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Senate Republicans are behind President Donald Trump’s desire to send the National Guard to Democrat-led cities and states with high crime rates, and some are even open to sending troops to blue cities in their own states to clean up the streets.
“Blue cities like Memphis need all the help they can get to combat violent crime,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told Fox News Digital in a statement.
Trump’s desire to replicate his crime-fighting efforts in Washington, D.C., where he federalized the local police and sent in the National Guard to patrol the streets and Metro stations, led him to signal plans to send troops to Chicago and Baltimore, two blue cities in blue states with high rates of crime.
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The likely move has riled up Democratic senators from Illinois and Maryland, who accused the president of playing “political theater” in D.C. and making an attempt to “play dictator” with the U.S. military.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., charged that Trump’s National Guard threat was “nothing more than a power grab to distract from his disastrous policies,” while Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told Fox News Digital in a statement, “Trump’s threats to invade our cities are not the answer – and are sad attempts to distract from his failures to actually put forward solutions to these and other issues facing our communities, like the rising cost of living.”
“Instead of politicizing our great City of Baltimore, which Trump knows nothing about, he should just button it up while federal, state, and local law enforcement do their important work,” he said.
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Republicans, however, have largely backed Trump’s decision to bring in the National Guard to the district and have considered extending his federalization of the Metropolitan Police Department — or allowing him to bypass Congress altogether to maintain his grip on the local police — after the 30-day window expires.
Some welcome the idea of troops coming to crack down on crime in their cities with open arms.
Memphis, for example, is ruby-red Tennessee’s largest city and has one of the highest violent crime rates in the country. Similar to Baltimore and Chicago, it is led by a Democratic mayor. Blackburn told Fox News Digital that she’d welcome Trump to send troops to the city.
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“I support the Trump administration’s efforts to restore law and order in lawless cities across America, and I’ll continue to work with the president, Attorney General [Pam] Bondi, and FBI Director [Kash] Patel to do whatever it takes to make cities like Memphis safe again,” she said.
And in St. Louis, another major city that consistently cracks the top 10 of violent and overall crime data pools, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., recently worked with Patel to secure funding for a surge of FBI agents dubbed as “one of the largest per capita infusions of full-time agents and intel personnel in the nation.”
Schmitt signaled an openness to troops coming to St. Louis and charged that “for too long, local leaders in blue cities have been more focused on the rights of criminals than victims, and it’s allowed crime to run rampant.”
“American families want and deserve to feel safe in their communities, and I’m glad to see President Trump doing what it takes to enforce the rule of law and increase public safety,” Schmitt said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “His efforts in D.C. have been hugely successful, and I have no doubt other cities could benefit from increased law enforcement presence.”
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