United States President Donald Trump has said he would consider using the Insurrection Act to send soldiers to US cities, as the states of Illinois and Oregon continue to fight federal military deployments in court.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have an Insurrection Act for a reason. If I had to enact it, I\u2019d do that,\u201d Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIf people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I\u2019d do that,\u201d Trump added.<\/p>\n
The US president\u2019s comments came shortly after US District Judge April Perry allowed the federal government to continue the deployment in Chicago while it responds to a new court case filed by the state of Illinois, challenging the deployment of National Guard soldiers<\/a> to the city.<\/p>\n Perry set a deadline of midnight Wednesday for the federal government to reply.<\/p>\n Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and officials from the city of Chicago filed the lawsuit earlier on Monday, after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked<\/a> Trump from sending the National Guard to the state\u2019s largest city, Portland, on Sunday night.<\/p>\n Trump has sought to expand the use of the US military during his second term, including to aid in domestic immigration and law enforcement.<\/p>\n That has come amid a wider effort to portray Democrat-run cities as violence-ridden and lawless.<\/p>\n In a post on X, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker decried Trump\u2019s latest plan, which would involve federalising 300 of the state\u2019s National Guard troops and deploying another 400 from Texas, as \u201cunlawful and unconstitutional\u201d.<\/p>\n Speaking later in the day, he further accused Trump of using members of the military as \u201cpolitical props\u201d, charging that the president was trying to \u201cjustify and normalise the presence of armed soldiers under his direct command\u201d.<\/p>\n The state\u2019s Attorney General Raoul said US citizens \u201cshould not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly for the reason that their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president\u2019s favour\u201d.<\/p>\n Since taking office in January, Trump has already deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles in the state of California and the federal district of Washington, DC, and has floated sending troops to at least eight other major cities.<\/p>\n In September, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration \u201cwilfully \u201d broke federal law by deploying guard troops to Los Angeles amid protests over immigration raids.<\/p>\n