He tried to fire a Fed board member but she said no and the Governor of Illinois is not impressed with his plan to invade Chicago – but on the other hand, he’s put another big picture of himself on a government building
Donald Trump is facing stiffer resistance to his plans to invade the streets of Democrat-run cities.
The latest broadside comes from JB Pritzker, the Governor of Chicago, who branded him a “wannabe dictator”, and urged Chicagoans to peacefully protest against Trump’s uniformed bully squads.
And in his speech – more of which is quoted below – he made a point that more people should be making.
Trump putting police on the streets isn’t about crime. Crime, as we’ve reported at length, was already being brought under control in all the places he’s threatening.
No, it’s about intimidation.
It’s about making parents cross checkpoints with masked, uniformed officers, while they’re taking their kids to school.
It’s about having uniformed squads near polling stations on election day, which might make people thing twice about turning up to vote – even if they’re in the country legally.
And it’s about reminding people that if they stand up to the regime, there are consequences.
Meanwhile, in Trump World:
- He claims people are saying “we want a dictator”
- He tried to fire a member of the Fed Board but she said no
- He claims people in Europe call him “President of Europe”
- More Pyongyang-style pictures of him have shown up on buildings in DC
- He wants to rename the Department of Defence to something scarier
- He quietly ‘fired’ a member of his staff with a murky past
…and more.
Here’s everything that went on in the last 24 hours that you need to know about. Buckle up.
1. ‘People want a dictator’
In recent days Trump has repeatedly declared how unbothered he is by people calling him a dictator – something more and more people are doing as he continues to act more like a dictator.
Maybe it keeps coming up because he’s bothered by it.
Referring to his plan to invade Chicago yesterday, Trump said: “People say ‘we don’t need it, he’s a dictator.”
Then he added, from behind the Resolute Desk: “A lot of people are saying ‘we’d like a dictator.’
“I don’t want a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person.”
2. Chicago says no
In a truly barnstorming speech yesterday, the Governor of Illinois told Donald Trump exactly what he thought of the “wannabe dictator’s” plan to send troops onto the streets of Chicago.
JB Pritzker said: “If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.
“Over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning, for quite a while now, to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country’s founders warned against, and it’s the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances.”
He went on to deliver a very clear message to Trump.
“Mr. President, do not come to Chicago,” he said, standing in a park about a mile from the Chicago skyscraper that features Trump’s name in large lettering.
The governor said he would fight the “petty whims of an arrogant little man” who “wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents and score political points.”
He went on: “This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals. _
“This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarise our cities and end elections.”
And to the Media he said: “This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see, where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favour of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president’s actions.”
Here’s his speech in full:
3. He says he’s fired a member of the Fed board. She has other ideas
Last night Trump ordered the removal of Lisa Cook from the board of the Federal Reserve, in a move that sent chills up the spines of a lot of economists.
The Federal Reserve is like America’s Bank of England – it’s a body largely independent of the Executive Branch, which sets monetary policy and interest rates.
Economists like that it’s independent, because its job is to prevent things like banking collapses and financial crises – and it’s a pretty god idea to separate those kind of things from politics and keep them technical wherever possible.
While the President nominates people for the 12-member board, he doesn’t have the power to remove them before the end of their term. Trump is therefore trying to do it anyway.
If he gets away with it, he’d be one step closer to what he really wants – which is to fire chair Jerome Powell, with whom he is feuding over his reluctance to cut rates.
Cook was appointed by Joe Biden in 2022 and is the first African American woman to serve in the role.
And she has no intention of leaving her role.
In a statement she said Trump had “purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so”.
In the US, dismissing someone “for cause” means firing them for a good reason – like gross misconduct.
She added: “I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022.”
4. I am the President of Europe
Trump claimed in the Oval that European leaders call him the “President of Europe”, which they absolutely do not.
“They call me the president of Europe,” he said. “Which is an honour. I like Europe. And I like those people. They’re good people. They’re great leaders.”
5. Welcome to Washington, twinned with Pyongyang
In case the troops on the streets and the tank parade through Washington DC weren’t giving off enough of a failed-state with strongman leader vibe for you, another massive banner has been draped over a government building with Trump’s face on it.
First it was the Department of Agriculture, now the Department of Labor has been adorned with Trump’s gurning visage.
6. The Department of War
Meanwhile, Trump has decided that the Department of Defence sounds too namby pamby for him, and he thinks it should be called the Department of War.
In both of his appearances in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump mused about renaming the Department of Defence to its original name, the Department of War.
The name was changed in 1949.
Trump said the previous name “had a stronger sound” and there might be an update on the potential name change “over the next couple weeks.”
Asked whether he could do that, given it would require an act of Congress, Trump said: “We’re just gonna do it. I’m sure Congress will go along. If we need that, I’m not sure that we need that.”
He does need that.
7. Personnel chief with murky past gets quietly fired
Sergio Gor, who until yesterday was the White House’s personnel chief has been given a new job as Ambassador to India.
It’s the latest in a long list of people being given a “soft landing” by Trump, to prevent him losing face by having to fire them.
In this case, there has been a long running claim in the New York Post that Gor’s real last name is Gorokhovsky, that he was born not in Malta, but in Soviet Uzbekistan.
There’s also been a bit of a kerfuffle over the vetting form White House staff all have to fill in.
Gor, whose job was to vet hundreds of White House staff, reportedly failed to do so for months, but finally submitted his recently.
And now he’s been given a plum new job and whisked out of the West Wing.
8. Administration forbidden from deporting Garcia, again
Since being brought back to the US after being “accidentally” disappeared to a torture camp in El Salvador, Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been preparing to defend himself in court over the Administration’s claims that he is a gang member and human trafficker.
The evidence for the government’s claims have already been ridiculed by judges as flimsy and circumstantial.
Meanwhile, Garcia, who has never been convicted of a crime, is still being pursued for deportation to random countries.
First the Justice Department pressured him to plead guilty and be deported to Costa Rica. He said no.
Then he was ordered to present himself to immigration officials on Monday, after which he was to be deported to Uganda.
Last night, a judge told them to quit it.
US District Judge Paula Xinis noted that the government is temporarily prohibited from deporting Garcia under overlapping court orders currently in effect.
She asked Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign if the government knows it is “absolutely forbidden at this juncture” to remove him from the US under the current legal landscape.
“Your honor, yes, we certainly understand that,” Ensign said.
Garcia was taken to a Virginia detention center after he surrendered on Monday, said the plaintiff’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, adding that they are concerned he would be moved to another facility later.
Xinis said she will order that Garcia is not moved from the Virginia facility for now. She said she believed she must extend a temporary restraining order barring Garcia’s removal from the US.
9. Bruisewatch
Trump, at least for yesterday, has stopped putting concealer on the bruise on his hand.
It looks pretty painful. He should get that looked at.
10. Hours after Trump signed a law banning flag burning, a man burned an American flag outside the White House
Trump yesterday signed an executive order requiring the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute people for burning the American flag, an activity that the US Supreme Court has ruled is legitimate political expression protected by the US Constitution.
The order he signed in the Oval Office acknowledged the court’s 5-4 ruling in a case from Texas in 1989, but said there is still room to prosecute flag burning if it “is likely to incite imminent lawless action” or amounts to “fighting words.”
“You burn a flag, you get one year in jail. You don’t get 10 years, you don’t get one month,” Trump said. “You get one year in jail, and it goes on your record, and you will see flag burning stopping immediately.”
Later the same day, this happened: