President Donald Trump insisted Tuesday he has unlimited power, and that includes the power to send the military to any state or city he chooses, he told reporters at the White House.
“I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States,” Trump said during a televised cabinet meeting that ran for more than three hours Tuesday. (Here’s a transcript, via Roll Call.)
Trump was reacting to public tension over the Pentagon’s reported plans to send troops into Chicago, which U.S. military officials have been planning for several weeks as a White House response to “crime, homelessness and undocumented immigration” in Illinois’ largest city, according to the Washington Post. If the governor of Illinois requests the Guard troops, the process would likely proceed somewhat quickly. But Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker has been especially vocal about declining Trump’s desired Guard deployment to Chicago, saying at a Monday press conference on the matter, “Do not come, Donald Trump. You are neither wanted nor needed here in Illinois.”
Additional context: Trump has “attacked the counterweights to his own authority in government, particularly focusing on Democratic governors and cities governed by Democratic mayors,” the New York Times reminds readers, and points out, “The president has not suggested sending troops to cities with higher crime in states that lean Republican.”
Also worth noting: “Although high crime rates have persisted for decades in Chicago, violent crime there has dropped since the pandemic, and murders are down by 50 percent since 2021,” the Times reports. And “Over the last year, crime has fallen in nearly every major category tracked by the Chicago Police Department.”
Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller: “The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization,” the president’s top immigration advisor told TV personality Sean Hannity of Fox on Monday. “It is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gangbangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists,” he said, and insisted—using patriotic “purity” rhetoric of autocrats and dictators throughout history—the “Democrat Party does not fight for, care about, or represent American citizens.”
ICYMI: Every state in the National Guard already has “quick reaction forces,” Randy Manner, a retired Army two-star who has served as acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, told ABC News this week.
But the new, specialized Guard troops Trump is demanding for each state in an executive order signed Monday? “They’re going to be there to police Americans,” Manner said.
Coverage continues below…
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1776, Revolutionary troops were flanked and defeated by a far larger British force in Brooklyn, but Gen. George Washington saved his army with a retreat to Manhattan.
Update: National Guard troops sent to the nation’s capital for “out of control” crime are now picking up trash and spreading mulch, NBC4 Washington and the Washington Post reported Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.
“Normally the Park Service does that, but the administration laid off the workers,” Brad Heath of Reuters noted on social media. Additional video confirmed the troops’ activity, which Pentagon officials said two weeks ago would be a possibility.
“Today here, we are right outside the waterfront. Had everyone with gloves and trash bags and all the materials they needed, and instructions to head out and pick up the trash,” a Guard soldier said in a video posted to social media over the weekend.
“The joint task force had 2,234 members as of Monday morning, including 929 members of the D.C. National Guard and 1,305 members of the Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia National Guards,” NBC4 reports.
Worth noting: “About half of U.S. adults, 53%, say they approve of Trump’s handling of crime…even as statistics show violent crime is down in Washington and across the nation following a coronavirus pandemic-era spike,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday, citing a survey of 1,182 U.S. adults conducted between August 21 and 25.
Caveat: “The poll shows there is less public support for federal takeovers of local police departments, suggesting opinions could shift over the coming weeks or months, depending on how aggressively Trump pursues his threats.” Read more, here.
Follow-up: Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said he agrees with Trump that the Defense Department’s name should be changed to the “War Department” because “George Washington started the Department of War because he wanted us to win our wars,” and “It’s not just about words; it’s about the warrior ethos,” he said during Trump’s three-hour cabinet meeting Tuesday.
In case you missed it, Trump said Monday he wants to officially change the name “over the next week or so,” during remarks at the White House. “We’re just going to do it,” Trump said when asked if he has considered lawmakers’ opinions on the matter. ABC News has more from Hegseth’s remarks at the cabinet meeting.
Balky booms: The refueling boom on the Air Force’s KC-46 tankers has been involved in three accidents that have cost tens of millions of dollars to repair. Two took place in 2022 and another last year, according to investigation reports released by the Air Force on Monday.
During the most recent of the mishaps described in the reports, a tanker’s boom got stuck in the fuel receptacle of a F-15E, then released with enough recoil to strike the tanker. The boom broke apart, resulting in $14 million in damages. That mishap was primarily caused by the boom operator’s control inputs, investigators found. Defense One’s Audrey Decker has more, here.
Navy “looking forward” to F/A-XX builder decision. Now that Congress is moving to restore funding for the sixth-generation fighter jet, the service is waiting for Pentagon leaders to pick a company to build it, according to Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever, commander of Naval Air Forces, speaking Tuesday at a CSIS event.
Background: In March, the Navy was reportedly close to picking a company to build F/A-XX, but an announcement never came, and the service ended up gutting funding for the aircraft in its 2026 budget request, throwing the program into limbo. But Congress is on track to reverse those cuts: Senate appropriators added $1.4 billion to F/A-XX in their draft defense spending bill and House appropriators added $972 million to their version. Decker has more, here.
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Trump-linked “covert operation” in Greenland? Officials in Denmark are reportedly aware that “at least three people with connections to President Donald Trump have been carrying out covert influence operations in Greenland,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday, relaying reporting from Danish public broadcaster DR.
BBC: “DR’s report on Wednesday gave details of a visit by one American to Greenland’s capital Nuuk, saying he was seeking to compile a list of Greenlanders who backed US attempts to take over the island. The aim would be to try to recruit them for a secession movement.”
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has summoned America’s top diplomat in Denmark, Mark Stroh, the U.S. charge d’affaires in Copenhagen, over the matter. “Any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the Kingdom [of Denmark] will of course be unacceptable,” Rasmussen told Time magazine.
“It is important for us to speak out very clearly against the United States,” Rasmussen told reporters Wednesday, according to Reuters. He called the allegations “completely unacceptable,” and added, “If anyone thinks they can influence it by creating a ‘fifth column’ or that type of activity, then it is contrary to the way states cooperate.”
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