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09/03/2025 — WHAT WE’VE HEARD TODAY
Earlier today, Trump said his administration is now considering sending troops to New Orleans for a crackdown on crime. Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) indicated that they are both on board with Trump’s proposal, according to NBC News.
“The governor of Louisiana doesn’t need the President of the United States to call out his National Guard to deal with crime,” Gov. JB Pritzker said at an afternoon press conference today. “I called out the National Guard. I’ve done it several times. I did it when we had protests, and that got out of control in the city of Chicago. I’ve done that before as a governor.”
Pritzker continued: “He’s looking for circumstances in which the governor is willing to call out the National Guard so that he can look like he’s [Trump] getting something done. The governor of Louisiana can do that on his own. [He] doesn’t need the president to ask him to do it.”
Pritzker also suggested that Trump wants governors to ask for his help for legal reasons. “What we’re trying to do is to get them to follow the law, and when they are not following the law, we can take them to court, prosecute them if they’re doing something truly illegal. Which one of the things we’re very concerned about is, you saw what happened in LA, there was a whole lot of activity that appeared to be illegal, and so some of that went to court.”
The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Wednesday that hundreds of federal agents are being sent to the naval base in North Chicago from Los Angeles. The federal agents are expected to leave before dawn each morning to follow through on Trump’s agenda to crack down on crime and make immigration arrests. There are nearly three dozen agents that are already at the Naval Station, according to the Sun-Times, and have “been practicing crowd control with shields and flash-bang grenades.”
This afternoon, Gov. JB Pritzker visited the Metropolitan Peace Academy in Pilsen to meet with community violence intervention (CVI) leaders and discuss progress on their programs aimed at reducing crime and violence.
“Community Violence Intervention Programs have a clear and demonstrated track record of reducing crime and making our communities safer – which is why my administration has invested historic amounts into them,” Pritzker wrote in a news release following his press conference. “President Trump’s deep cuts to these programs are another indication that his administration is not serious about fighting crime.”
The Metropolitan Peace Academy is a program under Metropolitan Peace Initiatives that trains participants for community violence intervention work to build a citywide CVI network. Pritzker also met with representatives from the Midwest Immigrant Defense Alliance, a coalition of seven immigrant legal service providers.
Both Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson have commended the work of CVI workers as crime rates in Chicago decline in 2025.
Trump’s administration this year froze $158 million for violence prevention programs and rescinded $800 million in anti-violence and crime reduction grants nationwide.
3:33 p.m.
A reporter asked Pritzker to respond to Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who said on Tuesday that the Texas National Guard will not be staged in North Chicago.
“Texas is not preparing to deploy troops to Illinois,” a spokesman for Abbott said on Tuesday afternoon, according to an Austin American-Statesman news report.
“I’m not suggesting that I am absolutely certain of whether or not the Texas National Guard will, in fact, end up in the state of Illinois,” Pritzker told reporters today. “What I know is that we have been told by people who seem to have the credentials to know that is what is happening.”
Pritzker continued, speaking about Abbott: “Let’s just take into account that he has not been a good actor at all toward the state of Illinois. So I don’t really trust anything that he is saying in this moment.”
During the migrant crisis, Abbott bused thousands of asylum seekers from Latin America to Democratic-run cities, sanctuary cities like Chicago, New York and Boston. Between August 2022 and December 2024, over 51,000 migrants arrived in Chicago, according to the city’s New Arrivals Dashboard.
3:32 p.m.
In response to a question from a reporter about where his administration is getting intel about Trump’s deployment plan, Pritzker said the following:
“I’m not going to tell you where it comes from, and it’s not because it doesn’t exist. It’s because we’ve gotten calls from people who don’t want to reveal their names to the public. These are people from inside the [Trump] administration or inside the military or inside the National Guard who are concerned about what’s happening in this country. These are patriots who want us to know what’s happening.”
Pritzker said he has received no information from the federal government. He said all he has received is a call from Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief, who “let us know that ICE would be instituting actions in the city of Chicago without any details.”
Bovino recently led immigration enforcement efforts in Los Angeles, according to a report by NBC 5 Chicago.
3:30 p.m.
Pritzker reiterates that he wouldn’t be calling Trump to ask for his help.
“Let me be clear, the president is begging me to call him, to ask him to do something that we don’t want. He wants me to call him and ask him to call in the National Guard to the city of Chicago,” Pritzker said. “We don’t want it. So that’s why I’m not calling the president. I have been very clear about what we do want. What we do want is civilian law enforcement assistance. We want to make sure that we have enough FBI, ATF DEA on the ground.”
He added that there can be more done to stop the flow of drugs and guns that are coming across the border into the state and Chicago.
“There’s more work that we can do to make sure that we’re fighting crime with, again, civilian law enforcement. I’ve been very clear about that,” Pritzker said. “The President wants me to call him about the National Guard. I’m not going to do that.”
3:24 p.m.
After meeting with community violence intervention leaders at the Metropolitan Peace Academy in Pilsen, Gov. JB Pritzker hosted a press conference.
Pritzker said the following about Trump’s deployment plan:
“What we’re hearing is that they’ll be assembled, ready to go on Friday, and that they would begin actions on Saturday,” Pritzker told reporters.
He also encouraged residents to document interactions with ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement].
“We’ve asked for the public to be ready with your iPhone and, any way that you can, to record what’s going on in their neighborhoods by ICE, because we think that’s the best way to demonstrate what ICE is doing if they’re doing something wrong, or to keep them honest and doing the right thing, because they know they’re being watched,” Pritzker said
2:00 p.m.
Gov. JB Pritzker will meet with community violence intervention leaders (CVI) at 3:00 p.m. today at the Metropolitan Peace Academy in Pilsen as they hold an emergency response training to prepare for the Trump administration’s federal deployments.
The press conference will air on the Governor’s Office website here. The TRiiBE may not be able to embed the video onto this article page, but we will write live updates on this page.
This response training comes amid repeated threats from President Donald Trump to send federal troops to Chicago to, in his words, get the city’s crime in order.
Pritzker told reporters on Tuesday that his administration has reason to believe the Trump administration has likely chosen to deploy troops to Chicago because Mexican Independence Day is on Sept. 16 and there are multiple celebrations that happen throughout the month. Pilsen is set to host its annual Mexican Independence Day Parade on Sept. 6.
“We have reason to believe that [White House deputy chief of staff] Stephen Miller chose the month of September to come to Chicago because of celebrations around Mexican Independence Day that happen here every year,” Pritzker said.
The Illinois governor continued, “It breaks my heart to report that we have been told ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] will try and disrupt community picnics and peaceful parades. Let’s be clear, the terror and cruelty is the point, not the safety of anyone living here.”
Pritzker added that the Trump administration has begun staging the Texas National Guard for deployment in Illinois.
Trump also appealed a federal judge’s ruling on Wednesday, which said that his deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles was illegal.
Today, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) released crime statistics for August. The number of shooting incidents, victims and homicides has declined for the seventh consecutive month, according to a CPD news release. Homicides dropped 24% compared to this time last year. It’s the lowest monthly August total since 2014.
At the same time, Ald. Anthony Napolitano (41st Ward), in a Facebook post last week, expressed doubts that crime is declining. “I truly hope I’m wrong, but based on both my experience and information I’ve received from the officers on the street, I have every reason to believe this administration is skewing the numbers. Chicago deserves honesty,” Napolitano wrote.
The Fraternal Order of Police Chicago Lodge No. 7 shared Napolitano’s post to its feed on Facebook, seemingly endorsing Napolitano’s theory that crime isn’t down. CPD Supt. Larry Snelling disputed those claims in an interview with the Chicago Tribune.
Trump has similarly said law enforcement is producing “fake numbers” when crime is trending downward.
WBEZ also reported that this summer has seen the fewest murders since 1965.
Instead of an influx of troops and federal agents, local elected leaders, including Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Mayor Brandon Johnson and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, collectively said if crime prevention was the true motive, then the Trump administration would not be cutting federal funds for community violence intervention programming or to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Cuts to ATF specifically directly impact efforts to curb the flow of illegal guns into Chicago.
During a press conference today, Trump said his administration is now considering sending troops to New Orleans.
He also insisted that the people of Chicago support him sending troops to Chicago. Yesterday, he said he’d seen Black Chicagoans say they support him in mainstream media reports.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
