Letters from an American - August 25, 2025

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

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August 25, 2025. This morning, President Donald J. Trump talked to reporters as he signed several executive orders in the Oval Office. Trump sat behind the resolute desk, as he has been doing lately, seeming to put its bulk between him and the reporters. Also, as he has been doing lately, he kept his left hand over the right, seemingly to hide a large bruise. Trump was there to announce an executive order charging Secretary of Defense Pete Hegesith with creating specialized units in the National Guard that will be specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues, apparently setting them up to take on domestic law enforcement as part of Trump's attempt to take control of Democratic-run cities. At the press

opportunity, Trump claimed that he saved Washington, D.C., where crime was at a 30-year low before he took control of the Metropolitan Police Department and mobilized the National Guard from such rampant crime that no one dared to wear jewelry or carry purses. People, he said, are free for the first time ever. Although in 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that burning a flag is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, Trump ordered the Department of Justice to prosecute anyone who burns a flag, claiming they would automatically go to prison for a year.

He has no authority to make such an order. After seven European leaders rushed to the White House to stabilize the U.S. approach to Russia after Trump's disastrous meeting with Russia's President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15th, Trump claimed that the seven leaders actually represented 38 countries, and that they refer to Trump as the President of Europe. Calling Chicago, Illinois, a disaster and a killing field, Trump referred to Illinois Governor

J.B. Pritzker as a slob. Trump complained that Pritzker had said Trump was infringing on American freedom and called Trump a dictator. Trump went on, a lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator. I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense and a smart person and when I see what's happening to our cities and then you send in troops instead of being praised they're saying you're trying to take over the republic these people are sick this afternoon standing flanked by leaders from business law enforcement faith communities education local communities and politics at the chicago waterfront near the trump tower there governor Pritzker responded to the news that Trump is planning to send troops to Chicago. He began by saying,

I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in the city and as a state and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will Heed, both here in Illinois and across the country. He acknowledged that over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning for quite a while now to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country's founders warned against, and it's the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances. What President Trump is

doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American. Prisker noted that neither his office nor that of Chicago's mayor had received any communications from the White House. We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did. We read a story in the Washington Post. If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor, or the police? Let me answer that question, he said. This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political

rivals. This is about the President of the United States and his complicit lackey Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections. There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no insurrection. Pritzker noted that every major American city deals with crime, but that the rate of violent crime is actually higher in Republican-dominated states and cities than in those run by Democrats. Illinois, he said, had hired more police and given them more funding. We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stocks, and high-capacity magazines, and invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs. Those actions have

cut violent crime down dramatically. Prisker pointed out that 13 of the top 20 cities and homicide rates have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago. Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of these states is Illinois. If Trump were serious about combating crime, Pritzker asked, why did he, along with congressional Republicans, cut more than $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants? Pritzker said, is defunding the police. Then Pritzker turned to the larger national story. To the members of the press who are assembled here today

and listening across the country, he said, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see where the authoritarian crows creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race peace on who will be helped politically by the president's actions. Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S.

city, punish his dissidents, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is. A dangerous power grab. Pritzker continued, Earlier today, in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city? Instead, I say, Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental

faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy. The governor called out the president for his willingness to drag National Guard personnel from their homes and communities to be used as political props. They are not trained to serve as law enforcement, he said, and did not sign up for the National Guard to fight crime. It is insulting to their integrity and to the extraordinary sacrifices that they make to serve in the guard to use them as a political prop, where they could be put in situations where they will be at odds with their local communities, the ones that they seek to serve. Prisker said he hoped that Trump would reconsider this dangerous and misguided encroachment upon

our state and our city's sovereignty, and that rational voices, if there are any left inside the White House or the Pentagon will prevail in the coming days. But if not, he urged Chicagoans to protest peacefully and to remember that most members of the military and the National Guard stationed in Chicago would be there unwillingly. He asked protesters to remember that they can be court-martialed and their lives ruined if they resist deployment. He suggested protesters should look to members of the faith community for guidance on how to mobilize. Then Pritzker turned to a warning.

To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your national guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its people, he said, cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our nation, and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to. He went on.

The state of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever in our disposal to protect the people of Illinois. Illinois and their rights. Finally, he said, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous, We are watching and we are taking names.

This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now. And eventually, the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf. You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law. As Dr. King once said, the arc of the moral universe is long. but it bends toward justice.

Humbly, I would add, it doesn't bend on its own. History tells us we often have to apply force needed to make sure that the arc gets where it needs to go. This is one of those times. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.