President Donald Trump said he is dropping for now his effort to deploy National Guard troops in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, after court roadblocks held up parts of the plan. In a social media post Wednesday, Trump said the Guard had helped drive down crime in the three cities and that he would “come back” later “in a much different and stronger form.”
The president’s announcement follows a period in which the deployments had become entangled in legal challenges over the scope of federal authority and the role states play in commanding their National Guards. Governors typically control their states’ National Guard forces, and Trump had deployed troops to all three cities despite the wishes of state and local Democratic leaders.
Trump has framed his second-term agenda around a crackdown on crime, immigration and protests, and toyed with invoking the Insurrection Act as a way to keep his plans moving when courts blocked them. The effort also served as a political message tied to his broader “tough-on-crime” approach ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
In the post, Trump said the troops’ presence was responsible for crime declines in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, though the article reported that the forces were never on the streets in Chicago and Portland as lawsuits played out. When the Chicago deployment was challenged in court, a Justice Department lawyer said the Guard’s mission would be to protect federal properties and government agents in the field, not “solving all of crime in Chicago.”
City and state officials disputed Trump’s account of why crime fell. Portland Mayor Keith Wilson’s office said in a statement that the city’s reduction in crime came from local police and public safety programs, while Chicago officials pointed to homicide totals for 2025, saying the city recorded 416 homicides—the fewest since 2014.
Legal action in recent months set the terms for what the federal government could do. The Supreme Court in December refused to allow the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area, a setback the article described as rare, even though it was not a final ruling. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said on X that Trump “lost in court” when Illinois stood up to an attempt to “militarize American cities with the National Guard,” and said Trump was forced to stand down.
In Portland, hundreds of troops were initially deployed from California and Oregon, but a judge barred them from going on the streets. The article said a federal judge permanently blocked the Portland deployment in November after a three-day trial. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said her office had not received “official notification” that remaining federalized Oregon National Guard troops could return home and said the forces “were never lawfully deployed to Portland.”
The effort began in Los Angeles in June after protesters took to the streets following a blitz of immigration arrests. Trump deployed about 4,000 troops and 700 Marines to guard federal buildings and later protect federal agents as they carried out immigration arrests. The number of troops steadily declined until several hundred remained, and the article said they were removed from the streets by Dec. 15 after a lower court ruling ordered that control be returned to Gov. Gavin Newsom, even as an appeals court had paused part of that order. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit later ordered the Trump administration to return control of the National Guard to Newsom.
“About time (Trump) admitted defeat,” Newsom said in a social media post. The article also noted that Trump’s administration had told a federal court it was no longer seeking a pause on the portion of the order dealing with control, and that appeals continued to shape what federal forces could do.
While Trump said he is backing off the effort in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland for now, troops would remain in some other cities, where litigation and policy announcements produced a different outcome. The article said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in December paused a lower court ruling that had called for ending the National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C., where troops have been deployed since August after Trump declared a “crime emergency.” It also said Trump ordered the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis in September as part of a federal task force, and that a Tennessee judge had blocked the use of the Guard while the state’s appeal allowed deployment to continue.
In New Orleans, the article said about 350 National Guard troops deployed by Trump arrived in the city’s French Quarter on Tuesday and are set to stay through Mardi Gras to help with safety, with the state’s Republican governor and the city’s Democratic mayor supporting the deployment.
As part of the broader conflict over federalized forces, the Supreme Court refusal in December for Chicago and the Portland judge’s block in November were both reported as significant legal hurdles for Trump’s plan, and Pritzker, Kotek and Newsom said those rulings required standing down or returning control. Trump’s statement Wednesday does not end the deployments elsewhere, but it signals a pause on the three main targets after courts limited how far federal control could reach.