President Trump on Tuesday promised that if Chicago leaders cannot get a handle on the city’s crime problem, the federal government will take charge.
He doubled down on his threat to invoke the Insurrection Act to send in federal troops.
“It’s been invoked before, as you know. If you look at Chicago, Chicago is a great city where there’s a lot of crime, and if the governor can’t do the job, we’ll do the job. It’s all very simple,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
He said the crime problem was obvious to everyone except Illinois’ Democratic leaders.
“They probably had 50 murders in Chicago over the last five, six, seven months. Many people were shot. And then the governor gets up and he says, ‘Well, we can handle it.’ They can’t handle it,” he said.
“They don’t know what they’re doing. The mayor is grossly incompetent. He’s at a 4% approval rating in Chicago,” he continued. “To have a great country, you can’t have crime, and we don’t have crime, but we have cities where there’s tremendous crime, and Chicago is one of them. And if the governor can’t straighten it out, we’ll straighten it out.”
The Insurrection Act of 1807 is a federal law that allows for the president to deploy the U.S. military or federalize state National Guard troops to quash what the president sees as an insurrection against the U.S.
According to a 2006 report by the Congressional Research Service, before invoking the Insurrection Act, the president “must first issue a proclamation ordering the insurgents to disperse within a limited time, 10 U.S.C. § 334.4. If the situation does not resolve itself, the President may issue an executive order to send in troops.”
The last president to invoke the Insurrection Act was George H.W. Bush during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
The other instance was in 1989, in response to looting and unrest in the U.S. Virgin Islands following Hurricane Hugo.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday asked a federal judge to block Mr. Trump from deploying 400 of the Texas National Guard to Chicago with 300 members of the Illinois National Guard.
“Let me be clear, Donald Trump is using our service members as political props and as pawns in his illegal effort to militarize our nation’s cities,” Mr. Pritzker said.
SEE ALSO: Trump open to invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 in Portland
Mr. Trump has also said he could invoke the Insurrection Act in Portland, Oregon, where protesters have been clashing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
“Portland is on fire. Portland’s been on fire for years, and that’s not so much saving it. We have to save something else, because I think that’s all insurrection,” the president said Monday. “I really think that’s criminal insurrection.”
Mr. Trump said he would do what “was necessary” as far as using the Insurrection Act to quell the violence and protect federal agents.
“So far, it hasn’t been necessary. But we have an Insurrection Act for a reason. If I had to enact it, I’d do that if people were being killed, and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up,” he said. “Sure. I would do that. I want to make sure that people aren’t killed. We have to make sure that our cities are safe.”
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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