Tammy Duckworth on Trump sending National Guard to Chicago: ‘He is afraid of us’

U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) joined Gov. JB Pritzker and other Illinois leaders Monday to denounce President Donald Trump’s plan to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago despite no request from state or local officials and a significant decline in the city’s crime rates.

About Trump’s plan: The president, who described Chicago as a “killing field,” first announced his plan last week before telling reporters Monday that he could “solve” the city “within one week” or less. The plan came with an executive order that creates National Guard units specifically designed for “quelling civil disturbances” and establishes a “quick reaction force … available for rapid nationwide deployment.” While Trump has deployed similar forces in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles, constitutional experts point to different legal constraints.

A defiant Duckworth: Drawing on her background as a 23-year military veteran with 17 years in the Illinois National Guard, Duckworth criticized Trump’s authority on military matters during the press conference. “Donald Trump never had the courage himself to raise his right hand and serve his country in uniform,” she said, arguing later that troops “are doing so to defend our nation’s rights and freedoms, not to protect a tinpot dictator’s thin skin or to police their own neighbors.”

The senator also addressed Trump’s history of targeting Chicago. “It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump is once again attacking Chicago. He has for a long time, and he will probably keep on doing it for years to come. It is because he is afraid of us,” she said. In a press release, she characterized the president’s approach as reflecting his “continuing pattern of politicizing and misusing our nation’s military for his own partisan gain and to crush dissent,” which she called “deeply disturbing, is un-American and has no place in any of our cities.”

What’s next: Pritzker, for his part, said Illinois will fight the deployment using “every peaceful tool we have.” “There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention that will disrupt the daily lives of our people. What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted,” he said. “It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. And it is un-American.” The governor also warned federal officials: “To any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous, we are watching and we are taking names.”

Illinois officials are preparing for potential court battles, with Atty. Gen. Kwame Raoul noting his office’s record of dozens of lawsuits fighting the “unlawful overreach of the Trump administration.” Pritzker also cited the Posse Comitatus Act, a Civil War-era legislation designed to prevent military forces from serving as domestic law enforcement, as a potential legal barrier. Meanwhile, coalition members have highlighted Chicago’s crime statistics, including violent crime reductions exceeding 22%, homicide decreases of over 32% and a 37% drop in shooting incidents compared to the previous year — marking the city’s steepest crime decline in more than a decade.

Separately, federal agencies are planning a large-scale immigration enforcement operation in Chicago for next week.