NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) — President Donald Trump said Friday he’s preparing to expand federal deployments of the National Guard beyond Washington, DC, with Chicago and New York among the cities under review.

The president has already moved the DC’s Police Department under federal control and ordered about 2,000 troops to patrol the nation’s capital. In the Oval Office on Friday, he said his next steps could involve other large, Democratic-led cities he has repeatedly criticized for crime and mismanagement.

“Chicago’s a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent. And we’ll straighten that one out. Probably next,” Trump said. “And then we’ll help with New York.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson last week criticized the idea of using the national guard in Chicago, pointing instead to cuts the administration has made to anti-violence programs.

“If President Trump wants to help make Chicago safer, he can start by releasing the funds for anti-violence programs that have been critical to our work,” Johnson said. “Sending in the National Guard would only serve to destabilize our city and undermine our public safety efforts.”

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker also slammed the idea last week arguing the president lacked the authority to use federal law enforcement to police Chicago. The city, which suffered under rising crime in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, has recently seen improvements with murders falling 32% to 188 in the first half of the year, the lowest in more than a decade.

Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat now running for re-election as an independent, said last week that he’s also opposed to the idea with “just three simple words: We got this.” Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa said at a campaign stop in Midtown on Friday that while many voters he met supported the federal presence in Washington, “there is no need for the president to take over New York.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said on X that 719 arrests and 91 firearms have been logged in Washington since Trump’s order. District police separately reported that the city has not recorded a murder since Aug. 13, two days after the start of the federal operation.

The comments came after the Pentagon authorized Guard troops in Washington to carry their service weapons, reversing earlier Army guidance that had restricted firearms to armories.

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