As thousands of protesters marched in Chicago and Washington, DC, to protest the deployment of National Guard troops and immigration agents to Democratic-led cities, US President Donald Trump has threatened to launch his newly renamed “Department of War” there.
A parody of the movie Apocalypse Now, which depicts a ball of flames as helicopters scurry over Chicago, the third-largest city in the US, was included in Trump’s threat, which was posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
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Trump wrote on his social media page, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning.” Chicago is “about to learn why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
The president provided no further information besides the phrase “Chipocalypse Now,” a play on the name of Francis Ford Coppola’s dystopian 1979 film set in the Vietnam War, in which a character declares, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
Trump has repeatedly threatened to add Chicago to the list of other Democratic-led cities where more federal enforcement is being conducted. His administration will deploy National Guard personnel and increase immigration enforcement in Chicago, just like it did in Los Angeles.
Chicago’s Democratic Governor, JB Pritzker, expressed outrage over Trump’s position and said the state “won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
The American president is threatening to attack an American city. This is not intended as a joke. He wrote in a post on X that “this is not normal.”
Additionally, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson criticized Trump’s threat as “beneath the honor of our nation.”
He wants to occupy our city and violate our Constitution, according to the reality. By defending each other and Chicago from Donald Trump, Johnson wrote on X.
Chicago, DC protests
Trump has deployed troops in Los Angeles since June as part of his unprecedented law enforcement takeover of the nation’s capital, including one in Washington, D.C. He also suggested Baltimore and New Orleans might receive the same treatment, and he even mentioned federal authorities “wipe’em out” and the protesters might do the same in Portland, Oregon on Friday.
The US president added that a letter stating that it sends “a message of victory” to the world on Friday that the US president signed would become the Department of Defense instead of the Department of War.
The deployments of troops and federal agents have sparked legal protests and protests, with some calling them authoritarian show of force.
More than a thousand protesters marched through downtown Chicago on Saturday, using signs that read “I. C. E. out of Illinois, I. C. E. out of everywhere,” referring to ICE.
When confronting ICE agents, speakers gave advice to the audience. Additionally, they compared Israel’s presence in Gaza to the proposed ICE crackdown on Chicago.
As many people waved Palestinian flags and donned keffiyehs, co-chair of the US Palestinian Community Network Nazek Sankari said, “We are inspired by the steadfastness of Palestinians in Gaza. We reject Trump and his threats.
If Trump installed the National Guard in their city, Viviana Barajas, the leader of the community organization Palenque LSNA, promised that Chicagoans would “stand up” as Los Angeles had done.
This is Chicago, and he is utterly mistaken, according to Barajas, who said, “If he believes these frivolous theatrics to undermine our sovereignty will shut out the desire we have to protect our people.” “We have been studying DC and LA, and they have defended their cities.”
Protesters at the “We Are All DC” march in the US capital marched behind a bright red banner with the words “END THE D. C. OCCUPATION” in both English and Spanish.
They carried posters with slogans demonizing Trump and chanted “Trump must go now,” “Free DC,” and “Resist Tyranny.”
Heidi Zhou-Castro, a reporter for Al Jazeera in Washington, DC, claimed Trump’s supporters were “furious” and “authoritarian” and “fascist.”
She noted that Trump deployed the 2, 000 troops last month to combat what he termed a rise in violent crime, but that the number of such crimes in the US capital last year was “at a 30-year low.”
Former US diplomat Mark Fitzpatrick, who has lived in Washington for ten years, expressed concern over the administration’s “authoritarian nature.”
He claimed that the federal agents and national guards who are scurrying through our streets are “really an affront to the democracy of our city.” He added that the situation is worse for DC residents because they lack federal representation. We are at the mercy of a dictator like this, a wannabe dictator, because we lack our own senators and members of the House of Representatives.
Jun Lee, a printmaker artist, showed up with a “Free DC” sign she made on a woodcut block, one of the protesters on Saturday.
She claimed she attended the protest because she was “heartbroken and saddened” by the impact the federal intervention had had on her city.
“This is my home, and I’ve never, ever believed that everything I watched in a history documentary actually takes place in person, which is why this is significant to everyone.” We must fight and resist because this is where we live.
Trump has made the claim that the National Guard’s deployment has almost unlimited powers. He occasionally even raises questions about his rule over.
The majority of people claim that a dictator can be anything he wants if he stops crime. By the way, Trump stated last month that he was not a dictator.
Not that I don’t have the right to do anything I want to do, he continued, “I would.”
