I want to speak plainly about the moment that we
are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in
this city, and as a state, and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am
alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person
listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.
Over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning,
for quite a while now, to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of
Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country's founders
warned against, and it's the reason that they established a federal system with
a separation of powers built on checks and balances.
What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal.
It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.
No one from the White House or the executive branch has reached out to me or to
the mayor. No one has reached out to our staffs. No effort has been made to
coordinate or to ask for our assistance in identifying any actions that might be
helpful to us. Local law enforcement has not been contacted. We have made no
requests for federal intervention. None.
We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did: We
read a story in The Washington Post.
If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what
possible justification could the White House have for planning such an
exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor,
the mayor, or the police?
Let me answer that question: This is not about fighting crime. This is about
Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue
city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals.
This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey,
Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our
democracy, militarize our cities and end elections.
There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention.
There is no inter- insurrection. There is no insurrection. Like every major
American city in both blue and red states, we deal with crime in Chicago.
Indeed, the violent crime rate is worse in red states and red cities.
Here in Chicago, our civilian police force and elected leaders work every day to
combat crime and to improve public safety, and it's working.
Not one person here today will claim we have solved all crime in Chicago, nor
can that be said of any major American metro area. But calling the military into
a U.S. city to invade our streets and neighborhoods and disrupt the lives of
everyday people is an extraordinary action, and it should require extraordinary
justification.
Look around you right now. Does this look like an emergency? Look at this. Go
talk to the people of Chicago who are enjoying a gorgeous afternoon in this
city. Ask the families buying ice cream on the Riverwalk. Go see the students
who are at the beach after school. Talk to the workers that I just met taking
the water taxi to get here. Find a family who's enjoying today sitting on their
front porch and ask if they want their neighborhoods turned into a war zone by a
wannabe dictator. Ask if they'd like to pass through a checkpoint with
unidentified officers in masks while taking their kids to school.
Crime is a reality we all face in this country. Public safety has been among our
highest priorities since taking office. We have hired more police and given them
more funding.
We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stocks, and high-capacity magazines.
We invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs. We
listened to our local communities, to the people who live and work in the places
that are most affected by crime and asked them what they needed to help make
their neighborhoods safer.
Those strategies have been working. Crime is dropping in Chicago. Murders are
down 32% compared to last year and nearly cut in half since 2021.
Shootings are down 37% since last year, and 57% from four years ago. Robberies
are down 34% year over year. Burglaries down 21%. Motor vehicle thefts down 26%.
So in case there was any doubt as to the motivation behind Trump's military
occupations, take note: 13 of the top 20 cities in homicide rate have Republican
governors. None of these cities is Chicago.
Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by
Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.
Memphis, Tennessee; Hattiesburg, Mississippi have higher crime rates than
Chicago, and yet Donald Trump is sending troops here and not there? Ask yourself
why.
If Donald Trump was actually serious about fighting crime in cities like
Chicago, he, along with his congressional Republicans, would not be cutting over
$800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants nationally, including
cutting $158 million in funding to Illinois for violence prevention programs
that deploy trained outreach workers to deescalate conflict on our streets.
Cutting $71 million in law enforcement grants to Illinois, direct money for
police departments through programs like Project Safe Neighborhoods, the state
and local Antiterrorism Training Program, and the Rural Violent Crime Reduction
Initiative, cutting $137 million in child protection measures in Illinois that
protect our kids against abuse and neglect.
Trump is defunding the police.
To the members of the press who are assembled here today, and listening across
the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is.
This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This
is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see, where
the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse
race piece on who will be helped politically by the president's actions.
Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his
dissidence, and score political points. If this were happening in any other
country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.
Look at the people assembled before you today, behind me. This is a full
cross-section of Chicago's leaders from the business world, the faith community,
law enforcement, education, community organizations, and more. We sometimes
disagree on how to effectively solve the many challenges that our state and our
city face on a daily basis. But today, we are standing here united, in public,
in front of the cameras, unafraid to tell the president that his proposed
actions will make our jobs harder and the lives of our residents worse.
Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras
and asked for me personally to say, "Mr. President, can you do us the honor of
protecting our city?" Instead, I say, "Mr. President, do not come to Chicago."
You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over
the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties
and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.
Most alarming, you seem to lack any appropriate concern as our
commander-in-chief for the members of the military that you would so callously
deploy as pawns in your ever-more-alarming grabs for power.
As a governor, I've had to make the decision in the past to call up members of
the National Guard into active service, and I think it's worth taking a moment
to reflect on how seriously I take that responsibility, and on the many things
that I consider before asking these brave men and women to leave their homes and
their communities to serve in any capacity for us.
As I've said many times in the past, members of the National Guard are not
trained to serve as law enforcement. They are trained for the battlefield, and
they're good at it. They're not trained to arrest people and read them their
Miranda rights. They did not sign up for the National Guard to fight crime. And
when we call them into service, we are reaching into local communities and
taking people who have jobs and families away from their neighborhoods and the
people who rely upon them.
It is insulting to their integrity and to the extraordinary sacrifices that they
make to serve in the Guard to use them as a political prop, where they could be
put in situations where they will be at odds with their local communities, the
ones that they seek to serve.
I know Donald Trump doesn't care about the well-being of the members of our
military, but I do and so do all the people standing here.
So let me speak to all Illinoisans and to all Chicagoans right now. Hopefully
the president will reconsider this dangerous and misguided encroachment upon our
state and our city's sovereignty. Hopefully rational voices, if there are any
left inside the White House or the Pentagon, will prevail in the coming days. If
not, we are going to face an unprecedented and difficult time ahead.
But I know you Chicago, and I know you are up to it. When you protest, do it
peacefully. Be sure to continue Chicago's long tradition of nonviolent
resistance. Remember that the members of the military and the National Guard who
will be asked to walk these streets are, for the most part, here unwillingly.
And remember that they can be court martialed and their lives ruined if they
resist deployment. Look to the members of the faith community standing behind me
today for guidance on how to mobilize.
To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your
National Guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the
wishes of its elected representatives and its people, you would be failing your
constituents and your country. Cooperation and coordination between our states
is vital to the fabric of our nation and it benefits us all. Any action
undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to
the ego of a dictator will be responded to.
The State of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with
every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We
will use every lever at our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their
rights.
Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme,
to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve
the petty whims of an arrogant little man, 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.
This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through
right now, and eventually the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year.
Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many
acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf.
You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from
finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or
political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our
constitutional rule of law.
As Dr. King once said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends
toward justice." Humbly I would add, it doesn't bend on its own. History tells
us we often have to apply force needed to make sure that the arc gets where it
needs to go.
This is one of those times.
Original Audio and Video Source:
CBSNews.com
Original Video Source:
lms.illinois.gov
Audio Note: AR-XE = American Rhetoric Extreme Enhancement
Video Note: Stereo enhanced audio.
Page Created:
11/2/25
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