President Donald Trump announced Friday that his next domestic military deployment will hit a red-state city — Memphis, Tennessee.
“We’re going to Memphis,” Trump said on “Fox and Friends,” suggesting he had the approval of the city’s mayor, Paul Young and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.
“Memphis is deeply troubled, and the mayor is happy, he’s a Democrat mayor, the mayor’s happy, and the governor of Tennessee,” Trump said. “The governor’s happy. Deeply troubled.”
“We’re gonna fix that just like we did Washington. By the way, we’ll bring in the military too if we need it, but National Guard, but Memphis is, look, it’s a great, music city.”
Young addressed rumors of deployments Thursday to local media outlets. Memphis is considered one of the U.S.’s most dangerous cities in terms of violent crime rates, according to FBI statistics.
“What we need most are financial resources for intervention and prevention, additional patrol officers, and case support to strengthen MPD’s investigations,” Young wrote in a statement. “Memphis is already making measurable progress in bringing down crime, and we support initiatives that help accelerate the pace of the work.”
The governor mobilized the state’s National Guard to help assist Trump’s immigration enforcement operations in Tennessee last month.
Two weeks ago, Lee said he had “no plans” to send troops to Memphis to help fight crime. Just last week, though, he told reporters that “nothing is off the table,” according to the Nashville Tennessean.
“Everything is a possibility,” Lee said. “We are aggressively pursuing the right strategy to lower the crime rate in Memphis. It’s a great city, but it has a real challenge that needs to be addressed.”
Some local leaders have already spoken out against the deployments. In an interview with WREG of Memphis, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris asked the governor to “please reconsider” the plans, since he thought there’s “no reason to bring them.”
“To have individuals with military fatigues, semi-automatic weapons and armored vehicles patrolling our streets is way too far, anti-democratic and anti-American,” he said, after saying he wouldn’t mind increased federal partnerships with local and state police.
The president has repeatedly threatened blue-state cities with troops and influxes of federal agents for over a month. Trump also floated sending troops to New Orleans, another red-state city that had the second-highest homicide rate in 2024, just last week.