Protest against President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, on Aug. 16, 2025.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announces on Aug. 1, 2025, that Major League Baseball and the Chicago Cubs will host the 2027 All-Star Game.

We’re now learning that President Donald Trump plans to take his faux-tough-guy Authoritarian Road Show to the great midwestern city of Chicago, potentially flooding the streets with National Guard troops under the guise of “fighting crime.”

That’s not remarkable. In Trump’s fresh-horror-each-day second term, that’s just Monday.

What’s remarkable is that some Americans hear the news of a plan to invade Chicago and still say, “Oh, he can’t do that. It’s not legal!”

Trump will obviously send troops into Chicago. Laws mean nothing to him.

As if “legal” means anything to our felon in chief. As if there’s a soul in the perpetually supine Republican Party who would lift a delicate finger to stop Trump. As if there are still guardrails to keep this power-drunk, swerving maniac from driving democracy off the cliff.

Of course, Trump is going to try a federal takeover of Chicago. It’s a big blue city in a blue state with a Democratic mayor who is Black, and while there are plenty of cities in America, large and small, that have worse per-capita violent crime, Chicago will be Trump’s target for the reasons listed at the beginning of this sentence.

He likes to demonize Democrats because that jazzes up his base. He doesn’t like or care about Black people, as evidenced by his not-subtle anti-diversity rants, his desire to downplay slavery in American museums and his incessant targeting of Black leaders.

And he is desperately seeking violence as he does to Chicago what he has limply done to Washington, DC.

Trump's tough-guy grandstanding meant to make us complacent

What began in Los Angeles with U.S. troops on the streets of an American city and continued in the nation’s capital is a transparent effort by Trump to make himself feel powerful and to normalize federal strong-arming. Is it legal? He doesn’t care.

So let’s dispatch with the soft headlines and the pearl-clutching howls of “He would never!” Wake up. Whatever Trump says he wants to do, the safe bet is he will do it, law or public opinion be damned.

This is what Republicans voted for. Trump made his authoritarian desires abundantly clear. He showed us over and over he doesn’t believe the laws apply to him.

He has pardoned insurrectionists and is weaponizing the Department of Justice to hound anyone he believes has wronged him in the past.

He’s trying to cleanse the Smithsonian of any historical information he doesn’t want to hear about, like slavery.

He has taken control of the Kennedy Center and decided he alone sets the country’s tariff policies.

Republicans won't stand up to Trump because this is what they voted for

Republicans in Congress haven’t just let it all happen; they’ve actively cheered it on. They are ‒ through their own lack of respect for the Constitution or fear of reprisal from Trump’s rabid base ‒ all in, a pack of lemmings chasing a mad king.

By denying real data about crime rates, firing people who put out federal economic data and lying to the American people day after day after day, Trump is solidifying his alternate reality.

So, of course, he’s going to use Chicago as the next testing ground for martial law. Of course, he’s going to keep pushing these unnecessary shows of force, hoping they spark a violent outburst that gives him a Reichstag-fire-like excuse to take more control.

Kamala Harris saw this coming, and she was right

At her final campaign rally, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris said: “Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him.”

She was right, of course. She was right because it was obvious to anyone paying attention. She was right, and Republicans still stood proudly by their victorious hero, knowing full well he would send soldiers into Democratic states. Why? Because that’s exactly what they wanted.

So don’t kid yourself, and don’t act surprised. Chicago will be invaded by the U.S. military sooner rather than later.

No guardrails will stop Trump. No Republican will stand up and say no. He will get his insane way.

And then it will be up to the good people of Chicago to show Americans how a city of broad shoulders peacefully and loudly stands up and resists a lawless president who invites madness in.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Of course Trump is going to invade Chicago. He's a lawless president. | Opinion

Reporting by Rex Huppke, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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