NBC News began Tuesday’s “Nightly News With Tom Llamas” with coverage of flight delays caused by a shortage of air traffic controllers, as did “CBS Evening News” and “World News Tonight.” The big story on CNN yesterday morning was coverage of the government shutdown. Fox News, of course, led with the arrival of a handful of Texas National Guard reservists in Illinois. (Fox put its own spin on the news with a through-the-looking-glass top-line that exclaimed, “Chicago mayor declares war on Trump.”)
The New York Times website looked at how health care politics figured in the shutdown fight; just below was coverage of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s fiery appearance before a Senate committee. MSNBC featured a shutdown-related story about Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. In all, Democrats won the messaging battle for the day. They successfully shifted attention from White House military deployments intended to rile up protests in blue-state cities to amplify its own made-up narrative that the country is becoming a frightening hellscape.
None of this is to say that the troop rollout does not hint at worse to come. Many on the left think that the presence of military personnel and equipment in a few cities is part of a larger plan to suppress Democratic-leaning voters in the 2026 congressional election. High turnout in blue areas would play a big role if the Republicans were to lose control of the House of Representatives. Scaring people away from the polls in these places could help stop a potential Democratic landslide.
All this means that the Trump administration will have to increase pressure on its political opposition. Unfortunately, that may mean sending regular U.S. forces into urban areas. For confirmation, consider what the president told top military leaders at an unprecedented assembly in Quantico, Va., last month ordered by Defense Secretary slash Secretary of War Pete Hegseth: “I told Pete we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard.”
A paltry 500 Trump-ordered troops are expected in the Chicago area; the Chicago Police Department has more than 12,000 officers and about 1,000 civilian employees. Americans should keep in mind that the National Guard deployments so far have been more for theater than effect.