Chicago’s mayor spent his weekend railing about fascism and the Constitution, but when it came time to answer the simplest public-safety question under the national spotlight—would more police make the city safer?—Brandon Johnson froze.
Joe Scarborough asked five times. Johnson danced around housing, mental health, and youth programs until he finally muttered something about police being “fully supported.” Translation: with Trump threatening to bring federal muscle, even the most progressive mayor knows he can’t sneer at cops forever.
The timing isn’t a coincidence. President Trump’s deployment of Guard units in D.C. cut homicides to zero for nearly two weeks. Then he said Chicago could be next. That sent Johnson and Gov. J.B. Pritzker into DEFCON 1, staging a press conference to shout “do not come to Chicago” and promising court battles. All the fire and brimstone about constitutional violations lasted right up until Johnson was forced to explain why cops don’t matter—at which point his resolve collapsed. Pressure works.
Yes, Chicago has seen progress. CPD’s CompStat shows homicides down 32% year-to-date versus 2024. Murders fell below 600 last year for the first time since 2019. That’s real and worth celebrating. But as any South or West Side resident will tell you, it’s not the whole story.
Carjackings more than tripled between 2019 and 2021. Robberies and thefts surged through the pandemic and remain elevated above pre-2019 norms. The Council on Criminal Justice shows carjackings easing in 2025, but they’re still far above where they were just a few years ago. Progress? Yes. Solved? Not even close.
That’s why the National Guard talk panics City Hall. If the data is as rosy as Johnson claims, scrutiny shouldn’t bother him. But when downtown retailers are still boarding windows, when residents still fear sitting in their cars, and when clearance rates for shootings languish, the slogans ring hollow. Trump’s threat exposed the gap between press releases and lived reality. And under pressure, Johnson suddenly discovered the language of police support.
The constitutional fight will grind on—Illinois’ attorney general is already sharpening lawsuits—but it won’t answer the moral question: why did “fully supported” policing only become part of the mayor’s vocabulary when the White House showed up with a stopwatch?
Competence looks like this: targeted surges in hot spots, license-plate readers and bait cars in theft corridors, warrant teams chasing the worst offenders, detectives staffed to lift clearance rates. And yes, pair it with co-responder mental health units and youth jobs. It’s not either/or. It never was—except in the mayor’s talking points.
Chicago families don’t need culture-war theatrics; they need leaders who back safety all the time, not just when CNN cameras force them into it. Trump’s threat didn’t just rattle the political class. It revealed the truth: under scrutiny, the tough talk about “housing not handcuffs” folds into mumbling about “fully supporting” the police. That’s not a strategy. That’s spin under duress.
If it takes presidential pressure to make city halls prioritize safety over slogans, then crank up the heat.
