Crackdown or invasion? National news media needs to stop with the transcription.

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Washington Post has an exclusive story about how Trump's Pentagon "plans military deployment in Chicago as Trump eyes crackdown." 



The story, as per usual from national news media these days, adopts the Trump frame, amplifying Trump's false claim that Chicago is a desperately violent city in need of a military "crackdown." Here is the lead of the story by Dan Lamothe.
"The Pentagon has for weeks been planning a military deployment to Chicago as President Donald Trump says he wants to crack down on crime, homelessness and undocumented immigration, in a model that could later be used in other major cities, officials familiar with the matter said. 
"The planning, which has not been previously disclosed, involves several options, including mobilizing at least a few thousand members of the National Guard as soon as September to what is the third most populous city in the United States."
It is absolutely terrifying and unprecedented - this news that Trump is considering a military invasion into the nation's third largest city (following on the military invasions in LA and DC.) It is unclear why Trump's frame needs to be adopted for this story or why the nation needs a model of military intervention to be followed in later military interventions in other American cities. 

The real story to be reported is that the president of the United States, in a likely violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, is contemplating a military occupation of American cities, an unprecedented act without a valid rationale. 

Here are additional graphs from the WaPo story that provide amplification of Trump's frame for this story:

"Trump on Friday touted his ongoing National Guard intervention in D.C., where more than 2,200 Guard members have been deployed in what he has cast as an overdue effort to crack down on crime. He zeroed in on Chicago as the next target.

"'Chicago’s a mess. You have an incompetent mayor. Grossly incompetent,' Trump said, in remarks that were immediately dismissed by Chicago’s leaders as unfounded. 'And we’ll straighten that one out probably next. That’ll be our next one after this. And it won’t even be tough.

"The officials familiar with the matter said that a military intervention in Chicago has long been in planning, probably in conjunction with expanded operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to search for undocumented migrants."

National news media has adopted a tactic where anything contradicting Trump must be politically motivated: "...in remarks that were immediately dismissed by Chicago's leaders as unfounded." We don't have to rely on remarks by Chicago's leaders to provide context that Trump's remarks are unfounded. There is actual data to support the claims of Chicago's leaders that this military invasion is unfounded - and there is no data to support Trump's claims that Chicago is wildly out of control to the point of needing a military intervention. 

What Washington Post is doing here is false equivalence - insisting that both claims carry equal weight. That's transcription, not actual reporting.

If Lamothe wanted to accurately report this story,  he would note that if crime were truly the issue to be addressed, the next city to invade, after Trump's current military invasion of the nation's capital, would be Memphis, which has the highest crime rate in the country. USA Facts has Memphis as the US city with the highest crime rate. In a US News story on the "top 25 most dangerous places to live in the US," Chicago does not even rank on this list, though again, Memphis tops the list as the most dangerous city in the US. When is Trump's military invasion of Memphis scheduled to happen? Or does Memphis's location in the red state of Tennessee make it off limits for such an invasion?


The Council for Criminal Justice recently issued a report showing crime is down in most cities - with domestic violence being the one crime that has seen an increase. From the report: "Reported levels of 11 of the 13 offenses covered in this report were lower in the first half of 2025 than in the first half of 2024; domestic violence was the only offense that rose during this period, and drug offenses remained even." There is really no justification at all for Trump to militarily invade ANY US city, according to the data that contradicts his claims. 

Additionally, a reporter accurately reporting the story about Trump's plans to militarily invade Chicago would note that Chicago is a world-class city that is on multiple "best city lists" - nationally and internationally. Here are two:
Also to be emphasized: crime has gone down in Chicago. It is factually accurate in a news story to note the data and reports that contradict Trump's false claim that Chicago's crime is so great it requires military intervention.

Sadly, none of the facts about Chicago's high rankings in lists of world-class cities made it into the Washington Post story. There is a brief note buried deep in the story about the decrease in crime: "...like D.C. and many other major cities, it had a spike in homicides and other violent crime during the covid pandemic, though rates have come down since."

What DID make it in - multiple quotes from Trump's team about the need to militarily invade a world-class city and the identification of Illinois's governor and Chicago's mayor as Democrats eager to oppose Trump's invasion, once again, framing this as a political, not factual, debate. 
“'The Department is a planning organization and is continuously working with other agency partners on plans to protect federal assets and personnel,'” the statement said. 
"The Pentagon’s plans for future deployments come as the Trump administration pressures state and local leaders to allow the federal government to do more to find and deport undocumented immigrants. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently sent a letter to numerous state, county and local leaders stating that “sanctuary policies” impede law enforcement and will be legally contested. 
"Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats, hit back at Trump in comments Friday, with the governor accusing Trump of attempting to 'create chaos.'”

Trump IS creating chaos and a huge potential for violence when he militarily invades US cities (See 1970 Kent State University National Guard shootings that resulted in four deaths and a Pulitizer Prize winning photo.) But the Washington Post story frames this as a purely political accusation from Illinois Democrats.  

The national news media really needs to stop using false equivalence in reporting stories about the authoritarian power grabs made by this administration. Start calling it for what it is - first steps on the path towards the installation of a military dictatorship in the United States. NO city in America has the kind of crime stats that warrant a military intervention done at the direction of the president. None. And yet, here we are, with a national news media devoted to using Trump's frame for their stories too many times. In sending military forces into US cities, Trump is not engaged in a valid "crackdown" on crime in US cities. He's militarily invading cities led by Democrats in order to crackdown on our democracy. 





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