Trump To Federalize Illinois National Guard, Pritzker Says

President Donald Trump will soon federalize 300 National Guard troops in Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker said Saturday, a move that comes despite the governor’s opposition.

“This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will,” Pritzker said in a statement. “It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.“

Pritzker’s announcement did not say where the troops will be sent. But Trump has long floated sending troops to Chicago as part of his nationwide crime crackdown. “We’re going in,” he told reporters at the White House in early September.

Trump has repeatedly deployed National Guardsmen to cities across America, from Los Angeles to Washington, despite federal law generally prohibiting the use of the military for domestic law enforcement.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its plans in Illinois. But Pritzker said in his statement that the administration’s motivation had little to do with protecting Americans from violent crime.

“They will pull hardworking Americans out of their regular jobs and away from their families all to participate in a manufactured performance — not a serious effort to protect public safety,” Pritzker said. “For Donald Trump, this has never been about safety. This is about control.”

Chicago officials have spent weeks preparing for a federal troop deployment, relying on plans originally used for the Democratic National Convention last year.

Pritzker on Monday warned that the Department of Homeland Security had notified his state that a memo had been sent to the Defense Department requesting the deployment of troops to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities.

In a Tuesday speech at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, Trump said he told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds” for the U.S. military.

“We’re going into Chicago very soon,” he said. “That’s a big city with an incompetent governor, stupid governor.”

The move comes a week after Trump directed Hegseth to send federal troops to Portland to tackle street crime and protect ICE facilities he said were “under siege from attack by Antifa,” authorizing the use of “full force” in doing so.

Portland and Oregon have since sued to stop Trump from federalizing the state’s National Guard. A ruling could come as soon as Saturday in that case.

This is a breaking news story that will be updated.