Republican senators who have no legal qualms about President Donald Trump sending National Guard troops to Chicago aren’t exactly thrilled with the standoff between state and federal officials.
“I don’t know if this is an issue of law,” Sen. Todd Young, a Republican from neighboring Indiana, said when asked about the use of troops in Chicago over local leaders’ objections and in spite of limits to what the military can do on U.S. soil.
Young didn’t offer a ringing endorsement: “It may be more an issue of propriety,” he told NOTUS.
Trump’s use of troops in American cities, most recently Chicago, is testing the bounds of presidential power and cutting against traditional Republican instincts to keep the federal government from meddling in states.
Republican senators didn’t condemn the long-promised deployment of National Guardsmen in Chicago Tuesday, but they didn’t sound celebratory, either.
Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who isn’t seeking reelection, questioned the wisdom of the military’s involvement.
Tillis said Chicago has a problem with crime, “But I think when you start deploying troops, you’re actually masking a fundamental problem in Chicago’s leadership. So I wonder if that’s really a best practice if the goal is a long-term reduction in crime.”
“If it’s episodic, I get it,” he said. “But long term, I don’t think it serves that purpose.”
Trump has made the case that as president, he has broad power to use troops for domestic law enforcement. He and his allies have pointed to violence in the city as a reasonfor the federal government’s involvement.
“When we’re ready, we’ll go in, and we’ll straighten out Chicago, just like we did D.C.,” Trump said in August. “Chicago’s very dangerous.”
Chicago is fighting in court to block the deployment. “The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the lawsuit argues.
A federal judge ruled earlier this year that Trump violated the laws governing the domestic use of the military when he sent troops to California. Trump threatened Monday to invoke the Insurrection Act, which explicitly allows presidents to deploy troops domestically under certain circumstances.
“What he cares about is trying to make sure that violence is stopped in a lot of our cities,” Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota said. “And this is one of the options that he believes is open to him.”
Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri described the president’s authority as “pretty broad.”
“Where you have a core power, like the commanding of the military, and Congress has also explicitly delegated the president authority — which is the case here — presidential authority is at its maximum,” he told NOTUS. “I’m not a resident of Illinois, but I can tell you crime looks pretty bad there.”
Trump has compared some American cities to war zones, but Democrats object to that comparison. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat, has slammed Trump for the move.
“What’s happening in Illinois is outrageous,” Durbin said of the troops’ arrival. “It’s almost criminal.”
Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming praised Trump’s decision, telling NOTUS: “The people of Chicago should have a comfort level that they and their children are going to live through the weekend and not get killed by some drive-by shooter.”
But she raised a different concern, unsolicited: “If it becomes non-temporary,” she said of the troops’ presence in the city, “that’s a different matter entirely.”
“That’s not appropriate,” Lummis said.
At what point would she start to feel uncomfortable with it?
“That’s a great question,” she told NOTUS. “I don’t know.”