After Supreme Court setback, Trump to remove National Guard from Chicago, LA and Portland

Last week, the Supreme Court rejected an emergency request from the Trump administration to allow Trump to deploy National Guard troops in Chicago. The court said that the administration had failed to make the case that the situation on the ground in Chicago was dire enough to empower the president to deploy troops there.

Following this order, Trump announced today that he would drop his push to deploy troops to Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, OR. However, he insisted that troops “will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again – Only a question of time!”.

The surprise announcement follows months of controversy and legal drama, with Trump testing the boundaries of the power of the presidency. Trump pushed to deploy troops in these cities over the objections of Democratic state leaders, who normally have the power to control deployments of guard troops within their states. The administration has argued that the guard troops were necessary to protect immigration officials as they detained migrants. The Supreme Court found this to be insufficient justification to override the authority of individual states and municipalities.