MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Illinois National Guard to deploy at least 300 soldiers to guard federal facilities, also to protect ICE agents and other federal officers in Chicago. Now that order calls for the troops to deploy for 60 days. That is according to a memo obtained by NPR. Meanwhile, another 200 Texas National Guard troops are set to arrive in Illinois tonight to assist in protecting facilities where Hegseth says violent demonstrations are occurring. NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman is tracking all this. Hey, Tom.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Catch us up on where things stand. Are there any guard troops on the streets in Chicago yet?
BOWMAN: No, not yet. I'm told by a U.S. official not authorized to speak that those Illinois guard troops are now gathering at a central location, but they'll still need medical screening, you know, personnel checks, training on crowd control before they head out. So it could be later this week or next before they hit the streets in Chicago. Now, as far as the Texas troops, no word on that from officials I'm talking with about when or if they'll be on the streets.
KELLY: Well, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker says they won't be on the streets if he has anything to do with it. He says the guard is not needed. He has filed a federal lawsuit to try to stop President Trump from sending the National Guard in Chicago.
BOWMAN: Yeah, that's right. He's saying the guard troops are being taken over by the Trump administration, sent to Chicago for what the suit says is, quote, "flimsy pretext." Now, there are some protests in Chicago against ICE and its facility, and a woman carrying a weapon was shot Saturday morning by Border Patrol agents and later taken into custody by the FBI. Border Patrol said, while on patrol, they were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars. Now, Pritzker, he held a press conference today and talked about why guard troops are not needed, that the local police can handle protests and sending in the guard will only undermine public safety and just inflame the situation. Let's listen.
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JB PRITZKER: There is no invasion here. There is no insurrection here, and local and state law enforcement are on the job and managing what they need to.
KELLY: Tom Bowman, let me shift our attention farther west to Oregon - Portland, Oregon. President Trump also wants the National Guard there. Again, he wants - he says to protect an ICE facility and ICE agents. Where does that stand?
BOWMAN: Right. Well, a federal judge has blocked the deployment of 200 Oregon guard troops to Portland, as well as another 200 guard troops from Texas, still another 200 from California. And the judge cited the administration's rationale in her ruling. It's called Section 12406, Title 10 of the U.S. Code.
KELLY: What is Title 10?
BOWMAN: Well, it says a president does have the power to take control of state's guard - it's called federalizing the guard - for three reasons - one, an invasion or threat of invasion by a foreign power; two, a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the United States; and three, the president is unable to execute the laws of the United States with the forces at hand, meaning, you know, let's say, local law enforcement. So do the protests in Chicago and Portland rise to that level? The Trump administration says they do. Again, Pritzker calls it all flimsy. A federal judge in Portland agrees. So the bottom line, Mary Louise, no National Guard troops are on the streets yet, and we're off to federal appeals courts.
KELLY: Just briefly, it's always helpful to look at precedent in things like this. There have been times in the past - right? - when a president has taken control of a state guard, or the governor has said, look, we do need to call out the guard.
BOWMAN: Yeah. It's on rare occasions for a president. Think of the Civil Rights era when Presidents, you know, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson took control of a state guard to enforce Civil Rights laws, making sure African American kids can go to school. And for the governors, serious riots - 1992, Los Angeles, after the Rodney King beating, and in Minneapolis after George Floyd's killing five years ago. But again, rare.
KELLY: Thank you, Tom.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
KELLY: NPR's Tom Bowman. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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