US President Donald Trump said Friday that Chicago and New York would be the next major US cities to be targeted in a federal crackdown on crime.
"We're going to make our cities very, very safe," Trump told reporters at the White House. "I think Chicago will be our next and then we'll help with New York."
Trump claimed that his federal takeover of Washington, DC’s police force helped reduce crime, pointing to a week without murders as a “miracle” even though such weeks have already happened several times this year.
He rejected polls showing most DC residents oppose the troop deployment, calling them “fake news,” and said people in cities like Chicago are asking for similar crackdowns. Trump even described African American women wearing red hats urging him to send forces to Chicago.
A Justice Department statement from January said that based on that data, "total violent crime for 2024 in the District of Columbia is down 35 percent from 2023 and is the lowest it has been in over 30 years."
But Trump has accused Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser of "giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures," threatening "bad things" including a total federal takeover of the city if she does not stop doing so.
It remains unclear how a federal operation in Chicago would work. Unlike other cities, DC is not a state and the president has special authority there, allowing him to federalize its police force.
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