Trump’s Call to Jail the Governor of Illinois and the Mayor of Chicago

Donald Trump has finally turned the office of the president into a political court of punishment. On Wednesday, he publicly called for the imprisonment of two elected officials – the Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, and the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson. Their offense: They are standing in the way of his National Guard. In the third-largest city in the United States, which has long since become a symbol of a nation in a state of internal siege, the conflict between federal and state authority is escalating into a constitutional nightmare.

“They should be in jail for failing to protect our ICE officers!” Trump wrote on Truth Social – one of those digital thunderbolts with which he has been targeting his political enemies for years. It is the language of a man who no longer recognizes the separation of powers but demands loyalty, like a monarch. The boundaries between power and arbitrariness are barely visible in Washington. The president calls for prisons while his minister, Kristi Noem, sends the National Guard from Texas to Illinois – despite an ongoing lawsuit by the state against the deployment.

In Chicago itself, there is an eerie mix of fear, defiance, and anger. Dozens of military vehicles are now stationed on the outskirts of Broadview, a suburb where ICE officers have set up a makeshift base. The official mission remains unclear, but what is emerging here goes far beyond “immigration control.” It is a political test of strength. The city government openly speaks of an unconstitutional operation. Governor Pritzker announced that he would await the court’s ruling and “not yield a single inch.”

The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, responded sharply to Trump’s outburst: “This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested. I’m not going anywhere.” It is a sentence that touches the historical wound that has never healed in America. Trump’s rhetoric, his attempt to use state power against political opponents and minorities, is eerily reminiscent of the authoritarian reflexes the Constitution was designed to prevent. Governor Pritzker wrote on X that Trump was crossing “a line that leads America toward open authoritarianism.” And indeed: The president is calling for the arrest of elected representatives – while the Justice Department, under his control, is simultaneously conducting criminal investigations against several prominent Democrats, including California Senator Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former Governor Andrew Cuomo. All three deny the allegations, describing them as politically motivated – and they are right, because the pattern is obvious: Trump is using the Justice Department to pursue his opponents while granting himself immunity.

In Illinois, the situation is escalating. Just over the weekend, a 30-year-old woman, Marimar Martinez, was shot by a Border Patrol agent. Her attorney said that video footage showed a completely different scene than the official account – no threat, no weapon, only panic. Nevertheless, Martinez was charged, as was Anthony Ruiz, a 21-year-old Latino. Both were released shortly thereafter. Trump’s comment on the case: “The judges protect criminals, not our officers.” It is the same logic by which autocrats turn the judiciary and the opposition into a single category of enemies.

The battle lines in Chicago now run straight through institutions. The Justice Department remains silent. The White House downplays. And the president governs as if he had never stopped campaigning. “I am your retribution,” he had declared in 2024. Now he is fulfilling that promise – with legal instruments, military presence, and rhetoric that has lost all restraint.

Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt empire, billionaire, and at the same time one of Trump’s loudest critics, reacted with cold sarcasm: “Maybe the president should read something – other than his own posts.” For him, it is clear that Trump is using the National Guard not only for intimidation but as a campaign weapon – a controlled militarization aimed at destabilizing Democratic strongholds and influencing the 2026 election. “He wants to create fear,” Pritzker said back in August, “because fear is his strongest currency.”

The public feels that fear. In the neighborhoods of the South Side, patrols can be seen, people are filming armored vehicles with their phones, posting under hashtags like #OccupiedChicago. But the president remains unmoved. “Chicago is a hell hole,” he recently declared – even though the city’s crime rates are statistically lower than they have been in years. It is a bitter irony: The man who once promised “law and order” is in the process of suspending the law itself. And while he turns opponents into enemies, the lines between police and military, between justice and power politics, blur more with each passing day.

Perhaps what is happening now in Chicago is a turning point – or the final proof that the United States in 2025 is a country where democracy is being replaced by dictatorship. When a president can, without consequence, call for elected officials to be jailed, then the path that JB Pritzker so accurately described has already been taken: the path “toward fully developed authoritarianism.”

But the resistance stands, and it is growing. In Brandon Johnson’s words: “I’m not going anywhere.” It is a sentence that contains more courage than all the laws still being written in Washington. And perhaps that is precisely why Trump fears him.