In the White House view of the world, five vibrant American cities—Washington, Los Angeles, Portland, Memphis, and Chicago—are putrid hellholes, so dangerous and crime-choked that local law enforcement needs federal backup.

Last week, President Trump sent in hundreds of Illinois and Texas National Guard members. Their mission was slightly at odds with the claim of urgently needing federal crime-fighters. As in Los Angeles, the Guard troops ended up protecting federal agents and federal buildings. But their real mission was to raid neighborhoods, threaten residents, and arrest protesters.

Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) sued the federal government to end the occupation, citing harms to residents and businesses, the local economy, and depleted tax revenues. Finally, last Thursday, District Court Judge April Perry ruled that the Illinois deployments violated the Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military forces in domestic policing. She issued a 14-day restraining order and labeled the Trump administration’s perception of events “simply unreliable.”

“I have found no credible evidence that there is a danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois,” Perry said, adding that “[The founders] would never believe that it would ever come to pass that one state militia could be sent to another state for the purposes of political retribution.”

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In a related case, Chicago media organizations won a temporary restraining order prohibiting federal law enforcement officials from “dispersing, arresting, threatening to arrest, threatening or using physical force” against a working journalist, and issuing a  crowd dispersal order “to any person to leave a public place that they lawfully have a right to be.”

Attorneys for Illinois and Chicago also argued that the administration’s actions infringe on the state’s self-governance and sovereignty. A bipartisan group of 26 former governors, including Democrats Jerry Brown (D-CA,) Steve Bullock (D-MT), Jay Inslee (D-WA), and Republicans Bill Graves (R-KS), Arne Carlson (R-MN), and Christine Todd Whitman (R-NJ), filed an amicus brief in the case. The document is a window into how governors view the unprecedented use of the military to punish certain cities for having the temerity to vote for a Democratic candidate for president.

The Republican amicus brief writers predate Trump. So how do current Republican governors view this constitutional crisis? Two men stepped up with answers last week, and they were surprisingly frank. 

Flashing his states’ right card, one Republican, Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, echoed the sentiments in the amicus brief. “As a federalist believer, one governor against another governor, I don’t think that’s the right way to approach this,” Stitt told The New York Times. “We believe in the federalist system—that’s states’ rights,” he said, adding, “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”   

If anyone understands the thinking of state chief executives, it would be Stitt, who co-chairs the National Governors Association. Asked if there could be other Republican chief executives who feel the same way about the Trump administration’s deployment of troops to Portland and Chicago, he had a provocative answer. “Maybe you just haven’t asked the right ones,” he said. 

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The other governor, Phil Scott of Vermont, had this to say at a press conference last Thursday: “I don’t think our Guard should be used against our own people. I don’t think the military should be used against our own people. In fact, it’s unconstitutional.” He made an exception for an insurrection, referring specifically to the events of January 6, 2021.

Two Democrats, Govs. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Laura Kelly of Kansas, have left the National Governors Association, frustrated by the organization’s refusal to take a stronger stance on the demonization of Democratic Party governors, mayors, and city dwellers across the country. Stitt has explained that weighing on political issues would conflict with the organization’s education mission under the Internal Revenue Code.

Still, the willingness to speak out against the broadly unpopular policy suggests that the pushback could grow.

“I don’t think the military should be used against our own people. In fact, it’s unconstitutional.”

The amicus brief argues that Chicago became a presidential target after protests against unlawful immigrant detentions erupted at a suburban immigration facility in Broadview, Illinois. The decision to send in troops without consulting Pritzker infringed on his executive decision-making authority, ratcheting up tensions even further. 

For the former governors, the president’s gambit “disturbs the constitutional balance of state and federal authority, weakens state executives’ authority to maintain intrastate law and order, deprives states of vital emergency response tools, and breaks with a long tradition of cooperation between the federal government and the states on issues of public safety.” 

They focus on the Tenth Amendment, which indicates that the powers not expressly granted to the federal government are reserved to the states or “to the people.” They namecheck Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist 51: “A healthy balance of power between the state and federal government,” Hamilton wrote in 1788, “reduces the risk of tyranny and abuse from either front.”

The former governors also point out that presidents have historically consulted with governors on the serious incidents that might necessitate the deployment of the National Guard. September 11, Hurricane Katrina, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and the pandemic emergency were all major crises that required troop deployments. 

The exceptions to those circumstances occurred during the civil rights era, when Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy federalized National Guard troops in Arkansas and Alabama in response to governors defying federal law. They also invoked the Insurrection Act to maintain order in places where violence was visibly spiraling out of control. It is difficult to say the same measures of force are required in cities where crime—in a country that tolerates astronomical rates of gun violence—has actually dropped. 

The Trump administration did not meet any of the local conditions for deployment of the National Guard: rebellion, invasion, or a president unable, with the regular forces, to execute federal laws.” Going outside of those very narrow parameters risks knock-on effects that rile up residents and waste resources. Military.com noted that in the weeks before the Chicago deployment, Trump created “a mix of fear, frustration, and defiance for residents.”

Trump consulted only one of the affected governors, Tennessee Republican Bill Lee, before he acted. But while the president federalized the Guard, and the governors of Illinois, California, and Oregon had to cede control of those troops, Lee maintains control of the Guard in Tennessee.

Moreover, in Memphis, the White House created a special task force to implement “hypervigilant policing, aggressive prosecution,” and more, similar to the operations currently underway in Washington. One community leader has compared it to policing by press release, publicizing data about arrests but very little about the nature of those arrests. 

However, no state of emergency has been declared in Memphis, state lawmakers have not weighed in, and a legal opinion by a prior Tennessee attorney general that using the Guard for anything other than rebellion and invasion would violate the state constitution has disappeared. The Tennessean reported that that opinion had been deleted by the current Tennessee attorney general.

Erasing hallucinations and disinformation about urban areas is its own tenuous victory.

In short, the former governors stress that federal law does not allow the president “to deploy the Guard anywhere, anytime, based on whatever facts that the president, in his sole discretion, deems sufficient, and without consultation with the state’s chief executive.” They conclude that Trump’s decision is incompatible with “federalist principles.”

As for the Chicago court decisions, erasing hallucinations and disinformation about urban areas is its own tenuous victory. It remains to be seen what kind of compliance, if any, is at hand, or if much more than the state-level executive authority of governors remains in jeopardy.