President Donald Trump speaks as Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel, left, and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi look on during a press conference in the Oval Office of the White House on Oct. 15, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel claimed victory Wednesday in what they said was a months-long surge of law enforcement in major cities and pledged to continue sending federal authorities to address violent crime in U.S. cities.

The FBI arrested more than 8,700 suspects during an initiative Trump dubbed “Operation Summer Heat” from June to September. 

The exact parameters of the operation, which had not been previously made public, were unclear as Trump and Patel said during an Oval Office appearance that they would continue to prioritize aggressive enforcement, particularly in major cities led by Democrats.

“Honestly, we haven’t really gotten going yet,” Trump said. “If we didn’t have to fight all these radical left governors, we could’ve had Chicago taken care of, as an example.”

Since June, Trump has pursued a controversial and legally questionable effort to send National Guard troops to U.S. cities — Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; Memphis and Portland, Oregon — to deal with protestors and general street crime while consistently hinting that more deployments would be coming. 

He said Wednesday that residents of Chicago largely approved of aggressive policing tactics and were “walking around with MAGA hats.” Trump won just 28% of the vote in Chicago’s Cook County in the 2024 election, compared to 70% for Democrat Kamala Harris.

“They’re not interested in National Guard, Army, Navy — bring them in, bring in the Marines,” he said. “They just want the crime to stop.” 

The crime push took Trump by surprise, he said, noting it was not a primary part of his campaign.

“I did get elected for crime, but I didn’t get elected for what we’re doing,” he said. “This is many, many steps above.”

He also identified White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as an architect and chief communicator of the administration’s law enforcement policies, though he made a passing implication that Miller’s far-right views were too extreme for much of the country.

“I love watching him on television,” he said. “I’d love to have him come up and explain his true feelings. Maybe not his truest feelings — that might be going a little bit too far. But Stephen, thank you for doing an incredible job. The people of this country love you.”

Political crime and Caribbean boats

Trump again broached the possibility of defying two typical norms of presidential power: calling for prosecutions to retaliate against officials who’d investigated him and defending the extrajudicial strikes on alleged drug runners in the Caribbean Sea that he said could expand to land.

Standing between Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump said U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, who, as a U.S. House Democrat before joining the Senate, led congressional investigations into Trump, and former prosecutor Jack Smith, who led criminal prosecutions, should be investigated.

“Deranged Jack Smith is, in my opinion, a criminal,” Trump said. 

“I hope they’re looking at Shifty Schiff,” he added, referring to the California Democrat. “I hope they’re looking at political crime, because there’s never been as much political crime against a political opponent as what I had to go through.”

Trump said the military’s attacks on vessels suspected to be bringing drugs to the United States had effectively halted drug importation from Venezuela. The operation could expand to land targets, he said.

“We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” he said.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker speaks at a news conference in Chicago on Oct. 6, 2025. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson stands at right. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

A federal judge will hear arguments Thursday in Illinois over Chicago’s lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to the state before deciding whether to block the move, the judge wrote in an order.

In a one-paragraph order, U.S. District Judge April M. Perry, whom Democratic President Joe Biden appointed to the bench, set an 11:59 p.m. Wednesday deadline for the Trump administration to respond in writing to the suit filed by the Democratic leaders of Illinois and its largest city, which they filed Monday morning. 

Perry did not immediately grant the restraining order Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson sought to block the deployment at the outset of the case.

Perry said she expected the federal government’s response to include evidence about when National Guard troops would arrive in Illinois, where in the state they would go and “the scope of the troops’ activities” once there. She set oral arguments for 11 a.m. Central Time on Thursday.

The suit seeks to stop Trump’s federalization of Illinois National Guard and mobilization of Texas National Guard troops to the state. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has also agreed to send Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, at Trump’s request.

Pritzker and Johnson’s complaint calls the federalization of state National Guard troops “illegal, dangerous, and unconstitutional.” The Democrats added that the move was “patently pretextual and baseless,” meaning it could not satisfy the legal requirements for a president to wrest from a governor control of a state’s National Guard force.

Pritzker, appearing at a Tuesday event in Minneapolis with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said the federal government has been noncommunicative about the plan for the National Guard troops, but had received “reports” that troops have arrived at a federal facility in the state.

“We don’t know exactly where this is going to end,” he said. “What we know is that it is striking fear in the hearts of everybody in Chicago.”

A federal judge in another case blocked the deployment to Portland after city and Oregon leaders sued to stop it. The federal government appealed that order, and a panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments Thursday, according to a scheduling notice posted Tuesday.

Insurrection Act cited by Trump

Trump has said the extraordinary use of troops, which raises serious legal and constitutional questions about the line between military forces and domestic law enforcement, is necessary to control crime in some Democrat-led cities, including Chicago and Portland. 

State and local leaders in those jurisdictions, as well as Los Angeles, have said military personnel are not needed to supplement local police. Pritzker called the proposed deployment to Chicago an “invasion.”

Trump indicated Monday he may seek to further escalate the push for military involvement domestically, saying he would have no qualms about invoking the Insurrection Act, which expands presidential power to use the military for law enforcement.

“We have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” he told reporters. “If I had to enact it, I’d do that. If people were getting killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I’d do that.”

Democratic U.S. Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin of Illinois, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden of Oregon and Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff from California — the three states where Trump has sent troops over the governors’ objections — called on Trump to withdraw the troops in a Tuesday statement that warned of the escalating conflict between blue states and the federal government.

“Donald Trump is stretching the limits of Presidential authority far past their breaking point and moving us closer to authoritarianism with each dangerous and unacceptable escalation of his campaign to force federal troops into American communities against the wishes of sovereign states in the Union he is supposed to represent,” the senators wrote.

Dems in Congress question raid

Trump’s use of National Guard troops is in part a response to protests in Democratic cities over this administration’s crackdown on immigration enforcement.

Trump has surged immigration enforcement officers to certain cities. Those agents have pursued sometimes aggressive enforcement, including a Sept. 30 raid on a Chicago apartment building that has been criticized for using military-style tactics.

A group of eight U.S. House Democrats wrote Monday to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calling for an investigation into that raid.

The members were Homeland Security Committee ranking member Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin of Maryland, J. Luis Correa of California, Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Shri Thanedar of Michigan, Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania and Delia Ramirez and Jesús “Chuy” Garcia of Illinois.

“We write to express our outrage over the immigration raid,” they said. “Treating a U.S. city like a war zone is intolerable.”

J. Patrick Coolican contributed to this report.