Throughout Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign for the presidency, he repeatedly indicated his desire to deploy National Guard troops into the “crime dens” of American cities and against the “enemy within.” This promise, at least, he has kept. Over the past four months, the president has sent the Guard into the streets of Los Angeles and the District of Columbia. Now Trump is pushing to do the same in Portland, Oregon (which he recently described as “a burning hellhole”), and Chicago (“probably worse than almost any other city in the world”).

Trump’s eagerness to send troops into American cities is at odds with the country’s well-established antipathy toward domestic military deployments. In a ruling last week barring Trump’s deployment of the Oregon Guard into Portland, Judge Karin Immergut of

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