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Morten Morland :: @mortenmorland

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“Be loud for America!”

September 3, 2025

Robert B. Hubbell

Members of the resistance continued to press their advantage on multiple fronts on Tuesday. The full court press is working. Trump is back on his (platform) heels.

In a second outstanding speech pushing back on Trump's threat to “occupy” Chicago, Governor JB Pritzker called on the citizens of Chicago (and America) to be part of the resistance. Pritzker said,

[W]e will do everything possible to ensure that [federal] agents operating inside the confines of this state do so in a legal and ethical manner. To Chicagoans, what you can do is look out for your communities and your neighbors. Know your rights. Film things that you see happening in your neighborhoods and your streets and share them with the news media. Authoritarians thrive on your silence. Be loud for America. To everyone listening, but most especially to the press, refuse to pretend that any of this is normal.

I refuse to concede that the abject cruelty that we're seeing play out with the execution of Trump and Steven Miller's policies are okay or justified. I refuse to fall into the pundit trap that demands we sacrifice vital constitutional rights if it's being done in the fake guise of fighting crime.

I urge you to watch Governor Pritzker’s 15-minute speech in its entirety. It is another example of Democratic governors resisting Trump by calling him out in plain language.

Moreover, Pritzker challenged the press to speak the truth about Trump's actions and called on Republican officials to abandon Trump's lawless attack on Democratic states. Kudos (again) to Governor Pritzker.

But it gets better. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson followed Governor Pritzker with a speech that tied the gun violence in Chicago to red states “exporting” handguns into Chicago.

Mayor Johnson made the compelling point that if Trump really wanted to clamp down on gun violence in Chicago, he should support gun safety legislation that would shut down the flow of handguns and illegally modified rifles (machine guns) into Chicago.

The video of Mayor Johnson’s remarks is here.

Mayor Johnson said,

The vast majority of guns do not come from Chicago. They are not made in Cook County. They are not bought in the state of Illinois. These guns come from red states. They are coming from Indiana. They are coming from Mississippi. They are coming from Louisiana. That is the harsh reality. . . . [¶] For every gun that the Chicago Police Department fights to get off the streets, two or three more new guns come into our city. Chicago will continue to have a violence problem as long as red states continue to have a gun problem.

Mayor Johnson’s strategy is brilliant: “Yes, there are shootings in Chicago, but those shootings are driven by massive exports of handguns and illegal conversion kits into Chicago from red states.”

Keep pounding that message! The alleged “need” to occupy Chicago is driven by the reckless refusal of Trump and the GOP to regulate the manufacture, sale, and transportation of guns, as well as their refusal to impose liability on manufacturers and distributors of guns and ammunition designed to kill humans.

Governor Pritzker also adopted an effective strategy of previewing Trump's plans. Per Pritzker,

In the absence of significant federal coordination, we've gathered information from unauthorized patriotic officials inside the government and from well-sourced reporters about Donald Trump's plan, which is to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago.

Pritzker then went on to detail Trump's plans to stage ICE, Border Patrol, Homeland Security, and “masked men in unmarked cars” at the Great Lakes Naval base.

In addition, the Texas National Guard is being moved to the Great Lakes Naval base, presumably to “protect” ICE in immigration raids—a curious development given the thumping that Trump took in California’s suit challenging the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles. See WSJ, Trump’s Use of Troops in Los Angeles Was Unlawful, Judge Rules.

Per the WSJ,

In a withering opinion taking aim at President Trump’s enthusiasm for military deployments at home, Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco found that the administration didn’t comply with the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 statute that restricts the use of U.S. armed forces on America’s streets.

For an excellent discussion and analysis of the ruling, see Lucian K. Truscott IV (Substack), A scalpel and an axe: I read the Posse Comitatus Act decision against Trump so you don’t have to.

Per Truscott,

Breyer held that Trump’s orders violated the [Posse Comitatus Act] in multiple ways: Trump specifically directed the commander of the deployment to use the soldiers for law enforcement purposes, an action banned by the PCA; failed to insist that the military forces coordinate with local law enforcement; and used an inadequate rationale to justify a military deployment for civilian law enforcement purposes.

For those interested in further reading on this subject, Truscott’s piece provides more detail and discussion.

Here’s the point: Governors Pritzker and Newsom are on the offensive, challenging Trump's unlawful justification for deploying National Guard to Democratic states. Trump and the National Guard commanders must be mindful of Judge Bryer’s detailed deconstruction of the Guard’s presence and activities in Los Angeles. Given the strictures in Breyer’s opinion, the National Guard troops may be relegated to tasks such as picking up trash and spreading mulch in planters, as they are currently doing in D.C.

And finally, in a truly brilliant form of resistance (noted by reader “lin” in the Comment section), Malcom Nance is promoting

a bit of psychological operations. Every time the National Guardsman moved a large unit to Union Station, [veterans protesting the deployment] started playing the retirement speech of General Milley … nonstop. On Sunday, after a show of force by the park police and DHS, they played the recording for eight hours.

Per the Remember Your Oath group,

We intend to expand this protest to all major cities. So if you’re a veteran, go to rememberyouroath.org and register. It’s a self-starting group, so once registered, you can get a permit, a tent, and a recording of General Milly’s speech and go to town.

This video shows how the group at Union Station in D.C. is employing this strategy: YouTube, Remember Your Oath: Washington DC.

Watch the video! You will be inspired! I promise!

While Trump may proceed with deploying Texas National Guard troops to Chicago, Pritzker and Newsom are fighting back. Our duty is to stand up for the Constitution. In the words of Governor Pritzker, we must “Be loud for America!”

[Robert B. Hubbell newsletter]

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