Front Burner - Will Trump declare ‘war’ on Chicago?

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

As President Donald Trump threatens to send federal forces into Chicago — a city he’s referred to as the ‘murder capital’ of the world — we have a look at Trump’s long standing focus on Chicago, and how the city became a favourite metaphor in conservative politics.This month, Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to send federal forces into Chicago to confront what he calls 'the most dangerous city in the world.'His fixation on Chicago stretches back more than a decade, echoed across conservative media that cast the city as a symbol of urban decay, plagued by “Black-on-Black crime” and in need of harsher policing. In reality, violent crime in Chicago is falling, and the nation’s highest rates are in southern states firmly in Trump’s column.So why target Chicago? And how did this Midwestern city become a metaphor for America — from gun violence and race to policing, housing, and migration?Natalie Moore is a longtime journalist in Chicago with WBEZ and author of ‘The South Side: a portrait of Chicago and American Segregation.’ She now teaches journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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Chicago is a very dangerous place. We could solve Chicago very quickly, but we're going to make a decision as to where we go over the next day or two. Four weeks, Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to send federal law enforcement into the city of Chicago. Well, we're going in. I didn't say when, we're going in. We'd love to go into Chicago and straighten it out.

You know, Washington. Last week, he uploaded an AI image on social media depicting himself as a war lieutenant. Chicago skyline covered in flames, with military helicopters covering the sky. The accompanying post reads, quote, Chicago is about to find out why it is called the Department of War. Trump has denied that this was a call to war,

but many are reading it as a declaration of one against an American city. His invocations of Chicago as a capital of urban decay and indiscriminate violence of so-called black-on-black crime and democratic failure have been more than a decade long. Chicago has been a favorite in conservative media as well, most famously on Fox News. There are super predators who are black. Telling the truth is not racist, but allowing the kind of violence we are seeing in Chicago is. Chicago looks like Baghdad.

And Trump's trying to save lives at home, just like he is overseas. Now, it is well known that Chicago has long struggled with gun violence. The city was given the moniker Shirek, likening it to a war zone. But it has almost always been true that the most violent cities in America have been located in the deep south in states now comfortably controlled by Donald Trump. So why then is he threatening to oversee a military campaign in Chicago? And how did the city in the Midwest become a metaphor for so much in America, from gun violence to race, to policing, housing, migration, and more.

Natalie Moore was a longtime journalist in Chicago with WBEZ and the author of The South Side, a portrait of Chicago and American segregation. She now teaches journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago, and she joins us to talk about her city and the possibility of a U.S. federal invasion. Natalie, hi, thank you so much for coming on to Frontburner. It's really great to have you. Thanks for having me. So let's start with the news. Donald Trump has made clear his desire to send federal forces into Chicago as part of what he's presenting as a kind of anti-crime effort, an effort to address a city. He's famously referred to as, quote, crime-infested, an embarrassment to the nation, and worse than a war zone.

You're a Chicagoan. You've spent a long time working in local media in the city. What's your reaction to the prospect that's something like that? this could happen. Chicagoans, by and large, are not happy about this. We know that they're not going after criminals. They're going after our communities. This is illegal. This is unlawful. This is racist.

It makes me emotional that everybody's out here, you know, standing for what's right. There are communities that are vulnerable, and so they are fearful. And most people don't want to militarize presence on their streets. I would also say that there's this expression. a lot of Chicagoans have, and it's keep Chicago's name out of your mouth. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson asked Chicagoans if they were ready to defend their land against the federal government, and he issued an order mandating the city's police department not to cooperate with Trump's federal forces. Are you prepared to defend this land, this land that was

built by slaves, a land that was built by indigenous people, a land that is built. Built by workers, are you prepared to defend this land? The people... Governor J.B. Pritzker has said that he will sue the Trump administration. We're making sure that we're prepared, that we're ready to go to court, and that we're pushing back on the narrative that he has, that somehow there is a problem in the city of Chicago that is worse than other cities across the country. How would you describe the response that we've seen from the political establishment?

across the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois. J.B. Putzker has been on front street since Donald Trump got elected. And he's someone who isn't afraid to mince words. He has talked about how Trump wanted him to beg for COVID relief when we were in the height of the pandemic. Brandon Johnson has also been out on front street saying, you know, we don't want this. We don't like this. It's a much different. response than we're than we see in a lot of other states and other cities. Illinois is a blue state, although there are a lot of conservatives that are here. And Chicago is a diversity with a legacy tied to civil rights, uh, the labor movement. So I think there's also a level of

organization that's here, you know, not just politically, but, But on the ground, there have been protests almost every day as of late, saying we don't want the National Guard here. We don't want ICE here. And so, you know, I think back to when Trump was running for office and he wanted to speak at a local university and people took to the street so strongly that he didn't even make his speech. So we know that Trump does hold grudges. So that could be one of the many grudges that he holds against Chicago. this is not a place that he can just run roughshod over it without any kind of resistance. Right. I mean, you mentioned protests. I believe there is one today. You and I are talking Wednesday in response specifically to the ramped up ICE law enforcement operations that have been launched.

To Chicago now where protests have erupted there. That is where the Trump administration is ramping up immigration enforcement. and a planet calls Operation Midway Blitz. At least about 200 demonstrators are right now taking to the streets walking along Michigan Avenue, making their voices heard, calling out what they say is an unjust treatment for the immigrant community here in the Chicago area. If Trump did send in federal law enforcement in large numbers, what do you think would happen on the streets of Chicago

if you could just paint a little bit more of a picture for me? This isn't the first time that, the Trump administration has brought in officials to try to do massive roundups. And there have been people protesting outside of a facility in the suburbs that they said were holding immigrants. You know, J.B. Putzker said he has told people don't get in the way because part of this is to try to make a spectacle and to up arrest. I don't mean to sound naive because Trump's unpredictability is his

predictability. There is a part of me that wonders how far is he going to go as far as theater goes, as far as fear goes, because if it is a large-scale invasion here, he would be putting J.B. Pritzker

in the spotlight, someone he considers his political foe. And if Pritzker decides to run for president, he's going to have a lot of footage showing how there was chaos here because of the Trump administration and what his office was doing to try to mitigate that. So there's a line that's there. And the one thing that we do know about Trump and his unpredictability is that he doesn't like to share the line like.

Right, right. I mean, because you could certainly make the argument that some of the recent enforcement in L.A. in surrounding areas has given Gavin Newsom and California, some opportunities to seize too, right? So same kind of thing going on there. I want to pivot now to the national environment that has created like a pathway for this kind of federal intervention. So for most of my adult life, Chicago has been conceived of. of and invoked by the American conservative world as a site of indiscriminate violence, urban decay,

and disorder kind of conceived as a sort of domestic war zone. I should say several years ago I lived there for a couple of months. It's one of my favorite cities in the world. And we'll get into a little bit more about the numbers when it comes to violence shortly. But what have you made of the way that the country talks about the city of Chicago?

What do outsiders often get wrong, and why do you think this conception was popularized in the way that it was? I take it back to Barack Obama, not that Chicago hadn't been the limelight for other things or symbols of urban decay. But even as a reporter, I recall when Obama was president that I would get calls from international media saying there was a shooting last night. can you talk about violence in Chicago? And I would wonder, like, why would someone really care on the other side of the ocean about a shooting that happened in Chicago, especially one that didn't result into any deaths? And I think that Obama being from Chicago made him a target of his political foes, who also wanted to use a racialized space. You know, it's not an all-black city, but when people talk about urban decay, they think of black and brown community. So I would say there was an uptick when he was in office of putting attention towards Chicago.

And in his first term, you know, and I've documented this, I've written about it. Trump kept Chicago's name in his mouth. All right. President of Donald Trump, apparently tweeting that Neurama Manual should seek federal help after the city's murder rate at a 20-year height last year. What was it President Obama's fault in 2016? You credited it as him as... Because President Obama was invited in, and he did a poor job. President Obama could have gone into Chicago. He could have solved the problem, and he didn't.

There's no place, there's no place in the world, including you can go to Afghanistan, you can go to places that you would think of. They don't even come close to this. Chicago is a hellhole right now. The way he talks about, you know, African countries and the way he talks about Chicago are very similar. It's really interesting to our producer, Matt, who made this episode. He was noticing a pattern around that time of how Chicago was discussed in the media as well.

So through much of the 2010s, TV and radio hosts would open up the week by reading the week's the city's weekend homicide tallies, right? Something Trump still actually does. On Monday morning, we told you about the shootings, the number of shootings in Chicago, Over the past weekend, something like 70 people were shot. A dozen were murdered. Why is this happening weekend after weekend after weekend? No solutions.

No attention. Two weeks ago, they had six people murdered, murdered, and they had 24 people hit by bullets. Last week, as you know, it was seven people, 24 people hit and seven people died. So Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, had segments like weekend body count in Chicago and what's wrong with Chicago and Steve Bannon's far-right media platform. Breitbart used to have a page called Black Crime that featured events and shooting tallies in Chicago regularly. And together, this coverage turned the city into, you know, part of that metaphor, right, of democratic failure, of liberal mismanagement. So far this year, murders in Chicago are up an astounding 49 percent compared to the same period in 2015.

intensifying criticism of the democratic policies that have long governed that city. Can you tell me a little bit more about the kind of role that you think that the media played in this as well? Yeah, it's very telling that it's called black crime. And none of these sites are really interested in root causes, systemic issues in cities, or even funding because we've seen this administration cut anti-violence funding. So I think that tells you a lot of what you need to know. You know, there's such a perception. When people come here, they're like, oh, this isn't what I thought it would be. They've heard people say that they thought it was really going to be like wild,

while less gunfire on most corners of the city. And, you know, not understanding that this is a global, a world-class city that absolutely has problems to segregation in equity, but also is a beautiful. place with the beaches and the skyline and theater and all the creative ingenuity that has come out of Chicago since its existence. So really what I see is people don't care. And these are quick headlines that you can say. It's a little bit like clickbait. It's a way to demonize a city and to show it through one lens, just going back. I wanted to be a journalist since I was a kid,

and part of it was because I didn't like how the local news portrayed Southside communities, black communities, as only places of violence. And, you know, in the 1980s, you only had a few newspapers and television stations. You didn't have a wider ecology of news and media like we do today. And I think that, for the most part, the press has grown and shown that you just can't do these roundups or headlines.

Some news organizations still do that, but a lot of them do not. And how do you show nuance? There was a story in the Sun Times where reporters went out to, you know, what is considered the most dangerous block in Chicago because it has had the most shooting. And they said, you know, what do you think about the National Guard coming? So these are not just like high-level academic conversations or, you know, white paper conversations that people are having. They are, you know, rooted in research from people who study violence, but also people in neighborhoods. And at one point, even the police union was saying that they didn't want the National Guard here. So these are very disparate groups who have very different ideologies who are saying,

this is not the best way to handle violence. Bingo! Great games, good friends, and giving back. That's what charitable gaming's all about. At a charitable bingo and gaming center, your gameplay has a real world impact on thousands of Ontario charities supporting causes such as counseling services, youth sports programs, and health care. So come and enjoy a wide variety of games.

And remember, when you play, local charities win. See how we play. Visit charitablegaming.ca. Please play responsibly. Charitable gaming, community good. Book club on Monday. Gym on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday.

Quiet night in on Friday. It's good to have a routine. And it's good for your eyes too. Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam. Eye exams provided by independent optometrists. I wanted to ask you specifically about the Shirek moniker.

So around the year 2012, people started to realize that Chicago was recording more murders than the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq across a given calendar year. And the idea of Shirek was born. It was then first really mainstreamed by rap artists in the city who kind of adopted it as a reflection of their lived reality. And when you think about that Shirek-Rak framing Tiberg, and when you think about that Shirek framing today what comes to mind for you luckily we don't hear shy rack as much as we used to 10 years ago you know shy rack is putting you know Chicago shytown with the term Iraq and you know I find it very flawed because a term like that is not showing sympathy to Iraqis I feel like it's

it's inflammatory to use that as a comparison it's not showing community care, I think, in any instance, and it becomes this label that you can just throw on. And again, it's another form of war metaphors. And if this is Shirek, then who's at war with us? And who are you rounding up in this war? And it's just a shortcut, lazy way to talk about crime to talk about violence. Again, a lot of crime prevention is not sexy, meaning that, you know, people want to see, some people want to see arrest. They want to see lock them up. Again, that tough on crime. Whereas drawing, again, a connection to mental health issues and closures of mental health clinics and communities doesn't draw that same line for them. And people

like Trump are not interested in data. They're not interested in the scholarship around violence prevention or, you know, what the issues are. It becomes if I could just show a whole bunch of people doing the perp rock, it shows that I have done something. Natalie, when you see a lot of the coverage talking about crime in Chicago, it does seem to be kind of obsessed with this idea of so-called black-on-black crime. Charlie, do you believe that it's okay in Illinois if to let black people shoot black people and there's not enough outrage from the people in power and the people in wealth? We've been seeing this black-on-black genocide for decades.

This isn't anything new, and it's been raging under the first black president. Did you know that in the kind of coverage that often pathologizes young black men and black families? In Chicago, only 25% of young black youth will even have a father in the househouse And that has contributed to this endless cycle of gang violence and gun violence. This became a favorite subject in the mainstreaming conservative American press. What do you think the black-on-black crime framing misses about the real roots of violence in Chicago? Well, one, I would say that people tend to commit violence against people they know. And also segregation. Chicago is hugely segregated.

So the violence that's happening that is so-called black-on-black is really happening because of proximity. And I have found that black-on-black crime is a what-aboutism because there's also a white-on-white crime. You know, you kill people who live near you. But again, the term is a way to delegitimize complaints that people may have about systemic racism or about police violence. And so I have heard many times over my career reporting, well, how come black people don't protest when there's violence in their community outside of the police? And it absolutely does happen a lot. But that doesn't fit the narrative of these are lawless communities that don't care about anything except that the police and it's a bunch of savages who are killing each other. So I have found that it de-legitomizes when that conversation goes out to the mainstream. It's interesting because Trump is positioning this military intervention as an anti-conference.

crime measure, but by the numbers, violent crime in Baltimore, which he's also talking about Baltimore, is at a 50-year low, and in Chicago, homicides have dropped by over 30 percent and shootings by nearly 40 percent. The city just had what the mayor describes as the safest summer since 1965. That isn't to suggest that crime has somehow been defeated. Gun violence and violent crime are absolutely still major issues in both Chicago and Baltimore, but given that the numbers are way down, why do you think Trump has decided to do this now? Do you think it's about crime at all, frankly?

Of course not. He does not care, in my opinion, about Chicago, about its residents. Politicians get a lot of mileage out of being so-called tough on crime. And that is the dog whistle that he is sending to his base. You know, I don't think that there should be any kind of military intervention in any city, and I don't take the position of, I think it's important to point out places that have higher instances of crime, but that doesn't mean that we should say he should go there. However, it is revealing that he is not going places in red states that have higher rates of crime than a place like Chicago or Washington. D.C. or are Baltimore. He wants to, you know, big cities are painted as these liberal, woke

cesspools, full of black and round people and full of elites. And I'm going to take them down. And the comments that you see from people are folks who don't know anything about Chicago. And that a racialized lens is that, you know, these are savages who have to be stopped. And Trump's language about Chicago, you know, has been, has been horrible. You know, I don't want to say the expletives. But I also think that when you use Department of War or say a war on crime or a war on a city, wars have sides and wars have enemies. And it's saying Chicago is an enemy. And it's saying that people in Chicago are our enemy. And one thing I wanted to ask you, when it does come to violent crime in Chicago, the numbers are still quite shocking in 2021, 804 people were killed, 22, 614, 614. In 2023, it was 620 last year, 573 murders in the city. And just how have local leaders reconciled these numbers? How does a city make sense of that kind of sustained violence?

How does it work to address that kind of issue? No one is saying that Chicago doesn't have a problem. And really our problem is with guns in the United States. It's bigger than Chicago. So despite the pointing out of statistics that say, hey, you know, crime is down or murders are down, you know, violence is very interpersonal and personal. And so if you are a victim or someone, a loved one is a victim, some of this may not feel good because you're thinking about the experience that you have. That said, I don't believe that people are trying to push crime under the rug and what they are asking for. you know, are things that make a city better that can get to the systemic issues, such as affordable housing, such as mental health clinics, such as youth jobs.

There's a whole suite of anti-violence work and ideas that can help mitigate violence, even as this country doesn't deal with its gun problem. Chicago is a city that has had issues with policing, too, there have been highly publicized incidents of police misconduct, like the police murder of teenager Laquan McDonald and the Chicago police department's ensuing cover. up of that. How would you describe the historical relationship between the police and neighborhoods like Chicago's South Side? And what is that relationship like today? Yeah, how far back do you want to go? You know, police tensions and black neighborhoods have run high for a long time. You know, we can go back to Fred Hampton being killed by law enforcement, the Black Panther leader in. the late 60s. They had an informant in the Black Panther Party by the name of William O'Neill. He sketched out a floor plan that showed where Hampton would be sleeping. They went to the apartment. They supplied that floor plan to the police. The FBI did. They went to the apartment in the early morning hours, and he was murdered in his bed. I can tell you stories about John Burge, a commander, who tortured men, a lot of whom were not guilty of the crimes

that they were convicted of and sent to death row. Now, this morning, we have been talking about the arrest of former Chicago Police Commander John Burge. Burge is accused of torturing suspects to get confessions. Thomas Glasgow. His area base tortured for 20 years from the 70s until the early 90s. We have had police shootings here. Laquan McDonald being the most famous.

a teenager who, before the video was released, police said he was lunging at an officer and the police shows the exact opposite of him walking away and still being shot 16 times. We, the jury, find the defendant, Jason Van Dyke, guilty of second-degree murder. Inside the court, Jason Van Dyke showed little reaction to the verdict. Outside, celebrations. Van Dyke convicted of shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald's 16. times caught on video held by police for more than a year before its release, sparking

protests. So Chicago has also been at the forefront with organizers around police reform and also the abolition movement, which imagines a world without police or without prisons. So in short, relationships have not been good by any stretch. But at the same time, black neighborhoods, you know, on the south and west sides do show up to community area policing meetings. What you find in a number of black communities is that residents are looking for better policing, not more policing. Natalie, we talked earlier about some of the organized protests that we're already seeing on the streets of Chicago, but with the specter of this military, potential military invasion hanging over the city,

how would you say it's affecting every day Chicagoans and, you know, their daily lives? Or is it? There are some communities that are more vulnerable than others, and we see that the U.S. Supreme Court has basically said, you can racially profile when it comes to these issues. The court said the Trump administration can continue indiscriminate immigration stops targeting Latinos and Spanish speakers. In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that he granted the administration's request because, quote, apparent ethnicity can be a relevant factor.

So there may be some families and Latino neighborhoods who want to keep their kids home from school. But there also was Mexican Independence Day that was recently celebrated. And, you know, the activity still went on. There was one event that was canceled in just this. week. Organizers said, you know what, we're going to reschedule. We're still going to have it. And then there are these other annual events that happened in Chicago that still had high attendance, like the Printers Road Lit Festival, like The Taste of Chicago. There was also something called Sundays on Stink Street where a major thoroughfare was closed down so people could, you know,

shop and walk the streets. One of the things that people feel like the administration will win, is if we stay at home. And being outside, enjoying activities is also a form of resistance. Okay. Natalie, thank you so much for this. This was really great. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

All right. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC.ca.com slash podcasts.