President Trump Says He’ll Deploy National Guard To Memphis

Nothing says “we live in an authoritarian police state” quite like literally militarizing law enforcement by deploying the National Guard. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he intends to deploy the National Guard to Memphis. 

AP reports President Trump announced the potential deployment during an interview with Fox News. “We’re going to Memphis. I’m just announcing that now, and we’ll straighten that out – National Guard and anybody else we need. And by the way, we’ll bring in the military, too, if we need it,” President Trump said. “The mayor is happy. He’s a Democrat. And the governor of Tennessee, the governor is happy. We’re gonna fix that just like we did Washington, [D.C.],” he added.

Memphis Mayor Paul Young released a statement that toed the line with the Trump administration. “We agree with Governor Lee that effective support for Memphis comes through focused initiatives that deliver results like we have seen with the FBI, state troopers, and other law enforcement partnerships,” Mayor Young’s statement read. Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris is less enthused about the potential deployment, asking Gov. Bill Lee to “please reconsider, if this is on the table,” during an interview with News3.

Tennessee Sen. London Lamar released a statement critical of the potential deployment. “If President Trump truly wanted to help, he’d restore the hundreds of millions in police and crime prevention funding his administration cut in April,” she wrote. “If Tennessee Republicans were serious about safety, they’d fix our broken gun laws and invest in good jobs, safe housing and health care – the real solutions that keep families safe. Instead, Trump and Republicans are using the National Guard as a political pawn. That’s just wrong and Memphis deserves better.”

Earlier this week, the Memphis Police Department released a statement announcing that violent crime has reached a 25-year low in the city, effectively pushing back against President Trump’s characterization of Memphis as “deeply troubled.”

“The Memphis Police Department reports historic crime reductions, with decreases across all major categories in the first eight months of 2025 compared to the same period in previous years,” the statement read. “Overall crime is at a 25-year low, with robbery, burglary, and larceny also reaching 25-year lows. Murder is at a six-year low, aggravated assault at a five-year low, and sexual assault at a twenty-year low.” 

Be it Chicago, Memphis, New Orleans, or Baltimore, the cities that President Trump has threatened to deploy the National Guard have one thing in common: Blackness. All of the aforementioned cities have Black mayors and large Black populations. President Trump has routinely characterized cities with Black mayors as “lawless” despite data showing violent crime trending downward in many of those cities. 

President Trump has already deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., which hasn’t exactly gone swimmingly. D.C. residents have been vocal in their displeasure, and morale has dwindled among the deployed. Violent crime had already been trending downward in D.C. for the last two years, which is evidenced by the fact that the deployed Guardsmen have mostly been assigned to Task Force Beautification. Instead of cracking down on crime, the Guardsmen have been replanting grass, picking up trash, and doing patrols around popular tourist areas. 

While the National Guard deployments are so, so, so dumb, they also carry a disturbing undercurrent. President Trump has effectively deployed the National Guard under a made-up pretense. This is less about “cracking down on crime” and more so a show of force against the American people by a sitting President. This isn’t even just my opinion, as President Trump basically said the quiet part out loud in a Truth Social post. “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” he wrote last week.

For a party that likes to tout “freedom” as one of its core principles, the GOP’s vision for America seems entirely built around subjugation.

SEE ALSO:

Residents In Historically Crime-Ridden Chicago Neighborhood Oppose Trump’s National Guard Threats

Trump Floats Idea Of Deploying National Guard To New Orleans

‘The Guard Is Not Needed’: Chicago Mayor Pushes Back On Trump’s National Guard Threat