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One of many proudest moments of my life was the primary time I ever laced up my boots, placed on my uniform and raised my proper hand to swear my oath to the Structure as a member of the Illinois Military Nationwide Guard.
I cherished each day that I received to get up and name myself a United States soldier. And it’s exactly as a result of I like our army so deeply that I refuse to let a five-time draft-dodging coward abuse it for his personal achieve and to our nation’s detriment.
At Quantico final week, President Donald Trump —the identical man who insists on rebranding the Pentagon because the “Division of Struggle”— informed high army leaders that he desires to make use of American cities as “coaching grounds” for our troops.
TEXAS NATIONAL GUARD DEPLOYS 200 TROOPS TO ILLINOIS FOR FEDERAL PROTECTION MISSION AMID PROTESTS
Let that sink in: the commander in chief desires members of the Department of War to “prepare” in opposition to the identical residents they swear an oath to guard. Final month, he introduced Chicago would “discover out why it’s referred to as the Division of WAR.” And this week, he’s making good on his threats: Trump has now pressured a whole lot of Nationwide Guardsmen into Chicago.
Members of the Texas Nationwide Guard assemble in Elwood, Illinois, on the Military Reserve Coaching Middle within the southwest suburb of Chicago, on Oct. 7. 2025.
(Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune Information Service by way of Getty Pictures)
For months, Trump has fabricated claims of chaos and crime on American streets to justify false claims that there’s a “want” to deploy troops into our cities in opposition to native officers’ needs. First to Los Angeles, then Washington, D.C. — and he isn’t stopping there, he’s additionally trying to deploy troops to Portland. Over the weekend, nevertheless, a federal choose that Trump appointed blocked his efforts to deploy troops there — twice — as a result of, in his personal handpicked appointee’s phrases, his claims about why they’re wanted have been “untethered to information.”
One other strategy to put that’s that he’s mendacity.
In simply the previous week in Chicago, we’ve seen Trump’s brokers detain harmless People, deny residents their proper to authorized illustration, zip-tie youngsters, arrest elected officers, ransack condo buildings and injure journalists. And in current weeks, they’ve shot two folks, leaving one — a father of two younger youngsters — lifeless, making doubtful and unsubstantiated claims about why they felt the necessity to use deadly drive.
It’s apparent what Trump is doing. He’s focusing on and punishing the cities who dare push again in opposition to him — those who’re prepared to name the president what he actually is: a wannabe emperor with no garments, no braveness and definitely no ethical compass.
And whereas he’s at present focusing on blue cities together with his lies, if these deployments will not be stopped, there can be nothing to cease him — or any future president — from doing this to anybody, anyplace, for any made-up motive.
PRITZKER SUES TRUMP TO BLOCK NATIONAL GUARD ACTION IN ILLINOIS
Let’s be clear: Ordering our troops to intimidate the very People they sacrifice each day to guard does nothing to make our nation safer. Policing People in their very own communities will not be the Nationwide Guard’s job. They’ll’t make arrests, and so they’re not adequately skilled to hold out police duties in city environments. These deployments are merely one other unwarranted, undesirable and unjust transfer from Trump straight out of the Authoritarian 101 textbook, additional jeopardizing civil rights whereas distracting our troops from executing their core mission of conserving our households secure from the precise adversaries who want us hurt.
President Donald Trump talks to the media after strolling off Marine One on the South Garden of the White Home on October 5, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Pictures)
We all know Trump’s actions aren’t about “regulation and order.” If this 34-time convicted felon really cared about regulation and order, he wouldn’t flagrantly and seemingly gleefully refuse to coordinate with state and native officers. He wouldn’t be taking our troops away from their coaching missions simply to do his private bidding, forcing our heroes to face on the facet of the road choosing up trash as a substitute of utilizing their time getting ready to guard our nation in case of future conflict. He wouldn’t actually defund the police by freezing and slashing federal {dollars} that assist rent, prepare and equip regulation enforcement.
However he did. All of these issues, as a substitute of supporting and increasing confirmed violence and crime prevention methods that stop retaliatory escalation.
Trump is losing hundreds of thousands of taxpayer {dollars} to terrorize law-abiding residents and authorized visa holders who’re merely exercising their First Amendment rights. And he’s diverting federal sources and brokers away from operations that examine drug cartels and gun traffickers, from missions that determine and disrupt terrorist plots and from actions that defend our households from cyber-attacks to do it.
Army personnel in uniform, with the Texas Nationwide Guard patch on, are seen on the U.S. Military Reserve Middle on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025, in Elwood, Unwell., a suburb of Chicago. (AP/Laura Bargfeld)
I drove previous among the Nationwide Guardsmen who’ve been mobilized on the best way to work at the moment. I felt for them. As a result of after they raised their proper fingers and took their oaths, they didn’t achieve this to assist a draft dodger dodge not simply wars however his personal private scandals, too.
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They signed as much as defend People’ proper to free speech — to not intimidate People from that act of talking out. They have been prepared to die to defend this nation — to not defend one man’s ego.
Los Angeles didn’t ask for this. Washington, D.C., didn’t ask for this. Portland didn’t ask for this. Chicago didn’t ask for this. Our servicemembers don’t deserve this. And it’s as a result of I respect our army so deeply that I refuse to remain silent as it’s disrespected and abused by a person who was by no means courageous sufficient to serve himself. I can not and won’t let him maintain giving our troops the center finger — taking them from their households and their missions, whereas eroding the hard-won belief and confidence they’ve earned from the American public over generations.
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Nowadays, I could not be carrying my Military uniform, but it surely nonetheless hangs proudly in my Senate workplace. Now, I spend a whole lot of my time seated beneath the nice, lovely Capitol Dome quite than beneath my Black Hawk’s important rotors. However my core mission continues to be the identical as once I was within the Nationwide Guard: to maintain America as robust and secure as she ought to be.
If solely Donald Trump cared about doing the identical.
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