https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-25-2025
"This morning, President Donald J. Trump talked to reporters as he signed
several executive orders in the Oval Office. Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk
as he has been doing lately, seeming to put its bulk between him and the
reporters. Also as he has been doing lately, he kept his left hand over the
right, seemingly to hide a large bruise.
Trump was there to announce an executive order charging Secretary of Defense
Pete Hegseth with creating “specialized units” in the National Guard that will
be “specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues,”
apparently setting them up to take on domestic law enforcement as part of
Trump’s attempt to take control of Democratic-run cities.
At the press opportunity, Trump claimed that he saved Washington, D.C.—where
crime was at a 30-year low before he took control of the Metropolitan Police
Department and mobilized the National Guard—from such rampant crime that no one
dared to wear jewelry or carry purses. “People,” he said, “are free for the
first time ever.”
Although in 1989 the Supreme Court ruled that burning a flag is a form of
speech protected by the First Amendment, Trump ordered the Department of
Justice to prosecute anyone who burns a flag, claiming they would automatically
go to prison for a year (he has no authority to make such an order). After
seven European leaders rushed to the White House to stabilize the U.S. approach
to Russia after Trump’s disastrous meeting with Russia's president, Vladimir
Putin, in Alaska on August 15, Trump claimed that the seven leaders actually
represented 38 countries and that they refer to Trump as “the president of
Europe.”
Calling Chicago, Illinois, a “a disaster” and “a killing field,” Trump referred
to Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker as “a slob.” Trump complained that Pritzker
had said Trump was infringing on American freedom and called Trump a dictator.
Trump went on: “A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator. I don't
like a dictator. I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense and a
smart person. And when I see what's happening to our cities, and then you send
in troops instead of being praised, they're saying you're trying to take over
the Republic. These people are sick.”
This afternoon, standing flanked by leaders from business, law enforcement,
faith communities, education, local communities, and politics at the Chicago
waterfront near the Trump Tower there, Governor Pritzker responded to the news
that Trump is planning to send troops to Chicago.
He began by saying: “I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in
and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in the city
and as a state and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that
is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will
heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.”
He acknowledged that “[o]ver the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald
Trump has been planning for quite a while now to deploy armed military
personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that
our country's founders warned against. And it’s the reason that they
established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and
balances. What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is
illegal, it is unconstitutional. It is un-American.”
Pritzker noted that neither his office nor that of Chicago’s mayor had received
any communications from the White House. “We found out what Donald Trump was
planning the same way that all of you did. We read a story in the Washington
Post. If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what
possible justification could the White House have for planning such an
exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the
governor, the mayor or the police?”
“Let me answer that question,” he said. “This is not about fighting crime. This
is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in
a blue city in a blue state to try and intimidate his political rivals. This is
about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey Stephen
Miller searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy,
militarize our cities, and end elections. There is no emergency in Chicago that
calls for armed military intervention. There is no insurrection.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
