Donald Trump has finally pulled National Guard troops from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, where they had been ripped away from their families and jobs to serve as glorified janitors picking up trash and cleaning debris from parks.
But while the troops will finally get to leave, Trump said that he is not giving up on his desire to militarize American cities, vowing that the federal government will return to those areas in the future.
“We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again - Only a question of time!” Trump wrote in a New Year's Eve post on Truth Social, in which he took credit for declining crime rates in those cities, even though it had already been dropping before he took National Guard troops from their homes and day jobs to make them stand around picking up trash.
Trump's decision to pull the troops came after the Supreme Court issued a rare rebuke of his policies, blocking him from deploying troops to Chicago—where he claimed they were needed to protect his lawless, masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons.
Related | Supreme Court blocks Trump’s National Guard deployment in Chicago—for now
"Donald Trump’s lying again," Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote in a post on X in response to Trump's statement saying he was choosing to remove troops from Chicago. "He lost in court when Illinois stood up against his attempt to militarize American cities with the National Guard. Now Trump is forced to stand down."
The Supreme Court order only applied to Trump's effort to deploy troops to Chicago.
But legal experts said that the decision would have strengthened the lawsuits filed by California and Oregon, which have also been seeking to block Trump's troops from their streets.
Both California and Oregon had secured legal wins blocking Trump's troop deployments, but the Trump administration had appealed those rulings.
"We won in court and forced him to," California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office wrote in a post on X in response to Trump's decision to pull the troops. "Trump’s rambling here is the political version of 'you can’t fire me, I quit.'"
For now, National Guard troops from those cities are finally back with their families after they were needlessly pulled away to help make Trump look like the strong man he desperately wants to be. In fact, two National Guard soldiers were shot—one fatally—during their unnecessary deployments to Washington, D.C., making the ultimate sacrifice just to make Trump look like a tough guy.
But Trump's vow that he is not giving up his fascist desire to militarize cities means he could once again deploy troops in the future.
"The President promised the American people he would work tirelessly to enforce our immigration laws and protect federal personnel from violent rioters,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Fox News, which reported that Trump still has cities he is thinking of deploying troops to, including St. Louis, New York City, and Baltimore. "Nothing in today’s ruling detracts from that core agenda. He activated the National Guard to protect federal law enforcement officers and to ensure rioters did not destroy federal buildings and property."
Once a fascist, always a fascist.
