Trump's demands get more unhinged amid his war on Democrats

President Donald Trump on Wednesday called for Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to be jailed—ratcheting up his retribution campaign against his perceived enemies.

"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!" Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

Trump made the comment as National Guard troops from Texas are preparing to deploy onto the streets of Chicago to guard Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from protesters demonstrating against the agents’ violent behavior toward city residents.

Pritzker quickly responded to Trump’s call for his arrest, saying he “will not back down.”

“What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?” Pritzker said in a post on Bluesky. “His masked agents already are grabbing people off the street. Separating children from their parents. Creating fear. Taking people for ‘how they look.’ Making people feel they need to carry citizenship papers. Invading our state with military troops. Sending in war helicopters in the middle of the night. Arresting elected officials asking questions. We must all stand up and speak out.”

Given that Trump has gotten yes-men in his corrupt administration to indict at least one of his enemies—former FBI Director James Comey—Democrats say everyone should take Trump’s demand to imprison Pritzker and Johnson seriously.

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"Trump said this stuff all the time in the first term and people blew it off because [the Department of Justice] ignored him. But with the Comey indictment and other investigations into his enemies list this term, [we] have to take these threats deadly seriously," Matthew Miller, who served in the Department of Justice under former President Barack Obama, wrote in a post on X on Wednesday, the day Comey is expected in federal court. "He means it, and so does the bureaucracy.”

Meanwhile, all the evidence on the ground shows that it's Pritzker and Johnson, not Trump and ICE, who are trying to protect Illinois residents from danger. Trump's ICE goons have been violent toward peaceful protesters and other residents of the city.

Multiple instances of ICE's horrific behavior have been caught on video.

For example, ICE was caught on camera assaulting Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, who was peacefully protesting at a nearby ICE facility.

One video shows federal agents throwing tear gas in a busy neighborhood, near a grocery store and an elementary school. And another recent video shows masked federal officers shooting a praying priest in the head with a pepper ball.

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Johnson and Pritzker have both condemned the Trump administration's violence toward Illinois residents, and even filed a lawsuit to try to stop Trump from inflaming tensions more by sending in the National Guard.

"ICE's abusive tactics have no place in our city, and our elected officials will continue to stand with residents against this attempt to stoke fear and intimidation," Johnson wrote in a post on X earlier this month.

Federal agents have been so violent that a group of journalists and others filed suit on Tuesday against the Trump administration, saying that federal officers' violent behavior in Chicago is an attempt to silence them through fear, against their First Amendment rights.

From the complaint:

There is no legitimate law enforcement purpose for these actions. The protesters do not take actions that threaten the federal officers. The federal officers’ brutality is not a response to the violation of any previously given order to disperse or to desist. Rather, the brutality described in the prior paragraphs is deployed solely to silence dissent, to intimidate, and to instill fear.
Meanwhile, Trump and the bloodthirsty dopes in his administration have claimed that ICE agents are the actual victims.

"Enough is enough. The Department ofJustice will stand strong when federal law enforcement officers are attacked or threatened for doing their sworn duty on behalf of the United States government," Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote in a Sept. 29 memo in which she said she authorized federal officials to "suppress all unlawful rioting and arrest every person suspected of threatening or assaulting a federal law enforcement officer or interfering with federal law enforcement operations."

Yet even a grand jury—which almost never fails to return indictments when prosecutors seek them—refused to indict two protesters Noem accused of assaulting ICE officers.

It’s the latest grand jury to refuse to indict people whom the Trump administration has accused of assaulting federal law enforcement officers.

As Trump acts more and more lawless, we have to hope the legal system continues to hold against his assaults on Americans’ basic freedoms.

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