Trump says he is halting efforts to send the National Guard to Chicago, LA and Portland
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US President Donald Trump said he is scaling back – for now – his campaign to send National Guard troops to Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., a move that comes after the official road closures.
Trump said in a social media post on Wednesday that he is removing the security forces for now. “We will be back, maybe in a very different and stronger form, when crime starts to increase again – It’s only a question of time!” he wrote.
The troopers had already left Los Angeles after the president deployed them earlier this year as part of a broader crackdown on crime and immigration. They were sent to Chicago and Portland but never hit the streets as legal challenges played out.
The president has made an anti-crime campaign the centerpiece of his second term – and has floated the idea of using the Sedition Act to prevent his opponents from using the courts to block his plans.
He said he sees his crime-fighting approach as a winning political issue ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
In November, the US Northern Command said it was “modifying and/or delegating” operations in Portland, Chicago and Los Angeles, but there would be “continuous, permanent and long-term presence in each city.”
Trump’s campaign to send troops into Democratic-led cities has faced legal challenges at almost every turn.
The Supreme Court in December refused to allow the Trump administration to send National Guard troops to the Chicago area as part of its crackdown on immigration. The order was not a final decision but it was a major and unusual challenge by the supreme court to the president’s efforts.
In the nation’s capital, District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued to halt the deployment of more than 2,000 security guards.
Hundreds of soldiers from California and Oregon were sent to Portland, but a federal judge forbade them from taking to the streets. A judge permanently blocked the deployment of National Guard troops there in November after a three-day trial.
California National Guard soldiers were pulled from the streets of Los Angeles on December 15 after a court order. But the appellate court upheld a different part of the order that required security managers to return to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In a court filing Tuesday, the Trump administration said it no longer wants a stay on that part of the order. That paves the way for the California National Guard to fully return to state control after Trump mobilized the Guard in June.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the development a “huge legal victory” in a press release Wednesday.
“For six months, the California National Guard has been used by a President who wants to be king,” said Bonta. “There is a reason our founders decided that military and civil affairs should be separated; a reason our military is, by design, political.”
Trump also ordered the deployment of the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis in September to fight crime, a move supported by Gov. Bill Lee of the country and the senators. A Tennessee judge blocked the use of the Guard, joining Democratic state and local officials who sued.
