JOSH HAMMER: Trump’s National Guard Deployment And The Art Of The 80-20 Issue

Donald Trump’s recent floated proposal to deploy the National Guard to crime-overrun blue cities like Chicago and Baltimore has been met with howls of outrage from the usual suspects.

For many liberal talking heads and Democratic officials, this is simply the latest evidence of Trump’s “authoritarianism.” But such specious analysis and manufactured hysteria distract from what all parties ought to properly focus on: the well-being of the people who actually live in such crime-addled jurisdictions.

What’s remarkable is not just the specific policy suggestion itself — after all, federal force has been called in to assist state-level law enforcement plenty of times — but rather how Trump is once again baiting his political opponents into defending the indefensible. He has a singular talent for making the Left clutch onto wildly unpopular positions and take the wrong side of clear 80-20 issues. It’s political jiu-jitsu at its finest.

Crime in cities like Chicago and Baltimore isn’t a right-wing fever dream. It’s a persistent, documented crisis that continues to destroy communities and ruin lives. Chicago saw nearly 600 homicides in 2024 alone, “earning” it the dubious title of America’s homicide capital for the 13th consecutive year. In Baltimore, despite a recent downtick, violent crime remains exponentially higher than national averages. Sustained, decadeslong Democratic leadership in both cities has failed, time and again, to secure even a minimum baseline level of safety for its residents — many of whom are Black and working-class, the very communities Democrats purport to champion.

Trump sees that leadership and quality-of-life vacuum. And he’s filling it with a popular message of law and order.

Trump’s proposal to deploy the National Guard — if local leadership continues to abdicate their most basic governance duties — isn’t the flight of fancy of a would-be strongman. It’s federalism functioning as the Founders intended: The federal government must step in, per Article IV of the Constitution, when local governance breaks down so catastrophically that the feds are needed to “guarantee … a republican form of government.”

Even more specifically, the Insurrection Act of 1807 has long been available as a congressionally authorized tool for presidents to restore order when state unrest reaches truly intolerable levels. Presidents from Jefferson to Eisenhower to Bush 41 have invoked it.