Pritzker To Address Reports Of National Guard Deployment To Chicago In News Conference

CHICAGO — Chicago had one of its bloodiest holiday weekends in recent years with 53 shot and 7 killed, even after the city claimed a 57 percent drop in homicides so far in 2025, over the same period of time last year. The weekend’s high casualty count comes amid threats by President Donald Trump to send National Guard troops to Chicago.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker is expected to address the deployment of military to patrol the streets of Chicago. Whether troops will be patrolling Chicago’s downtown area or neighborhoods that have seen high rates of gun violence remains to be seen.

The governor will be holding a press conference at 3 p.m. Monday. Last week, Trump and Pritzker traded barbs over the tentative plans to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago, with the governor pointing out that red states have much higher crime rates than Chicago.

“Memphis, Tennessee, Hattiesburg, Mississippi have higher crime rates than Chicago, yet Donald Trump is sending troops here and not there. Ask yourself why," Pritzker said. "If Donald Trump was actually serious about fighting crime in cities like Chicago, he, along with his congressional Republicans, would not be cutting over $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants nationally.”

According to Trump, Chicagoans “are screaming for us to come.”

“Chicago is a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “We're going to straighten that one out, probably next. It won't even be tough. The people in Chicago are screaming for us to come.”

This past weekend, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed a sweeping executive order Mayor Brandon Johnson signed a sweeping executive order establishing the “Protecting Chicago Initiative.” The initiative is a cross-departmental directive to protect the Constitutional rights of city residents amid the possibility of imminent ICE officers and the National Guard deployment by the federal government into Chicago.

The order demands that President Donald Trump stand down from his threat to deploy National Guard personnel to Chicago and affirms that Chicago Police Department will remain a locally controlled law enforcement agency under the authority of the City of Chicago and Mayor Johnson, according to city hall.

“The City of Chicago will do everything in our power to defend our democracy and protect our communities,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a news release.

“With this executive order, we send a resounding message to the federal government: we do not need nor want an unconstitutional and illegal military occupation of our city. We do not want military checkpoints or armored vehicles on our streets, and we do not want to see families ripped apart. We will take any action necessary to protect the rights of all Chicagoans. Protecting Chicago is the next step in the work we have been doing to defend our city from federal overreach and illegal action.”

The mayor has also ordered that any members of ICE and the National Guard remain unmasked. During the "Workers over Billionaires" rally and protest near the Haymarket Memorial Monday, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson led the crowd in chanting "no federal troops in the city of Chicago."

After a weekend of internet speculation that the president was near death, Trump said he would also make a “special announcement” at 2 p.m. Tuesday. It is being speculated that Trump will sign an executive order aimed at ending cashless bail policies in Washington, D.C. Illinois adopted the Pretrial Fairness Act (part of the SAFE-T Act) in 2023, becoming the first state in the U.S. to eliminate cash bail. The new executive order threatens to revoke federal funding for cities and states that have cashless bail policies, The Hill is reporting.