Chicago has been a hotbed of resistance throughout Trump’s second term, the site of major protests, and a city with a strong tradition of actively supporting its immigrants.
As far back as late January, Trump immigration czar Tom Homan was already complaining that outreach efforts by immigration advocates in Chicago made things difficult for ICE there.
“Sanctuary cities are making it very difficult to arrest the criminals,” he said on CNN. “For instance, Chicago, very well-educated. They've been educated how to defy ICE, how to -- how to hide from ICE. And I've seen many pamphlets from many NGOs, ‘Here's how you escape ICE from arresting you, Here's what you need to do.’ They call it, ‘Know your rights.’ I call it, ‘How to escape arrest’.”
Now, seven months later, signs are that Trump is about to flood Chicago with federal agents – and possibly federal troops – against the wishes of the city, its mayor, and its governor.
“Chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the World, by far,” Trump wrote Tuesday in a lie-filled social media post. “[Illinois Gov. JB] Pritzker needs help badly, he just doesn’t know it yet. I will solve the crime problem fast, just like I did in DC. Chicago will be safe again, and soon.”
At a press conference on Tuesday, Trump was asked about plans to send the National Guard to Illinois. Trump responded: "Well, we're going in, I didn't say when we're going in."
Pritzker, for his part, is emerging as a true resistance hero.
“In the coming days, we expect to see what has played out in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., to happen here in Chicago,” Pritzker said during a press conference on Tuesday. He warned that "unidentifiable agents in unmarked vehicles with masks are planning to raid Latino communities and say they're targeting violent criminals."
“None of this is about fighting crime or making Chicago safer. None of it,” Pritzker said. “For Trump, it’s about testing his power and producing a political drama to cover up for his corruption.”
Last week, Pritzker urged residents “to continue Chicago's long tradition of nonviolent resistance.”
On Tuesday, he had more advice:
To Chicagoans: What you can do is look out for your communities and your neighbors. Know your rights. Film things that you see happening in your neighborhoods and your streets and share them with the news media. Authoritarians thrive on your silence. Be loud for America.
And later on Tuesday, he posted a reminder on social media for Chicagoans to “Make sure you know how to stand up for yourself and others at illinoisimmigrationinfo.org.”
Pritzker also urged residents to remain peaceful in their response to federal agents, in order not to give Trump “any excuse” to send in the military.
“If someone flings a sandwich at an ICE agent, Trump will try to go on TV and declare an emergency in Chicago,” Pritzker said, in a reference to an incident in Washington. “I’m imploring everyone, if and when that happens, do not take the bait.”
Unlike in Washington, officials in Chicago have already taken steps to resist. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson last week signed an executive order instructing police not to cooperate with troops or federal agents in the event of a deployment. The order also directs police not to wear masks and to use body cameras.
And the Illinois TRUST Act prevents local law enforcement from participating in federal immigration enforcement activities unless federal officials have a warrant.
Judge’s Ruling Complicates Trump’s Plans
A federal judge in San Francisco ruled on Tuesday that Trump’s use of thousands of military troops in Southern California earlier this summer was illegal – a violation of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the U.S. military to enforce domestic law. Judge Charles R. Breyer accused Trump of creating his own “national police force.”
The ruling only takes effect on September 12 and only has the force of law in California. But, as the New York Times explained, it will likely “pose impediments to any plans Mr. Trump may have for sending the military into the streets of other cities, like Chicago.”
Trump could conceivably escalate even further by invoking the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that gives president emergency power to use federal troops to restore law and order domestically. But that act requires a showing that state and local officials are unable or unwilling to act.
Another possibility, via the Times:
Mr. Trump’s continued threats have raised the question of whether he could claim that crime in Chicago threatens federal functions there, as he did in Los Angeles, as a basis for sending in troops without risking a legal fight over invoking the Insurrection Act without a request for assistance.
Labor Day Rallies
An estimated 500,000 people across the country took to the streets in peaceful “Workers Over Billionaires” protests and rallies across the nation on Labor Day.
Nearly 10,000 people in San Diego participated in an impressively long march. There were thousands more protesters in hundreds of locales, including Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Concord, N.H., Portland, Ore., Seattle, Baltimore, Durham, N.C., and New York City, where chants of “Trump must go now!” echoed outside Trump Tower.
All that said, a showing of 500,000 -- when there are, by comparison, over 17 million union members nationwide -- isn’t particularly impressive.
Erik Loomis, a historian of labor, wrote in a New York Times opinion piece on Monday that the labor movement isn’t doing nearly enough to resist Trump:
Where is organized labor in the public fight to maintain union jobs, stop the stripping of the safety net and lead the fight for democracy? Other than some statements and angry speeches, the movement has been muted.
If the labor movement wants to fight for its survival, it must return to mass mobilization tactics, reminding Americans that their rights come through working together — not through supporting a president who talks about helping American workers while slashing worker safety regulations, supporting tariffs that raise the cost of consumer goods and stripping workers of their legal rights to contracts…
Unions love to talk about how workers have the ultimate power; they can withhold their labor through strikes. They should use their power to target President Trump’s war on the working class.
On Persisting in Dark Times
Ian Bassin, executive director of Protect Democracy, had some inspirational words last week about carrying on in dark times. He was talking about this essay with Jen Psaki on MSNBC:
I think we've had a lot of dark weeks in sort of this rise of autocracy under Donald Trump. And I think this has been one of the darkest, where it has just seemed like the strategy that he has deployed of flood the zone — of emergencies made up and crises all at once in order to seize and consolidate power — reached kind of an apex this week. And it felt quite bleak on a lot of fronts.
And I went back to history -- to all of the prior pro-democracy and pro-freedom movements, whether it was the Solidarity movement in Poland, or the African National Congress in South Africa, or the civil rights movement here in the United States, the marriage equality movement here in the United States. And they all had dark midnights. They all had moments when things seemed bleak. And it was in those moments that the leaders said, “we still have to do the right thing now. We have to hold on to truth. We have to hold on to justice. It's a moral imperative.” And if we do that now, it plants the seeds for the victories of the future.
And sometimes those victories take a long time to come. But in other times, the winds shift immediately and the victories come quickly. And our job is to hoist the sails now. And I think it gives us something to hold on to. We are not the first who have faced dark moments like this, and we will not be the last, and the world will keep on turning. The dawn will come and it’s our job to just stay in the fight.
Similarly, University of Toronto professor and tyranny expert Timothy Snyder wrote in his newsletter that “In the present circumstances, the future of the United States cannot be taken for granted.” But, he said, history provides two important lessons:
One is that resistance is patriotic. Everything that we do to oppose American authoritarianism we do not just in the name of defending freedom, but in the name of preserving America as such. In the swirl of destruction that is underway, it is impossible to know what will crack first, and how the collapse will begin. But what we do know is that the thing that comes next, the better America, can rest only on the labor that we perform now, on the good that we do now.
The other lesson is that resistance is constructive. It can seem difficult to resist merchants of calamity such as Trump and Vance. No one action seems to stop them. But every act of resistance creates the possibility that the country itself can survive, and every moment of hope creates the foundation for a better republic. The actions we take have to be actions against, against what is being done to us now. But by their nature every strike, every protest, every act of organization, every act of kindness and solidarity are also actions for, for a future in which the United States continues to exist, and in which the learning from resistance becomes the politics of freedom.
The Week in Lawsuits
It was a big week for anti-Trump lawsuits. In addition to the ruling that Trump’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles was illegal:
A federal appeals court ruled that Trump had no legal right to impose sweeping tariffs across the globe. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that Trump exceeded his authority under an emergency powers law. The ruling does not take immediate effect, however, giving Trump time to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Trump unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants he claimed belonged to a Venezuelan gang. The panel rejected his assertions that the American homeland was under invasion by the gang.
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from using the “expedited removal” process for migrants apprehended in the interior of the country. U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb said the process violated due process rights. “By merely accusing you of entering unlawfully, the Government would deprive you of any meaningful opportunity to disprove its allegations,” she wrote.
An appellate panel upheld a ruling that the unprecedented termination of Temporary Protected Status for an estimated 600,000 Venezuelans is illegal and should be postponed. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has no practical effect, however, because the Supreme Court in May said deportations could continue during litigation.
Do We Finally Have Our Protest Song?
The New York Times reports that Neil Young, “long one of the most outspoken figures in rock, launched a broadside against President Trump on Wednesday.”
Young’s new song, “Big Crime,” debuted at a tour stop in Chicago. You can listen to the song here. The lyrics include:
Got to get the fascists out
Got to clean the White House out
Don’t want soldiers on our streets
There’s big crime at the White House
And
No more money to the fascists
the billionaire fascists
Time to blackout the system.
End Notes
Protesters outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on Thursday chanted “USA, not RFK.” They gathered in support of public health leaders who resigned in protest over political interference in their work.
A group of veterans is holding a vigil at Union Station in Washington D.C., asking National Guard members to “Remember Your Oath.”
An ad campaign criticizing the use of masks by federal agents has expanded to 115 bus stops in Washington, D.C., per the organizers.
FreeDC is calling for a march on Saturday, September 6, “in solidarity with DC communities to end the occupation of DC.”
The ACLU is holding a “Know Your Rights Training” on Friday, September 5, at 8 p.m. ET.
Moveon has announced that the next major national protest event will be held on October 18.