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When President Trump ordered the National Guard to Chicago last week, Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois became the latest Democrat to bear the brunt of managing an aggressive federal government.
He has concluded it must be combated with a national campaign.
Aside from instructing his attorney general to file a lawsuit to block troops from other states coming to Illinois, Mr. Pritzker has few formal options to resist what he described this week as an “unconstitutional invasion of Illinois by the federal government.”
Instead, he is using his city to issue a call to action for the nation, positioning Chicago as a harbinger of the threat that he believes Mr. Trump poses and himself as a chief antagonist to a president who has already threatened to jail him.
At a time when Democrats are searching for leadership, Mr. Pritzker is trying to seize the moment to demonstrate it — to fuel opposition to Mr. Trump across the nation, and, perhaps, his future presidential ambitions.
“This is exactly the moment for people to stand up. And do I see enough people doing it? No, I don’t,” Mr. Pritzker said at a forum in Minnesota on Tuesday, as national guardsmen from Texas awaited deployment in Chicago. “It shouldn’t be that there are Democrats that are afraid, because you know what? We’re the targets. We need to be strong, we need to fight back.”
Eight months into the second Trump administration, various Democratic playbooks are emerging on how to handle unwanted federal troops and agents who descend on America’s blue cities.
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