CHICAGO—As a federal judge ruled Tuesday that President Trump’s deployment of the military in the nation’s cities and using them as a police force under his control are illegal, Illinois officials, unions, and their allies warned that the regime in the White House should “stay out of Chicago.”
Trump was warned even before U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco threw the book at him in the case before the Federal Appeals Court on September 2. Judge Breyer ruled that deploying the Marines, as he did in Los Angeles, was illegal under the 1868 Posse Comitatus Act, which bans use of federal troops to enforce the law in domestic cases except to combat rebellion or insurrection.
“Is there any limit?” the judge asked angrily. Trump, he said, “is trying to create a national police force with the president as its chief.” He put a hold on his own ruling for 10 days to give time for the expected appeal, which the Trump regime promptly filed.
The illegal deployment of troops to Chicago, which the president says is next on his list, happened last in 1894 when President Grover Cleveland deployed troops to the city, over the objections of then Gov. John Peter Altgeld, to break the historic Pullman rail strike. Altgeld is the governor who pardoned the Haymarket martyrs who were framed and executed by Chicago’s ruling anti-labor lawmakers.
Chicago Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson, a Chicago Teachers Union member and former shop steward, Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and CTU President Stacy Davis Gates praised Judge Breyer and blasted Trump’s plans to send in the troops.
Top congressional Democrats have been essentially Missing in Action for quite some time on the issue of Trump’s military takeovers. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., criticized Trump’s troops in D.C. in mid-August—and pivoted in the next sentence to the economy. He’s said nothing since. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, also D-N.Y., finally spoke up on September 2, and hit the constitutional points.
“Every time Trump creates a new crisis, each new controversy, each new lie, every time he sends armed troops to U.S. cities, each new attack on the courts, on the rule of law, and on the Constitution is a disgrace to the presidency,” said Schumer.
The Associated Press keeps a running list of anti-Trump lawsuits, who filed them, and their status. There are no federal lawmakers on those suits. Even the Chicago Women in Trades sued Trump over grant cutoffs for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The Illinoisans, especially Chicago Mayor Johnson, are far more defiant of Trump than Democratic Party leaders as a whole.
No troops in Chicago!
“No federal troops in the city of Chicago! No militarized force in the city of Chicago!” Johnson said in a short Labor Day speech at the historic Haymarket Memorial on the North Side. “We’re going to defend our democracy in the city of Chicago. We’re going to protect the humanity of every single person in the city of Chicago.”
Days before, Johnson signed a Chicago executive order telling the city police not to cooperate with Trump’s troops. “This executive order makes it emphatically clear this president is not going to come in and deputize our police department,” Johnson said at a news conference with city leaders and Pritzker.
The mayor’s order “affirms that Chicago police officers will continue to enforce state and local laws, but will not work with the National Guard or federal agents on patrols, arrests, immigration enforcement or other law enforcement actions,” an official statement said.
“We will not have our police officers…deputized to do traffic stops and checks for the president. We may see militarized enforcement” or “even military vehicles in the streets,” the mayor warned.
The city has been told by the administration to expect ICE agents at any moment this week to conduct raids across the city.
“We do not want to see families ripped apart…grandmothers thrown into the back of unmarked vans…homeless harassed or ‘disappeared’ by unmarked federal agents,” Mayor Johnson declared.
“When did we become a country where it’s OK for the U.S. president to insist on national television that a state should call him to beg for anything—especially something we don’t want?” Gov. Pritzker chimed in. “Have we truly lost all sense of sanity in this nation, that we treat this as normal?”
“You are not wanted here nor needed here,” Pritzker told Trump the week before Labor Day. He spoke at an outdoor press conference outside Trump’s monster retail-apartment tower on North Wabash Ave.
“Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents, and score political points,” the governor said then. He later warned he’s “watching and taking names” of Trumpite aides who force troops into Chicago, and would sue them, as individuals.
Judge Breyer “confirmed what we have known from the beginning: President Trump’s militarization of American cities is immoral, illegal, and rooted in racism not safety,” said Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates, a social studies teacher.
“After Trump’s tyranny in Los Angeles and unconstitutional practices in Washington, D.C, if he hasn’t already decided to cancel his occupation of Chicago, this ruling vindicates those who have been standing up to tell him to stay out of our city.
Reject military occupation
“As a union of educators, entrusted with the nurturing and well-being of hundreds of thousands of children, we reject any attempt at an unlawful federal occupation of our city. We would welcome leadership at the federal level that fully funds public education, restores SNAP benefits, and expands Medicaid to healthcare for all.”
Trial evidence showed Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles. In short, the two “violated the Posse Comitatus Act,” Judge Breyer’s 52-page ruling stated.
“There was no rebellion,” the judge declared, “nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.”
There are still 300 Marines patrolling downtown Los Angeles, aiding Trump’s ICE agents there who grab, beat, hogtie, and arrest people, claiming they’re “illegal aliens.” After nabbing people in restaurants, schools, courthouses, and even churches, or by smashing in their car windows and pulling them out, Trump’s agents fly them to faraway states—or countries—without hearings or due process.
Having the Marines protect ICE as it attacks people is illegal, Judge Breyer said. It’s also what Trump wants troops to do in Chicago and other “blue” cities headed by mayors of color. Trump even said so at an August 27 Cabinet meeting, the judge noted.
Asked about deploying the National Guard to Chicago, Trump declared then “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the President of the United States. If I think our country is in danger, and it is in danger in these cities, I can do it.”
If that sounds familiar, it is. In a 1977 interview, Richard Nixon justified the rampant law-breaking and constitutional violations of Watergate by declaring, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
Which is also what the GOP-named majority on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in essence last July. It gave Trump and future presidents absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts” during their terms–with a broad definition of official acts.
Judge Breyer accused Trump of turning 5,000 Marines in Los Angeles into a “national police force,” which, he ruled, is illegal and unconstitutional. He said Trump has exceeded the limits of federal law, which prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. He said the administration’s rationale for deployment fell “far short” of the permissible categories of “rebellion” and “insurrection.”
“There was indeed protest in Los Angeles yet there was no rebellion or insurrection,” the judge wrote.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass applauded the ruling. “The White House tried to invade the nation’s second-largest city,” she said. “That’s illegal, Los Angeles will not buckle, we will not break.”
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