SEN TAMMY DUCKWORTH: Why this veteran strongly opposes Trump’s National Guard deployment to cities

One of the proudest moments of my life was the first time I laced up my shoes, put on my uniform, and raised my right hand to take the Oath to the Constitution as a member of the Illinois Army National Guard.

I cherished every day I woke up and called myself an American soldier. Because I love our military so much, I refuse to allow a coward who has evaded the draft five times to abuse it for his own gain and at the expense of our country.

At Quantico last week, Chief Donald Trump — the same man who insists the Pentagon be renamed the “War Department” — has told top military leaders that he wants to use American cities as “training grounds” for our troops.

The Texas National Guard deploys 200 soldiers to Illinois to participate in a federal protection mission amid protests

Let that sink in: The Commander-in-Chief wants members of… War Department To “train” against the very citizens they are sworn to protect. Last month, he announced that Chicago “will discover why it is called the War Department.” And this week, he’s making good on his threats: Trump has now forced hundreds of National Guardsmen into Chicago.

Members of the Texas National Guard gather in Elwood, Illinois, at the Army Reserve Training Center in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, on October 7, 2025.
(Brian Casella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

For months, Trump has fabricated claims of chaos and crime on American streets to justify false claims that there is a “need” to deploy troops in our cities against the wishes of local officials. The first to Los Angelesthen Washington, D.C. – and he does not stop there, but also tries to deploy forces in Portland. But over the weekend, a Trump-appointed federal judge blocked his efforts to deploy troops there — twice — because, in the words of his hand-picked judge, his claims about why they were needed were “irrelevant to the facts.”

Another way to say it is that he is lying.

Just last week chicagoWe have seen Trump agents detain innocent Americans, deprive citizens of their right to legal representation, restrain children, arrest elected officials, ransack residential buildings and injure journalists. In recent weeks, they shot two people, killing one of them — a father of two young children — and made questionable and unsubstantiated claims about why they felt the need to use deadly force.

It’s clear what Trump is doing. He targets and punishes cities that dare to stand up to him – those who wish to call the president what he really is: a wannabe emperor with no clothes, no guts, and certainly no moral compass.

And while he currently targets blue cities with his lies, if these deployments are not stopped, there will be nothing to stop him — or any future president — from doing so to anyone, anywhere, for any made-up reason.

Pritzker is suing Trump to prevent the National Guard from operating in Illinois

Let’s be clear: Ordering our troops to intimidate the very Americans they sacrifice every day to protect them does nothing to make our country safer. Monitoring Americans in their communities is not the National Guard’s job. They cannot make arrests, and are not adequately trained to carry out police duties in urban environments. These deployments are simply another unwarranted, unwanted, and unfair move by Trump straight out of the authoritarianism 101 textbook, further endangering civil rights while distracting our troops from carrying out their primary mission of keeping our families safe from actual adversaries who wish us harm.

President Donald Trump speaks to the media after exiting Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on October 5, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Tasos Katopoudis/Getty Images)

We know that Trump’s actions are not about “law and order.” If this is a 34 time convicted felon In reality Given his concern for law and order, he will not blatantly and gladly refuse to coordinate with state and local officials. He will not only take our troops from their training missions to carry out his personal orders, forcing our heroes to stand on the side of the street picking up trash instead of using their time to prepare to protect our nation if that happens. Future conflict. He will not literally defund the police by freezing and cutting federal dollars that help hire, train, and equip law enforcement.

But he did. All of these things, rather than supporting and expanding proven violence and crime prevention strategies that prevent retaliatory escalation.

Pritzker says Trump is ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard to Illinois, Oregon and other locations

Trump is wasting millions of taxpayer dollars terrorizing law-abiding citizens and legal visa holders who are simply exercising their rights. First Amendment rights. To do so, it diverts federal resources and agents away from operations that investigate drug cartels and arms traffickers, from missions that identify and disrupt terrorist plots, and from procedures that protect our families from cyberattacks.

Uniformed military personnel, with a Texas National Guard patch, are seen at the U.S. Army Reserve Center on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025, in Elwood, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. (AFP/Laura Bargfield)

I walked past some National Guardsmen who were mobilized on their way to work today. I felt them. Because when they raised their right hands and swore, they did so to help a draft evader avoid not only wars, but also his own personal scandals.

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They registered to defend Americans’ right to free speech, not to intimidate Americans from the act of speaking out. They were willing to die to defend this country, not to defend one man’s ego.

Los Angeles did not ask for this. Washington, DCHe didn’t ask for this. Portland did not ask for this. Chicago did not ask for this. Our soldiers do not deserve this. And because I respect our military so deeply that I refuse to remain silent because it is being disdained and abused by a man who has not had enough courage to serve himself. I cannot and will not allow him to continue pointing the finger at our troops, taking them from their families and their missions, while eroding the hard-earned trust they have earned from the American public over generations.

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These days, I may no longer be wearing my military uniform, but it still hangs proudly in my gear Senate office. Now, I spend a lot of my time sitting under the magnificent, beautiful Capitol Dome and not under the main rotors of my two Black Hawks. But my primary mission remains the same as it was when I was in the National Guard: to keep America strong and safe as it should be.

If only Donald Trump cared to do the same.

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