Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday to “fix crime” in Chicago, describing the northern U.S. city as “by far the most dangerous in the world.”
“I will fix the crime problem, just like I did in Washington,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform, referring to the deployment of federal law enforcement forces that he recently ordered in the U.S. capital.
After Los Angeles in June and Washington since mid-August, the Trump administration is threatening to send federal police and military personnel, including National Guard reservists, to other Democratic-run cities such as Chicago, New York, Baltimore, and Boston.
“Chicago is the murder capital of the world!” the Republican president further wrote in an all-caps post on Truth Social.
Democrats, for their part, have warned against what they call a military “invasion” of Chicago, Illinois.
Democratic Governor JB Pritzker, one of Trump’s most vocal opponents, accused the billionaire—whom he had already branded a “dictator”—of using such deployments to undermine the upcoming midterm elections in November 2026.
He and Maryland Governor Wes Moore, whose state includes Baltimore and is also in Trump’s crosshairs, accused the president of “manufacturing crises” to justify sending federal forces into Democratic states.
But for Donald Trump, “Pritzker desperately needs help, he just doesn’t know it yet.”
Chicago’s Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson, meanwhile signed an executive order aimed at limiting the authority of any potential federal law enforcement presence.
“No federal troops in Chicago! (…) We will defend our democracy in the city of Chicago!” he declared Monday during a rally.
“We are going to wage this fight across America, but we must first defend ourselves here at home,” he added.
In Washington, where they have been deployed since mid-August, armed soldiers with armored vehicles patrol the streets and subway, particularly near national institutions and monuments.
The deployment of the National Guard to maintain order in Los Angeles, following June protests against Trump’s hardline immigration policy, was ruled illegal on Tuesday by a federal judge.
However, that ruling will only take effect starting September 12, giving the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court the opportunity to weigh in.
The deployment of troops—National Guard and Marines—to Los Angeles was carried out without the consent of the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, marking the first such instance in the United States since 1965.
