Members of the Texas National Guard at the US Army Reserve Center, in Elwood, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, October 7, 2025 (Erin Hooley/AP)
EA-Times Radio VideoCast: “Trump Is At Breaking Point”
Donald Trump is not just waging a war on Iran. He is waging it on US cities.
In Trump’s second term, the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel or the National Guard in urban areas has become “normal”. Far from coincidentally, these large US cities have Democratic leaders. They also are diverse, liberal communities with the greatest resistance to the MAGA agenda.
Trump claims he is targeting these cities to combat crime. But this is a smokescreen, as he portrays “war zones” run by the “radical left”. Trump is targeting urban America because he is trying to weaken dissent and opposition while seeking to enforce MAGA policies.
With Executive Order 14287, “Protecting American Communities From Criminal Aliens”, the Trump Administration restricted federal funding for “sanctuary” jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal authorities pursuing documented immigrants.
“They can sue us and maybe they’ll win,” Trump said in January. “But we’re not giving money to sanctuary cities anymore.”
Chicago
Last October, Trump sent National Guard troops from Texas into Chicago.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker accused the Trump Administration of an “authoritarian march”. President Barack Obama reflected:
[What] if I had just sent the National Guard into Texas, and just said, “You know what? Lot of problems in Dallas. Lot of crime there. I don’t care what[Governor Greg Abbott] thinks. I’m gonna kind of take over law enforcement, because I think things are out of control”?
It is mind boggling to me how Fox News would have responded.
Before Trump sent the National Guard into America’s 3rd largest city, he blustered, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning….Chicago [is] about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
When Pritzer and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson resisted, Trump threatened them: “Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect ICE Officers! Governor Pritzker also!”
Pritzker was undaunted, “I will not back down. Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?”
He noted that only 2.5% of those arrested in Illinois under the immigration crackdown had been accused or convicted of a serious crime.
The Administration continues to withhold funds in health, transportation and other areas from the State of Illinois and Chicago, citing their “sanctuary” policies. Among the transportation targets are funds for electric vehicle chargers and for the Chicago Harbor Lock between The Chicago River and Lake Michigan. Cuts to health research include projects aimed at studying impact on specific populations, such as groups in Chicago disproportionately affected by sexually transmitted infections: “adolescents, racial and ethnic minorities, and men who have sex with men”.
The Smokescreen
Last September, Trump summoned commanders for a virtual address. He told them, “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military….They’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one.”
When Trump put the National Guard on the streets of the nation’s capital, Washington D.C., he made up statistics and complained that domestic abuse was included.
They said, “Crime’s down 87%.” I said, “No, no, no. It’s more than 87%, virtually nothing.”
And much lesser things, things that take place in the home they call crime. You know, they’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime. See?
So now I can’t claim 100%, but we are. We are a safe city.
Unsurprisingly, Trump ignored the fact that rates of violent crimes in US cities were decreasing before he returned to the White House. And he also ignored crime in rural areas.
In 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention established that rural counties had some of the highest rates of gun homicides in the US on a per capita basis, exceeding cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Walter S. DeKeseredy, Professor of Sociologyat the University of West Virginia, explains:
In reality, rates of violent crime are often higher in many rural communities, and at times there’s even more silence around it. Yet crime in rural and remote places is reported to the
police at lower rates than in urban areas.
Trump’s attack on urban America, in the guise of crime, is to make residents of these cities fearful. “He is taking a page from authoritarian rulers around the world who have used crime as an excuse to consolidate power and suppress rights.” assesses Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
City on a Hill?
The urban targeting by the Trump Administration is a cultural attack on diverse hubs of the US. It is an attempt to exercise and grab more power, hoping to tear down Democrats in areas where they get the most votes.
John F. Kennedy, just before being sworn in as President, expressed the hope that “we shall be as a city upon a hill — the eyes of all people are upon us”.
Twenty years later, Ronald Reagan took up the message:
I believe that Americans in 1980 are every bit as committed to that vision of a shining city on a hill, as were those long ago settlers….These visitors to that city on the Potomac do not come as white or black, red or yellow; they are not Jews or Christians; conservatives or liberals; or Democrats or Republicans.
They are Americans awed by what has gone before, proud of what for them is still… a shining city on a hill.
Trump has turned his back on this vision. His American First agenda has made America less American, feeding the worst in people and turning them against each other. He uses ICE and its agents as a paramilitary force to patrol the streets of America’s great cities.
The city on the hill does not seem to be shining any more. There is a darkening across it.
It is not the people of these cities that have cast this shadow. It is Donald Trump.
