Do cities need the National Guard?

“They are the ones who are making it a war zone,” Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois bloviated on CNN recently, as Jake Tapper listened, displaying his best Resting Serious Journalist Face. “They need to get out of Chicago. If they’re not going to focus on the worst of the worst, which is what the President said they were going to do, they need to get the heck out.”  

ICE has overreached its authority, according to Pritzker, arresting innocent children and zip-tying grandparents in the middle of the night, asking people for their citizenship papers on the street. And yet here comes the National Guard, as ordered by Donald Trump, an “invasion” of trained soldiers from Texas. “Every American needs to stand up and stop this madness,” Governor McCheese tweeted.  

Yet what are the feds supposed to do? Last month ICE launched “Operation Midway Blitz,” last seen deployed by the Chicago Bears in the 1980s. Unsurprisingly in Chicago, which has a contemporary left wing that makes Red Emma Goldman look like a Bircher, the operation soon led to daily protests outside the ICE processing center in the Chicago suburb of Broadview. This Saturday brought a scarily violent scene during an ICE patrol on Chicago’s South Side, when, according to the Department of Homeland Security, ICE agents “were attacked and rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.” Agents shot (non-fatally) a woman who was allegedly brandishing a semi-automatic weapon. There’s some dispute about what role the Chicago Police Department played in all this, but a dispatch call does go, “per the chief of patrol, all units clear out from there, we’re not sending anybody out to that location.” The CPD doesn’t seem to want to get involved. Hence, the National Guard.  

Meanwhile, in the People’s Republic of Oregon, federal judge Karin Immergut, who Trump appointed, said that Trump’s ordering of the California National Guard to deal with ICE protesters in Portland is illegal, and local officials “are likely to succeed on their claim that the President exceeded his constitutional authority and violated the Tenth Amendment.” California Governor called Trump’s order “a breathtaking abuse of the law and power.” Well, it’s no Covid-era lunch at the French Laundry, but Cockburn can understand Newsom’s concern.  

Trump, who seeks peace abroad daily but war at home hourly, seems unfazed. In front of a thropping Marine One yesterday, he said, “Portland is burning to the ground! You have agitators, insurrectionists, all you  have to do is look at the television, turn on your television, read the newspaper. It’s burning to the ground. The Governor, the Mayor, the politicians are petrified for their lives. That judge oughta be ashamed of herself.”  

Trump advisor Stephen Miller has emerged from his crypt to make the case in non-goombah language. The President, Miller says, isn’t trying to deploy the National Guard to rampage through the streets of Chicago and Portland, terrifying ordinary citizens and shaking down neighborhood bars (in Chicago) and feminist yarn stores (in Portland). They’re going to protect federal agents who are trying to enforce immigration laws.  

“This large-scale political violence is domestic terrorism,” Miller tweeted. “And it is the absolute moral and constitutional duty of the federal government to stop this terrorism, defend the lives and safety of federal officers, and protect the American citizen and nation by ensuring the full and unrestricted enforcement of federal immigration law in all fifty states.” 

Cockburn, who lives in Washington, DC, has personally enjoyed the side benefit of having the National Guard around. He feels quite secure watching them walk past while he’s at his favorite Asian foot spa, or enjoying oysters at the Occidental. If only Portland and Chicago would willingly open their city gates to the Guard, and let ICE do its job relatively unimpeded. Things would calm down very quickly. Let the Guard cook, and then they, too, can enjoy the true feeling of liberty.