Guest article by Meghan Hays, Democratic strategist and former special assistant to the president and director of message planning for President Joe Biden.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, in a recent interview, issued a stark warning: Donald Trump isn’t talking about fighting crime when he suggests sending troops into American cities. He’s talking about control.
“It’s an attack on the American people by the President of the United States,” Pritzker said. “He may disagree with a state that didn’t vote for him. But should he be sending troops in? No.”
That distinction matters. The U.S. military is trained to fight wars, not to police neighborhoods. Using soldiers to patrol our streets doesn’t create safety—it creates fear, chaos, and a dangerous precedent.
We’ve seen this before in the United States and abroad. During the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, federal troops and the Illinois National Guard were sent in to “restore order.” Instead, the streets erupted. Protesters and authorities clashed in violent confrontations that became a symbol of a government at war with its own people.
And in 1989, the Chinese government sent tanks and troops into Tiananmen Square to crush pro-democracy demonstrations. The images of soldiers firing on students stunned the world.
The lesson in both of these examples is clear: when political leaders deploy the military against their own citizens, it doesn’t calm unrest—it magnifies it, deepening mistrust in government itself.
No one is suggesting America is China. But the point is the same: once a leader normalizes troops in the streets for “security” or to “fight crime,” it becomes easier to use those troops to intimidate, suppress, and ultimately interfere with elections.
Governor Pritzker put it bluntly: “He’d [Trump] like to stop the elections in 2026—or, frankly, take control of those elections. He’ll just claim that there’s some problem…and then he’s got troops on the ground that can take control if, in fact, he’s allowed to do this.”
That is the nightmare scenario. Today it’s about crime. Tomorrow it could be about peaceful protest. And the day after that, it could be about ballots. But one thing is clear: once the military is used as a political weapon, democracy itself is at risk.
Our National Guard should remain under the control of governors. Our military should defend us abroad, not police us at home. If we allow a president to send troops into cities selectively—only in states that didn’t vote for him—it won’t be about safety. It will be about power.
And if we cross that line, history tells us we won’t look back on it as a show of strength. We’ll look back on it as the moment when force replaced freedom.
Meghan Hays is a Democratic strategist and former special assistant to the president and director of message planning for President Joe Biden.
The people need to protest in full force against this tyranny.
October 18th, No Kings 2.0