President Donald Trump has threatened to unleash his newly rebranded “Department of War” on Chicago, escalating tensions over his push to deploy troops into Democratic-led US cities. This move mirrors an operation in Washington, D.C., where Trump deployed National Guard troops and increased the number of federal agents. That action has sparked backlash and a new protest on Saturday that drew thousands.
On Saturday, Trump posted on his Truth Social account: “Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” The Democratic governor of Illinois, where Chicago is located, voiced his outrage at Trump’s post. “The President of the US is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal,” Governor JB Pritzker wrote in a post on X, adding, “Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
The post featured an apparent AI image of Trump and the quote: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning”—a reference to the 1979 Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now. In the film, the line is spoken by Lt Col Bill Kilgore, who says he loves the smell of “napalm” as the American military drops the highly flammable weapon on Vietnamese targets. The 79-year-old Republican has steadily increased his threats against Chicago since first mentioning the city in late August.
Anti-Trump protesters took to the streets of Chicago on Saturday, carrying signs that read “stop this fascist regime!” and “no Trump, no troops.” The protest route passed Chicago’s Trump Tower, and protesters made rude gestures at the building as they walked by. In Washington, D.C., where National Guard troops have been deployed since Trump declared a “crime emergency” in August, a thousands-strong protest marched through downtown with participants demanding an end to the “occupation.” Demonstrators in D.C. carried inverted US flags, a traditional symbol of a country facing existential peril.
Trump’s troop and federal agent deployments—which first began in Los Angeles in June, followed by Washington—have prompted legal challenges and protests. Critics have called them an authoritarian show of force. Local officials in Los Angeles have spoken out against the deployments and the violent tactics used by ICE agents, who often wore masks, drove in unmarked cars, and chased down and snatched people from the streets without cause or warrants. In addition to Chicago, Trump has threatened to replicate the surges in other Democratic-led cities like Baltimore and New Orleans.
On Friday, Trump signed an order changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, stating that it sends “a message of victory” to the world. Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth cheered the move, saying the US will decisively exact violence to achieve its aims, without apology.
