President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he would abandon, for now, efforts to deploy the National Guard in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon.
The decision comes after the Supreme Court ruled last week that Mr Trump could not deploy troops in the Chicago area over the objections of Illinois officials.
The president’s announcement made no mention of the ruling, but he suggested his administration would not hesitate to deploy troops in the future.
“We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again – Only a question of time,” he wrote on Truth Social.
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The president’s announcement also did not acknowledge that in both Portland and Chicago the troops had a limited, if nonexistent, presence in part because of legal challenges to their deployment.
The president first deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June in response to protests over his administration’s crackdown on immigration.
He said the deployment, over the objections of governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, was necessary to restore law and order in the city. He then deployed troops in Washington, DC, because he said the city was overrun by crime.
Mr Trump’s efforts to deploy the troops prompted numerous legal challenges with state leaders accusing the administration of exceeding its authority and infringing on traditional state powers over policing.
The state-based troops are typically deployed at the request of governors to respond to emergencies such as natural disasters.
Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago said that the Trump administration’s attempt to deploy guard troops was “both unnecessary and unconstitutional”.
“We achieved the fewest homicides in Chicago in decades through strong collaboration between our police officers, violence intervention groups and community organisations,” Mr Johnson said.
Chicago is poised to end the year with steep reductions across all categories of violent crime, including a 35 per cent drop in shootings and a 30 per cent decrease in murders.
In California, the Trump administration had recently begun backing away from attempts to maintain control of California National Guard troops after last week’s Supreme Court ruling.
In a brief filed Tuesday night with the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, the justice department withdrew its request to stay a lower court order that the California National Guard troops must be returned to the control of Mr Newsom.
“This admission by Trump and his occult Cabinet members means this illegal intimidation tactic will finally come to an end,” Mr Newsom’s press office said in a statement.
The National Guard is still deployed in Washington, New Orleans, and Memphis, Tennessee.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
