This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 8 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
As National Guard troops mobilize on the outskirts of Chicago, the standoff between Donald Trump and local Democratic officials continues to escalate. On Wednesday, in a Truth Social post, the president called for the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to be jailed, writing: “Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!”
What we are already seeing in Chicago, from ICE and other federal agents, feels like an attempted occupation.
That kind of comment, made on the same day that former FBI Director James Comey was arraigned in a Virginia courthouse, should probably be taken seriously. But, for his part, Pritzker doesn’t seem to be intimidated.
“This is a convicted felon — think about that — who is threatening to jail me,” the governor told MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff. “I got to say, this guy’s unhinged, he’s insecure, he’s a wannabe dictator. And there’s one thing I really want to say to Donald Trump: If you come for my people, you come through me. So come and get me.”
That kind of resistance from Pritzker is really important at a time like this, because this is all happening just a week after Trump told the 800 highest-ranking leaders of the U.S. armed forces to be prepared to fight the enemy within.
What we are already seeing in Chicago, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents, sure does look like an extension of that. It feels like an attempted federal occupation.
In one image shared by a Chicago Tribune reporter, a federal agent can be seen pointing a weapon out of a car window at a woman who was filming them. Last Friday, we saw folks in a residential neighborhood get tear-gassed. The chemical agent was used just a block away from an elementary school.
Across social media, there is video after video after video of people being detained, often violently, by federal agents. In one instance, Kat Abughazaleh, a Democratic congressional candidate, was violently thrown to the ground by ICE simply for exercising her constitutional right to protest the agency’s presence in her city.
Last month, the Rev. David Black was shot in the head with what appeared to be a pepper-spray projectile while speaking outside an ICE detention facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview.
Commenting on the incident, the Department of Homeland Security said that “agitators” were blocking an ICE vehicle and throwing bottles. According to the pastor, that’s not how the situation played out: “I told them there was still time to repent, believe the Good News, and turn from their wicked ways. That’s when they opened fire.”
But this is all just the beginning. NBC News has reported that the White House is holding serious discussions about invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807, a law that would allow Trump to marshal federal troops to act as law enforcement agents in our cities without nearly as many legal constraints over how those troops could operate. It would be akin to a declaration of war against the people of this country — with no actual, legitimate justification.
One person close to the White House told NBC News that the debate over the Insurrection Act is working its way up “an escalatory ladder.”
What we are seeing in Chicago sure looks like the opening move in a larger vision for this country, where the leader consolidates power to harness state, local and federal police in cooperation with the U.S. military, which is trained to defend America from foreign threats and unleash them against Americans.
Just consider what White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told police officers in Memphis last week, “I see the guns and badges in this room. You are unleashed. The handcuffs that you’re carrying, they’re not on you anymore. They’re on the criminals. And whatever you need to get it done, we’re going to get done.”
The pretext is always fighting criminals. But it’s clear that Miller and Trump want to treat Americans who do not support their agenda like enemies. And I’ve got to say, the response we are seeing against that vision is actually really emboldening.
The pretext is always fighting criminals. But it’s clear that Miller and Trump want to treat Americans who do not support their agenda like enemies.
Despite being far less willing to weigh into American politics than his predecessor, Pope Leo XIV, who is from Chicago, is calling out Trump’s overreach. In remarks to bishops visiting him at the Vatican on Wednesday, the Holy Father urged them to use the pulpit to speak out against Trump’s draconian immigration policies.
This administration has decisively lost the moral high ground. People, at a deep level, understand that what they are seeing in Chicago is wrong. They know that they are free citizens of a free country — a free country that we spent hundreds of years trying to achieve and perfect.
Americans know that they have the right to film ICE agents and to even peacefully verbally challenge them. They know they have a right to protest, to stand outside detention centers, to try and shame people who are committing what they believe to be grave injustices, and the fact that they are continuing to do that, even in the face of this onslaught, is a testament to the fact that Americans will not be intimidated.
