President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/span> plan to add Chicago to the list of American cities under U.S. military occupation could cost almost $1.6 million per day, according to an expert estimate furnished exclusively to The Intercept.\u00a0<\/p>\n Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Tuesday that members of the Texas National Guard<\/a> are poised to deploy to Chicago. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott\u2019s office disputed this claim. Trump, when asked about his plans to send National Guard troops to Chicago, said, \u201cWe\u2019re going in,\u201d but added, \u201cI didn\u2019t say when.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn the coming days, we expect to see what\u2019s playing out in L.A. and D.C. happen in Chicago,\u201d Pritzker posted to X<\/a>on Tuesday. \u201cThese efforts are not about fighting crime or making communities safer. This is about Donald Trump testing his power and producing political drama to cover up his own corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n An analysis by Hanna Homestead of the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan research group, found that if Trump deployed 3,000 National Guard troops to Chicago it would cost taxpayers around\u00a0$1,590,000 per day. It\u2019s the latest runaway expense \u2014 expected to climb into the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars \u2014 connected to Trump\u2019s efforts to turn the U.S. into a genuine police state<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cDeploying National Guard troops to Chicago is only going to add to taxpayers\u2019 growing tab for these law-and-order optics,\u201d said Stephen Ellis, the president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group. \u201cSpending millions of dollars a day on troops milling about major American cities is a waste of their time and squanders precious resources.\u201d<\/p>\n A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that Trump\u2019s deployment of troops to Los Angeles<\/a> was illegal and harkened back to Britain\u2019s use of soldiers as law enforcement officers in colonial America. He warned that Trump intends to transform the National Guard into a presidential police force.<\/p>\n It remains unclear whether that judicial decision will be enforced. Given the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year decreeing that federal district courts cannot issue injunctions against federal policies nationwide<\/a>, any decision on a Chicago occupation would have to come from a case of its own.<\/p>\n Trump has threatened<\/a> to deploy troops to Chicago for weeks, following militarized crackdowns in Los Angeles<\/a> in June and in Washington, D.C.,<\/a> last month. \u201cI will solve the crime problem fast, just like I did in D.C. Chicago will be safe again, and soon,\u201d Trump posted to TruthSocial on Tuesday, the same day that the federal judge deemed the\u00a0California troop deployment illegal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump signed a wide-ranging executive order<\/a> last week directing the Defense Department to take a larger role in domestic law enforcement, as he threatens to deploy troops to numerous\u00a0cities led by Democratic mayors in states with Democratic governors.\u00a0Trump directed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to create \u201ca specialized unit within the District of Columbia National Guard\u201d to police \u201cthe Nation\u2019s capital\u201d and ready each state\u2019s National Guard to assist in \u201cquelling civil disturbances.\u201d The order stated that the defense secretary \u201cshall ensure the availability of a standing National Guard quick reaction force that shall be resourced, trained, and available for rapid nationwide deployment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Experts, including a federal judge, say that the increasing use of military forces<\/a> in the interior of the U.S. represents an extraordinary violation<\/a> of the Posse Comitatus Act, a bedrock 19th-century law fundamental to the democratic tradition in America that makes it illegal to use federal troops on domestic soil as a presidential police force.<\/p>\n \u201cCongress spoke clearly in 1878 when it passed the Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the use of the U.S. military to execute domestic law. Nearly 140 years later, Defendants\u2014President Trump, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, and the Department of Defense\u2014deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced,\u201d is how U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer began a 52-page ruling<\/a> issued on Tuesday that found Trump\u2019s deployment of troops to Los Angeles was illegal. \u201cYet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Breyer ruled that the Pentagon systematically used armed soldiers to perform police functions in California in violation of Posse Comitatus and planned to do so elsewhere. \u201cPresident Trump and Secretary Hegseth,\u201d he wrote<\/a>, \u201chave stated their intention to call National Guard troops into federal service in other cities across the country \u2026 thus creating a national police force with the President as its chief.\u201d<\/p>\n Breyer said the government \u201cviolated the Posse Comitatus Act willfully\u201d and \u201cknowingly contradicted their own training materials, which listed twelve functions that the Posse Comitatus Act bars the military from performing.\u201d\u00a0He forbid the administration from using the military in California \u201cto execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants\u201d in ways that violate Posse Comitatus. Beyer gave the Trump administration until noon on September 12 to comply.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have nothing to add on this and defer you [sic] to the White House,\u201d a Pentagon spokesperson replied to a request for comment on Breyer\u2019s findings.\u00a0The White House did not respond to questions from The Intercept.<\/p>\n Acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli <\/a>rejected Breyer\u2019s ruling on X. \u201cThis is a false narrative and a misleading injunction,\u201d he wrote<\/a> on Tuesday, stating, \u201cThe military will remain in Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump called Breyer \u201ca radical left judge\u201d and framed the September 12 deadline as a victory allowing the administration to continue its occupation \u2014 now down to 300 troops from more than 5,000 \u2014 unabated. \u201cThe judge said, \u2018But you can leave the 300 people that you already have in place, they can continue to be in place.\u2019 \u2026 They can stay, they can remain, they can do what they have to do,\u201d Trump insisted.<\/p>\n Trump, in federalizing<\/span> the California Guard<\/a> in June, invoked a statute,\u00a0Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code<\/a>, that allows him to call National Guard members into federal service under certain conditions, including a state of rebellion against the federal government.<\/p>\n Federal forces<\/a>\u00a0have been operating under the same\u00a0Title 10 authority<\/a>, or federal control, in at least five states \u2014 Arizona,\u00a0California<\/a>, Florida, New Mexico, and Texas \u2014 in service of the Trump administration\u2019s anti-immigrant agenda<\/a>.<\/p>\n Many more troops, like the state National Guard forces deployed to Washington, D.C., are operating under so-called Title 32 status, meaning they are under state, rather than federal, control, unlike deployments in\u00a0Los Angeles<\/a>\u00a0and across the\u00a0southern border<\/a>. With no governor to report to, the D.C. National Guard\u2019s chain of command runs from its commanding general, to the secretary of the Army, to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, to the president.\u00a0<\/p>\n Under the Constitution, the federal government doesn\u2019t possess actual domestic police powers, Joseph Nunn, an attorney with the Brennan Center who focuses on the domestic role of the U.S. military, explained, noting that the absence of an insurrection or obstructions to the execution of federal law limits what troops are legally allowed to do in most U.S. cities.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of what the administration has done in Washington, D.C., is not repeatable anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cIn Chicago, there\u2019s absolutely nothing that the administration can point to justify any kind of military deployment,\u201d he told The Intercept. \u201cMost of what the administration has done in Washington, D.C., is not repeatable anywhere else, because the federal government has a uniquely high level of authority over the district that it doesn\u2019t have in the states. To the extent that Trump is talking about sending the National Guard into Chicago to take over local law enforcement, he can\u2019t do that. The president cannot use the military or federal law enforcement or any other means to take over municipal policing or crime prevention in a state, or in a city within a state.\u201d<\/p>\n Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and other Illinois Democrats have pushed back against Trump\u2019s threats. \u201cThis is not about fighting crime,\u201d Pritzker said. \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump repeatedly denigrated the nation\u2019s third-largest city on Tuesday. \u201cCHICAGO IS THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!\u201d he posted<\/a> on TruthSocial, also calling it<\/a> \u201cthe worst and most dangerous city in the World, by far.\u201d This is not true. FBI data<\/a> from 2024 shows that many U.S. cities have much higher murder rates than Chicago, including Birmingham, Alabama; St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; Cleveland and Dayton, Ohio; Kansas City, Missouri; Shreveport, Louisiana; South Fulton, Georgia; and Little Rock, Arkansas, among others. Murder rates in some cities in Mexico, Ecuador, and South Africa in recent years have been much higher still, according to one study<\/a>, and those are dwarfed by the number of civilian deaths<\/a> in the cities of the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not a coincidence that the MAGA coalition is targeting Democrat-run cities like D.C. and Chicago with Black leadership. \u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cExpanding the military domestically to occupy American cities and suppress internal dissent is textbook authoritarianism,\u201d Homestead, of the National Priorities Project, told The Intercept. \u201cIt is not a coincidence that the MAGA coalition is targeting Democrat-run cities like D.C. and Chicago with Black leadership. We should not underestimate the racial component of this strategy \u2014 which is helping energize the Republican base while providing a distraction from the unpopular Medicaid cuts and unreleased Epstein files.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump has threatened<\/a> military occupations of other cities led by Democratic mayors including Baltimore, Oakland, and New York City.<\/p>\n Dozens of Chicago<\/span> pastors published an open letter<\/a> to Trump on Tuesday saying that instead of deploying troops, Trump should focus on socioeconomic inequality in the city. \u201cThe real violence in Chicago \u2014\u00a0like real violence across America \u2014 is not the violence of the streets but the violence of policy: underfunded schools, disappearing jobs, healthcare deserts, food apartheid, and a criminal justice system that treats poverty like a capital offense,\u201d wrote<\/a> the faith leaders.<\/p>\n Housing all of Chicago\u2019s homeless people would cost about $383,000 per day, Homestead told The Intercept, noting that the sum equaled roughly one-quarter of the expense of a deployment of 3,000 Guard members to Chicago.<\/p>\n\n
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