Members of the West Virginia National Guard patrol at the Lincoln Memorial. Photo / Craig Hudson, The Washington Post
For nearly three weeks, President Donald Trump signalled Chicago would be the next site of a National Guard deployment, promising that armed federal troops would be “going in” to fight crime.
On Friday morning, he announced a different destination: Memphis.
Trump has left Democratic mayors uncertain where he will send forces next, making it a challenge to prepare for interventions that will affect residents’ daily lives and their cities’ operations and could influence their own political careers.
As they prepare, Democratic mayors are communicating on text chains and strategy calls, contacting their governors – including those in Trump’s party – and confronting tricky neighbourhood politics, while grasping for effective responses amid their own internal divisions.
Trump’s tough talk on the ravages of violent crime has put them into a tight political box: they must show they are taking crime seriously while heeding pressure from core supporters to resist Trump.
Most have sought to convey a nuanced message: Crime is a serious issue, they say, and they are open to federal support, but they do not want Trump sending the military to their streets, especially without co-ordination.
“I’ll work with anybody to keep my city safe,” said Justin Bibb, the mayor of Cleveland and chair of the Democratic Mayors Association. “I’ll do it with this administration, but I don’t want the damn National Guard in Cleveland patrolling my streets.”
While Trump unveiled his plans for Memphis on Friday, he had spent recent days floating several other cities beyond Chicago, including Baltimore, New Orleans and New York City. A seemingly offhand comment about Portland, Oregon this month prompted a swift response from state and local officials asking him to stay away.
Anxiety is high. Portland Mayor Keith Wilson had asked his residents just a day earlier for donations to two new homeless shelters, saying that the administration could launch its next incursion there if the city did not clean up its streets.
Trump’s focus on crime has only intensified in recent days amid national outrage over the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and the fatal stabbing of a Ukrainian refugee aboard a light rail train in Charlotte. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said on Thursday in a radio interview that Trump is preparing to announce in the coming days “a more comprehensive plan on violence in America”.
In the month since the DC deployment, Trump has sought to portray himself as deferential to local leaders, saying he would like them to ask for help before he surges federal resources into their cities. But he has also suggested his patience could run out.
“At a certain point, we’ll just say, ‘I’m sorry, we’re going in,’” Trump said in a radio interview on Tuesday.
On Friday, Trump portrayed the Memphis operation as a collaborative effort, suggesting the city’s Democratic mayor, Paul Young, was “happy” with it. Young said that was an “overstatement” at a news conference hours later, expressing opposition to the deployment but conceding that it was out of his control.
“My goal is to make sure that as they come, that I have an opportunity to work with them to strategise on how they engage in this community.”
Polls show many Americans consider crime a big problem, especially in urban areas, and they approve of Trump’s handling of it more than they do his performance on other major issues. But when asked about his specific tactics to fight crime, opinions have been more varied.
Bibb acknowledged the challenge. But he also said it gives mayors an opening to show they have been hiring more police officers and investing in mental health resources to reduce violent crime since the pandemic-era spike.
Democrats also face a restive base demanding their leaders do more to resist what they label as authoritarian behaviour from Trump.
“Every Democratic mayor has two options: plan ahead and fight back, or play nice and get steamrolled,” Ezra Levin, co-founder of the liberal organising group Indivisible, said, contrasting the relatively conciliatory approach of Washington Mayor Muriel E. Bowser with the more combative pushback that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson expressed.
America’s largest cities are overwhelmingly led by Democrats, and the most populous one – New York – is holding an election this fall in which the front-runner, Zohran Mamdani, is promising a more aggressive posture against Trump. During a recent campaign event with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Mamdani said it was an “inevitability” that Trump would send the Guard to New York and that local leaders must be ready to “use every single tool at our disposal”.
For now, the mayors who are most alarmed about Trump’s crackdowns appear to be placing much of their faith in the courts. A federal judge in California ruled last week that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles in June – over the objections of Governor Gavin Newsom (D) – was improper.
Mamdani praised the team effort that California Democrats showed against Trump’s deployment, suggesting it paved the way for success in the courts. And on Friday, after the Memphis announcement, Mayor Johnson of Chicago hailed the “united front” that Illinois Democrats have displayed, suggesting it caused Trump to reconsider his plans there for now.
In other states, Democrats at different levels of government favour different strategies.
That was clear on Friday in Tennessee, where the Democratic mayor whose county includes Memphis, Lee Harris, responded more quickly and forcefully to Trump’s announcement than Young did. In a statement, Harris said the deployment is “disappointing, antidemocratic, and violates American norms and possibly US laws”.
Young was not nearly as critical during his news conference. And Memphis is not the only place where mayors have sought to ease – rather than escalate – tensions with Trump.
In Detroit, Mayor Mike Duggan touted that the city already has a “highly successful” partnership with the federal Government after Mike Rogers, the Trump-backed candidate for Senate, suggested Duggan ask for National Guard support. New Orleans took a similar approach after Trump first floated the city as a target.
Trump continued to mention New Orleans as a likely spot for further deployment on Friday.
Bibb said he has encouraged other Democratic mayors to talk with their governors, especially if they are in red states. He said Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) has assured him “in no uncertain terms” that he would not send the National Guard to Cleveland without Bibb’s sign-off. Trump, of course, has disregarded California’s governor.
Late last month, as anxiety was rising over Trump’s threats to send the National Guard to cities beyond Washington, Bibb held a private strategy call for Democratic mayors that drew representatives from more than two dozen cities, according to a person familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to publicly discuss it. The call was first reported by the New York Times.
On the call, the mayors sought to coalesce around a message that emphasises that they know what is best for their cities and that they need “a federal partner that works with them, not against them,” the person said.
Bibb said he is in three or four group chats with fellow mayors, while other municipal officials pointed to additional efforts to share the experience of Los Angeles, Washington and other cities that have dealt with Trump.
In Chicago, as they awaited a potential Guard deployment, some Democratic aldermen contacted colleagues in the Los Angeles City Council for advice and commiseration.
Alderman Gilbert Villegas, who represents a ward that includes three predominantly Hispanic neighbourhoods, said he “never thought I’d have to call a colleague of mine in a different city to talk about authoritarianism or dictatorship”.
But, as ICE carried out arrests under Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” a ramped-up deportation campaign targeting criminals who are in the country illegally, Villegas and other city aldermen acknowledged that the local leaders were struggling to find unity.
Alderman Nicholas Sposato, a former Democrat who declared himself an independent in 2017, welcomed the ICE reinforcements and accused some Democrats of spreading fear without offering a coherent alternative.
“Maybe two or three aldermen in the city council think, ‘We should do something and work together’” with the federal government, he said. “The rest of them are like: ‘Stay the heck out of here.’”
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