US president backs away from troop deployment to US cities amid legal setbacks, vows return when crime ‘begins to soar’.

United States President Donald Trump announced he is ceasing his efforts to deploy federal troops to several Democratic-led cities in a major policy pivot.

The announcement on Wednesday comes amid a series of legal setbacks to Trump’s efforts to deploy National Guard members to Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California; and Portland, Oregon.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he’s “removing” the National Guard from those cities, although their deployment was already mostly limited by lower courts.

“We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact,” he said.

Despite the claim, the National Guard has been barred from taking direct part in law enforcement, which remains illegal under US law. Trump had not invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807, which allows presidents to deploy troops domestically when “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion” against the federal government make it “impracticable to enforce” US law “by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings”.

Because of that, troops deployed in or around Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago had been largely tasked with guarding federal buildings and offering support services to immigration enforcement.

About 300 National Guard members remained under federal control in both Los Angeles and Chicago at the time of Trump’s announcement, with 200 more in Portland.

Since first deploying the National Guard in Los Angeles to respond to protests against mass immigration enforcement sweeps, Trump has repeatedly claimed major cities across the US have been plagued by overlapping crime and immigration crises.

Critics have accused Trump of taking part in dangerous political theatre to target opponents.

Trump’s announcement did not reference the ongoing National Guard deployment in Washington, DC, a federal territory, or in New Orleans, Louisiana, which had been specifically requested by the state’s Republican governor.

Legal setbacks

The president’s move comes amid a series of legal setbacks, topped last week by a Supreme Court order keeping in place a lower court’s ruling barring the president from deploying the National Guard to Chicago.

While members of the federal military, National Guard troops are typically deployed at the request of state governors. Presidents can unilaterally deploy the National Guard, but only in instances when other federal agents can no longer execute the law.

The majority of Supreme Court justices ruled Trump has not yet met that threshold, dealing a major blow to the administration’s justification for similar deployments across the country.

Earlier on Wednesday, Department of Justice lawyers in California withdrew a request to keep troops in the state under federal control as they appealed a lower court’s ruling. That ruling by US District Judge Charles Breyer said the troops must be returned to state control.

In a post on X, the office of California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and top Trump critic, said the “admission by Trump and his occult cabinet members means this illegal intimidation tactic will finally come to an end”.

Newsom and his staff “look forward” to a more lasting court ruling on the issue.

For his part, Trump, in his Truth Social post, said he would not hesitate to redeploy troops.

“We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again – Only a question of time!” he said.