Here is a brief timeline of events that got us here. Chicago has had a decline in violent crime and murders over the course of the last several years, with 2025 on pace to mark it as the safest year yet in the city. Despite that plain fact, Donald Trump has banged on about how my beautiful city is a “war zone” and “crime ridden” and so on. In early September, Trump essentially declared war on Chicago via social media, pumping this idiotic meme out to his followers and the rest of the world.

We have a great deal of dog parks here in Chicago, which I assume is why Kristi Noem got right to work with plans to terrorize the city. A raid on a single apartment building in the city, including the use of ICE and other federal agents deploying to the roof of the building from Black Hawk helicopters, resulted in the detention of everyone that lived there, only a portion of whom were detained over their immigration status. The rest were merely held, terrorized, had weapons pointed at them, had their possessions destroyed or strewn about, and then told to be on their fucking way. Noem was particularly incensed when, at one point, a city facility refused to let her take a piss. DHS does have its priorities, I suppose.

Meanwhile, protests outside of an ICE facility in a suburb, Broadview, have essentially been ongoing. Noem and Trump have made a great deal of noise about the danger that ICE and DHS agents are enduring, which is a particularly odd take as the only shots fired in all of this danger thus far that I can find have been when an ICE agent shot a protester. Now, the federal government claims that the woman was shot after she “rammed” her car as part of a “convoy” of protesters and that the ICE officer acted in self defense. An attorney for the protesters claim otherwise. Also the “convoy” appears to consist of two cars.

Rather than let this play out in the courts, or merely release the body camera footage to put this to bed, Trump, of course, greedily used this and related incidents to federalize the Illinois National Guard to deploy to Chicago alongside some Texas National Guard as well in order to “protect” ICE agents from the people they are shooting and otherwise terrorizing. Meanwhile, Trump has published a list of his enemies to the White House website, because that’s totally normal and chill, and IL Governor J.B. Pritzker is on the list.

So, when Illinois and Chicago sued in court to stop the illegal deployment of the armed forces to the city, Trump jumped straight onto social media and called for the arrest of both Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.

President Trump on Wednesday called for Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) to be jailed as the two leaders push back on the Trump administration’s crime crackdown and immigration enforcement raids on the Windy City.

“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Officers!” Trump posted to Truth Social. “Governor Pritzker also!”

Bring it on. Make your arrest. File charges. Kick off what will be a full on revolt of big cities across the country, never mind states with governors who have enough brain cells to rub together to understand where this all ends. If this all needs to come to a head, then let’s do it.

Because nothing about an arrest of a mayor and governor absolutely acting within the bounds of the law would be constitutional. We throw around the phrase “constitutional crises” a lot these days, and validly so, but this would be something entirely different. Thus far, no charges have been filed against either Johnson or Pritzker. If none emerge, then this is meaningless bloviating from a president who will demonstrate he cannot backup his words with force. And if he does attempt to back those words up, you will see defiance at a level far beyond what has been shown to date.

Pritzker and Johnson both seem to understand this.

“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?” Pritzker posted on X.

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

I know my state and I know my city. If the federal government wants to make a serious attempt to detain our mayor and governor, let them try. The resulting revolt by the public and the litigation that will result will be epic. This is all coming to a head one way or another, it seems. We might as well get started.

But make no mistake: this is a five alarm fire for American democracy.

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