Trump says ‘you can violate the governor’ to send troops into Chicago

Trump has a theory of federalism, and it takes five words: “you can violate the governor.”

At Saturday’s gaggle after he voted, a questioner who said their dad is a Chicago police sergeant asked whether he could send the National Guard into Illinois without JB Pritzker’s approval. “I mean, you can violate the governor. You can go in.” The governor is “supposed to ask for help,” he allowed, but there are “national emergencies like in Chicago, where we could have that place fixed up in two weeks.” And: “I could set that up.”

He already tried to. In 2025 he sent hundreds of Texas Guard troops to a base outside Chicago. A federal judge blocked the deployment, and on 23 December 2025 the Supreme Court refused to let it go ahead. CBS Chicago reports the troops went home without ever being put on the streets, and that the Congressional Budget Office put the bill at $21 million. The case was dismissed as moot in April, after a judge ruled the orders no longer operational.

So “you can go in” is a policy that has been tested in court and sent home. The “two weeks” is his claim, as were the Chicago death tolls he cited in the next breath.