Preparations continued Wednesday for an influx of federal agents to Chicago as President Trump considers sending in the National Guard.
On Tuesday, Gov. JB Pritzker met with violence interrupters at Chicago’s Metropolitan Peace Initiatives as they run table exercises and trainings to learn how to encounter federal agents should they come to Chicago.
They said the training would apply whether it involves additional agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, members of another federal agency, or the National Guard.
Metropolitan Peace Initiatives members take their work to the street — trying to minimize the teen takeovers that often pop up in Chicago in the summer months. Members of the organization talked with CBS News Chicago in May, saying members of its crisis response team train in classrooms for 18 weeks before they go out into the field and start talking to teens during trends.
Pritzker also held a news conference at Metropolitan Peace Initiatives at the possible deployment. He was asked why he is not calling President Trump
"The president is begging me to call him to ask him to do something that we don’t want. He wants me to call him and ask him to call in the National Guard to the city of Chicago. We don’t want it," Pritzker said. "So that’s why I’m not calling the president. I have been very clear about what we do want. What we do want is civilian law enforcement assistance."
On Tuesday, President Trump renewed his threats to send in federal troops to Chicago to crack down on crime, despite a judge in California ruling the president’s deployment of troops in Los Angeles violated federal law.
The president said on Tuesday he still plans to send National Guard troops to Chicago, after the city saw at least eight people killed and 51 others wounded over the Labor Day weekend.
"Well, we’re going in. I didn’t say when. We’re going in," Mr. Trump said Tuesday. "Look, I have an obligation. This isn’t a political thing. I have an obligation."
Pritzker said Wednesday that he had learned from multiple sources that National Guard troops previously deployed in Los Angeles will soon be moved to Chicago, and some of them already have arrived. He also said members of the Texas National Guard would be sent to Chicago.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said this was not true, but at the Wednesday news conference, Pritzker said he does not trust Abbott.
"He has not been a good actor at all to the state of Illinois, so I don’t really trust anything that he’s saying at this moment," Pritzker said.
Meanwhile in a new wrinkle Wednesday, President Trump added New Orleans to the list of cities that may be targeted.
"So we’re making a determination now — do we go to Chicago, or do we go to a place like New Orleans where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to come in and straighten out a very nice section of this country that’s become quite, you know, quite tough, quite bad," President Trump said.
On that issue of New Orleans, Pritzker noted the Louisiana governor can mobilize his own National Guard if he so chooses — as Pritzker himself has done in the past.
Ino Saves New
via rk2’s favorite articles on Inoreader https://ift.tt/jQk4zrE
September 3, 2025 at 04:41PM
Illinois Delivered 