Trump calls for jailing of Chicago mayor and Illinois governor as national guard arrives in city | Chicago | The Guardian

Trump calls for jailing of Chicago mayor and Illinois governor as national guard arrives in city

(Jail the 32-time convicted felon that foolish and racist Americans voted for President.)

"President accused Brandon Johnson and JB Pritzker of failing to protect Ice officers as troops deploy to Chicago

Anna Betts

Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, center, speaks as the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, left, and US representative Raja Krishnamoorthi listen at a news conference in Chicago on Monday. Photograph: Nam Y Huh/AP

Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the imprisonment of Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s mayor, and JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, accusing them of failing to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers.

“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. “Governor Pritzker also!”

Both Johnson and Pritzker are Democrats.

Trump’s remarks come as national guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area at the order of the Trump administration, despite objections from Illinois officials, including Pritzker and Johnson.

“This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested” Johnson said on Wednesday in response to Trump’s remarks. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Pritzker also responded on social media, saying: “I will not back down. Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?”

As of Wednesday morning, national guard troops from Texas had arrived at Elwood army reserve center, an army training center about 50 miles outside Chicago, as the Trump administration pushes ahead with an aggressive policy toward big-city crime and its mass deportation efforts..

The president has called Chicago a “hellhole” of crime, although police statistics show significant drops in most crimes, including homicides.

On Wednesday, 200 national guard troops from Texas are expected to deploy to the Chicago area, with another 300 Illinois national guard troops preparing to deploy, according to the New York Times, citing a US military official. The official reportedly said the troops were not going to assume law enforcement duties but would protect federal immigration agents and facilities.

Military personnel in uniforms with the Texas national guard patch were reported by the Associated Press at the USarmy reserve center in Elwood. Trucks marked “Emergency Disaster Services” dropped off portable toilets and other supplies. Trailers were set up in rows. Extra fencing was spread across the perimeter.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered flight restrictions over the army reserve center for security reasons until 6 December.

The Trump administration has ramped up immigration enforcement operations in Chicago in recent weeks, prompting protests, especially outside an immigration center in Broadview, a Chicago suburb..

On Monday, Illinois and Chicago sued the Trump administration, seeking to block the deployment of the national guard to the city, urging a federal judge to stop what they describe as “Trump’s long-declared ‘War’” on Chicago and Illinois, calling it “unlawful and dangerous”.

A court hearing on their lawsuit is scheduled for Thursday.

Mayor Johnson also signed an executive order on Monday barring federal immigration agents and others from using city-owned property as staging areas for enforcement operations.

Pritzker has accused Trump of using troops as “political props” and “pawns”.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Pritzker said that Trump was attempting to “justify and normalize the presence of armed soldiers under his direct command”.

The nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act limits the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws. However, Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active-duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.

Since starting his second term, Trump has sent or talked about sending troops to at least 10 cities, including Baltimore; Washington DC; New Orleans; and the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles, arguing that the military presence is needed to combat crime and protect Ice officers.

Data shows that most violent crime around the US has declined in recent years. In Chicago, for example, police data shows that homicides were down 31% to 278 from the start of 2025 to the end of August compared with the same time period last year.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday found that most Americans oppose the deployment of troops without an external threat.

This article was amended on 8 October 2025. An earlier version said that in Chicago homicides were down 31% to 278 through August. In fact, the figures were for 2025 from January to the end of August, compared with the same time period in 2024."

How the 'diploma divide' helped steer Trump back to the White House

Democrats have long struggled to reach voters without a college education. That growing blind spot played an important role in Harris' loss.

Zachary Schermele

(This story was updated to correct a typo.)

Among voters without college degrees, Kamala Harris fared worse than Joe Biden four years ago.

That’s a big problem for Democrats. And it has become more of a liability for the party as it struggles to grasp the working class appeal it once enjoyed.

The GOP won big last week thanks in part to white women unswayed by Donald Trump's link to the end of Roe v. Wade, a realignment of Latino voters and some Black men in swing states. But the wins also resulted from the expanding political differences between voters with college degrees and those without them. 

That chasm, nicknamed the “diploma divide,” has long been an issue for Democrats. It appears to have worsened last week: CNN exit polls (which are only a snapshot of the electorate and aren’t always accurate) showed Harris outperformed Biden’s 2020 numbers among white voters with college degrees. Meanwhile, exit polling from NBC News gave Republicans a 9-point gain with voters who never attended college. Exit polling from The Associated Press and The Washington Post provided similar evidence.

"The diploma divide continued and extended a bit from previous elections," said Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State University who has studied the trend.

Going to college is a privilege. Not everyone can go, and perhaps more importantly, not everyone wants to go. Yet, in recent decades, a degree has arguably become more of an economic necessity than ever. 

As having a college education became a standard expectation among many employers around the turn of the century, the cost of college rose. Student loan debt ballooned. Students accused some schools of knowingly ripping them off. Then came student loan forgiveness, which has been highly politicized and criticized by Americans who don’t want to be left unfairly footing the bill for other people’s financial risks.

All those circumstances have clashed with the two major American political parties, shaping the public's choices about whom to support.

For years, Democrats have accepted the fact that they can’t win over voters who aren't college educated, said Joan Williams, a professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, and author of the forthcoming book “Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back.” 

“The assumption has been that Democrats would make up for that by winning overwhelmingly among voters of color. But that didn’t work,” she said. “This strategy, of resigning yourself to losing among white noncollege voters, is gone with the wind.”

Two-thirds of white men without a college degree supported Trump this election, according to exit polling data from The Washington Post. So did 60% of white women who didn't go to college.

College-educated voters haven’t always been Democrats

For decades, Republicans have accused colleges of “liberal indoctrination.” But experts say college-educated voters weren't always a left-leaning majority. 

Throughout the 20th century, Americans with bachelor’s degrees were more likely to align with the GOP. Historically, higher education was disproportionately available to young people from richer families, and those families were often Republicans, according to Grossmann, who co-authored the book “Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics.”

The presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s started to lure white voters without college degrees away from the Democrats. A reversal seemed underway, according to the writings of the historian Thomas Frank. More traditional blue-collar Democrats were seeing less of themselves reflected in a party that favored a more connected world and began to be perceived as more "elite."

Working class voters started to feel looked down upon, Frank says in his 2004 book, "What's the Matter With Kansas." GOP leaders learned how to "align themselves with the common people, rising up righteously against the puffed-up know-it-all," he writes.

By the 2008 election, something had fundamentally changed. That year, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama defeated Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (whose populist appeal, some think, paved the way for Trump’s rise).

Research shows it also marked the first time holding a bachelor’s degree became a significant predictor that people would vote for a Democrat. 

By 2016, white voters without college degrees flocked to the Republican Party. Roughly two-thirds identified or leaned toward the GOP, according to Grossmann and Hopkins. Trump successfully tapped into the populist appeal quickly becoming the GOP's brand. His disregard for political correctness and disinterest in the nitty-gritty of policy resonated with voters who felt a cultural connection with him.

The diploma divide persisted into 2020, and last week the gap seemed to widen even more. 

Put simply, Democrats “do not have an image as a party of the working class anymore," Grossmann said.

Democrats shift messaging on the value of college

Since 2016, the left's vulnerabilities among voters who didn't go to college have likely played a role in broadening Democrats' messaging about the value of a college degree.

Barack Obama set a goal at the beginning of his first term for the U.S. to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. But that “college for all” rhetoric has since been de-emphasized, particularly as efforts to make community college free fizzled out. Expanding other educational pathways, such as vocational programs and apprenticeships, has become a more comfortable talking point for Democrats in recent years. 

Just before Election Day, Kamala Harris promised that on her first day in office, she would get rid of degree requirements for some positions in the federal government. It's unclear how many caught on to that pledge, but days later, many who could've benefited from it opposed her at the ballot box.

Without the kind of visibility the Oval Office affords, Democrats will have a lot more work to do to win back the kinds of voters they’ve lost, said Williams, the San Francisco professor. 

“Noncollege voters feel like they’ve really gotten screwed economically," she said. “They’re not that interested in preserving a system that, as they see it, ate up the American Dream and spat it out in their face.” 

Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.

Trump calls for jailing of Chicago mayor and Illinois governor as national guard arrives in city | Chicago | The Guardian