# Trump says he is pulling National Guard troops from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he was withdrawing National Guard troops from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, framing the move as a tactical pause rather than a reversal of his broader immigration and crime agenda.
The announcement followed a string of legal defeats that had already forced the administration to scale back or halt deployments in some cities. According to the report, the Supreme Court had blocked the Chicago deployment last week, while a federal judge in California had ordered an end to the Los Angeles deployment and a return of control to the state. In Portland, a judge ruled the deployment unlawful and ordered it permanently blocked.
Trump has used National Guard deployments as one of the defining tools of his second-term approach to urban policing and border enforcement. He sent troops into several Democratic-run cities, arguing that they were needed to suppress crime and protect federal interests. Local officials and state leaders countered that the deployments amounted to militarized overreach and that ordinary law enforcement could handle the public-order issues cited by the White House.
The withdrawal announcement did not signal an abandonment of the policy. Trump said the cities could again see troops if crime rises, suggesting that future deployments remain an option. The article also notes that some troops had already been pulled from the three cities in recent weeks as court rulings accumulated.
The practical impact of the decision was clearest in Los Angeles, where only about 100 Guard troops remained deployed after most had already been demobilized. In Chicago, roughly 300 Guard troops were still activated as of last week but were not engaged in operations. The story shows an administration under pressure to defend the legality of a policy that had become politically central to Trump’s messaging.
The announcement also drew criticism from Democratic leaders. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said Trump had been forced to stand down after courts and local officials resisted what he called an attempt to militarize American cities. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom said the administration had stopped opposing the court ruling in Los Angeles.
Trump’s move does not resolve the underlying dispute over the use of federal troops in domestic cities. It only pauses one chapter of a fight that has now become both a legal and political test of how far the White House can go in using the Guard for law-and-order messaging.
