President Trump announces National Guard will be withdrawn from Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland
President Donald Trump said in a social media post that he would withdraw the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland.
President Donald Trump said in a social media post on Wednesday, Dec. 31, that he is rescinding efforts to send the National Guard to Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, in the face of several legal defeats.
“Remove the National Guard in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland. That’s simply due to the fact that having these great patriots in these cities has significantly reduced crime,” Trump wrote.
The president added that if crime rates rise, federal troops “will come back.” President Trump said the controversial deployment of troops to Democratic-led cities was aimed at enforcing immigration laws and fighting crime, but has increasingly faced legal challenges.
National Guard troops have been mostly off-site in Los Angeles for at least several weeks, and although they are also deployed in Portland, Oregon and Chicago, they have not taken to the streets to face legal challenges. In California, nearly all of the 4,000 California National Guard troops and 700 Marines originally deployed left the state over the summer.
The move came hours after the administration ended its fight to keep California’s National Guard under federal control, with the Democratic state winning a months-long legal battle.
The Supreme Court last week considered the president’s controversial use of military force. The Dec. 23 decision blocked the deployment from moving forward in Chicago amid developing legal issues.
Then, in early November, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration’s sending of troops to Portland violated the 10th Amendment to the Constitution and that the sending of troops “exceeded the authority of the president.”
The National Guard normally operates under the command of governors, but can be called to federal service by the president only under certain circumstances.
“If the federal government hadn’t intervened, Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago would be gone,” Trump said in the post. “We will be back when crime starts to spike again, perhaps in a much different and more powerful form – it’s just a matter of time!”
Kathryn Palmer is USA TODAY’s political reporter. She can be reached at the following address: kapalmer@usatoday.com And to X@Kathryn Purml. Sign up for her daily politics newsletter here.
(This story has been updated to include video.)
