pritzker referenced, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday directed the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies “to immediately direct all necessary officers and agents to defend ICE facilities and personnel whenever and wherever they come under attack, including in Portland and Chicago,” according to a memo from Bondi’s office.
Pritzker: Feds seeking to deploy military to Illinois to protect ICE agents
Trump’s comments came after Hegseth summoned the top U.S. military officials to an in-person meeting to announce directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness as well as an end to “woke” culture in the military.
“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said.
He said he’s loosening disciplinary rules and weakening hazing protections.
Hegseth and Trump abruptly called military leaders from around the world to convene at a base in Virginia without publicly revealing the reason until Tuesday morning. While meetings between top military brass and civilian leaders are nothing new, experts say the scale of the gathering, the haste with which it was called and the mystery surrounding it are particularly unusual.
Although the military is designed to handle foreign threats, the president emphasized his vision of using it for domestic purposes.
“It’s the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control,” he said.
Trump’s remarks referred to criminals and immigrants who are in the country illegally. He also complained about “insurrectionists” who are funded by “the radical left.”
“Many of our leaders used our military to keep peace,” he said.
The Associated Press and baiduhai’s Jeremy Gorner contributed.