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US President Donald Trump said he is abandoning – for now – his push to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, a move that comes after legal roadblocks halted the efforts.
Trump said in a social media post Wednesday that he was withdrawing Guard troops for the time being. “We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime starts to skyrocket again. It’s only a matter of time!” he wrote.
The troops had already left Los Angeles after the president deployed them earlier this year as part of a broader crackdown on crime and immigration. They had been sent to Chicago and Portland, but were never on the streets while legal proceedings were taking place.
The president has made cracking down on crime in cities a centerpiece of his second term — and has toyed with the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act to prevent his opponents from using the courts to block his plans.
He said he sees his tough-on-crime approach as a winning policy issue heading into next year’s midterm elections.
In November, U.S. Northern Command announced that it was “moving and/or scaling” its operations in Portland, Chicago and Los Angeles, but that there would be a “constant, sustainable, long-term presence in each city.”
Trump’s efforts to deploy troops to Democratic-led cities have been met with legal challenges at almost every turn.
In December, the Supreme Court refused to allow the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops to the Chicago area as part of its immigration crackdown. The order was not a final decision but was a significant and rare setback by the high court to the president’s efforts.
In the nation’s capital, District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued to stop the deployment of more than 2,000 Guardsmen.
Hundreds of troops from California and Oregon were deployed to Portland, but a federal judge banned them from taking to the streets. A judge permanently blocked the deployment of National Guard troops in November after a three-day trial.
California National Guard troops were withdrawn from the streets of Los Angeles on December 15 after a court decision. But an appeals court had suspended a separate part of the order requiring control of the Guard to return to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In a court filing Tuesday, the Trump administration said it was no longer seeking to suspend that part of the order. This clears the way for California National Guard troops to fully return to state control after Trump federalized the Guard in June.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the development a “major litigation victory” in a press release Wednesday.
“For six months, California National Guard troops have been used as political pawns by a president desperate to become king,” Bonta said. “There is a reason why our founders decided that military and civilian affairs should be separate; a reason why our military is, by design, apolitical.”
Trump also ordered the deployment of the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis in September to combat crime, a move supported by the state’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, and senators. A Tennessee judge blocked the Guard’s appeal, siding with Democratic state and local officials who filed the lawsuit.
