A state governor who called out the US National Guard more than five years ago in reaction to 160 cases of COVID-19 is accusing President Donald Trump of trying to "manufacture a crisis" by also calling in the National Guard today.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat and heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune who won't rule out a run for President in 2028, on Friday accused President Donald Trump of creating "some kind of distraction" by deploying National Guard servicepeople to 19 states over the next few weeks, aiming to help with immigration enforcement.
President Trump said last week that Chicago could be the next city to see federally-mandated Guardsmen and women, after more than 800 were called into Washington DC earlier this month, which has resulted in a drop in DC crime.
Pritzker, said in a statement Saturday that he has no desire for, and there is no need for, the deploying of servicepeople to Illinois' biggest city, Chicago.
But the Governor himself called up 650 US Army National Guardsmen (including Air Guard) in March 2000, just as the COVID-19 crisis was getting underway, when fewer than 700 people had been diagnosed with the virus and one person had a related death.
Back then, the Guard servicemembers were expected to help with medical services in Chicago, even though hospitals were not overrun with virus cases.
The official use of "sending in the National Guard" has a long history of signaling a troubling but significant event in the minds of the public.
Chicago has gained a national reputation as a city of crime, though the number of murders in the city dropped last year from more than 700 to about 650.
In January 2025, though, Kim Smith at the University of Chicago Crime Lab noted, "Black Chicagoans are 20 times more likely than their white counterparts to be killed by a gun or to be a victim of a homicide. So, we often hear in Chicago, it's a tale of two cities, and we definitely see that in the data."
Chicago residents suffered 28,443 violent crimes in 2024, an overall 20-year high.
And while the National Guard is not expected to take part in major Chicago or Illinois crime fighting initiatives, Governor Pritzker insists that the move to deploy Guardspeople to 19 states nationwide is "just a distraction."
"Where are the Epstein files," he says.