\n<\/p>\n
\n\tIllinois Governor JB Pritzker blasted President Donald Trump after he threatened on Friday to target Chicago as the next city to send federal troops to, purportedly to fight crime, as he has done in other Democratic strongholds. Trump has deployed nearly 2,000 National Guard members in his current campaign in Washington, D.C., after deploying 2,000 in Los Angeles in June in the wake of protests over aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cChicago\u2019s a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent. And we\u2019ll straighten that one out probably next, that\u2019ll be our next one after this, and it won\u2019t even be tough,\u201d Trump said on Friday, confirming previous reporting from Rolling Stone<\/em> that his administration was eyeing Chicago for a militarized crackdown.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAnd the people in Chicago, Mr. Vice President, are screaming for us to come in,\u201d Trump claimed. \u201cThey\u2019re wearing red hats, just like this one, but they\u2019re wearing red hats. African American ladies, beautiful ladies, are saying, \u2018Please, President Trump, come to Chicago. Please.\u2019 I did great with the Black vote, as you know, and they want something to happen, so I think Chicago will be our next.\u201d His remarks followed his administration ordering troops to carry firearms, despite there not appearing to be indication that troops are facing threats that would require weapons. Trump later added: \u201cAnd then we\u2019ll help with New York.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFollowing the president\u2019s remarks, Pritzker called Trump\u2019s threat \u201can authoritarian power grab of major cities\u201d in a social media thread. \u201cThings People are Begging for: 1. Cheaper groceries 2. No Medicaid and SNAP cuts 3. Release of the Epstein Files,\u201d Pritzker wrote. \u201cThings People are NOT begging for: 1. An authoritarian power grab of major cities.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAs Donald Trump attempts to create chaos that distracts from his problems, we\u2019ll call it out for what it is. Trump and Republicans are trying to distract from the pain they\u2019re causing \u2014 from tariffs raising the prices of goods to stripping away healthcare and food from millions,\u201d Pritzker wrote in a social media thread, noting that Trump used D.C. and L.A. as a \u201ctesting ground for authoritarian overreach.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\t\u201cTrump\u2019s goal is to incite fear in our communities and destabilize existing public safety efforts \u2014 all to create a justification to further abuse his power,\u201d he continued. \u201cHe\u2019s playing a game and creating a spectacle for the press to play along with. We don\u2019t play those games. Our commitment to law and order is delivering results.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tPritzker said that crime rates are improving and that homicides are down by 30 percent in the city over the past year, a significant drop in violent crime; and shootings are also down by nearly 40 percent, as Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson noted via CBS News in response to Trump\u2019s claims about the city.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cOur state and local law enforcement partners know our neighborhoods and our streets because they live here too,\u201d Pritzker continued. He added: \u201cThe safety of the people of Illinois is my highest priority, so we will follow the law and stand up for the sovereignty of our state.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\tTrump has been on a tear against the Democratic sanctuary city of Chicago for years, threatening to send in the feds back in January 2017 and saying the city is \u201cworse than some of the places \u2026 in the Middle East where you have wars going on,\u201d as Block Club Chicago reported. <\/p>\n \n\tIn June, a senior Trump official told Rolling Stone<\/em> the city was in his sights for ICE arrests and deportations following the progressive mayor telling citizens to \u201crise up\u201d against the president\u2019s immigration crackdowns and the city\u2019s robust anti-Trump and anti-ICE movement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Illinois Governor JB Pritzker blasted President Donald Trump after he threatened on Friday to target Chicago as the next city to send federal troops to, purportedly to fight crime, as he has done in other Democratic strongholds. Trump has deployed nearly 2,000 National Guard members in his current campaign in Washington, D.C., after deploying 2,000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[10512,6645,10511,1741,1162,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-17415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-blasts","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-pritzker","11":"tag-target","12":"tag-threat","13":"tag-trumps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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