Chicago Shootings
Chicago weekend shootings leave seven dead, dozens injured, prompting Trump's call for intervention.
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A wave of shootings swept Chicago over the Juneteenth holiday weekend, leaving seven people dead and 38 others wounded across 14 separate incidents from Friday evening through Sunday morning, MyNorthwest reported. The bloodshed — a 12% rise in victims compared to the same weekend in 2025 — pushed President Donald Trump to renew his demand for military intervention in the nation's third-largest city.
Chicago police released the grim figures on Sunday morning. By that afternoon, only two arrests had been made in connection with all 14 shootings, The Associated Press reported. Mayor Brandon Johnson said the city is "grieving with the families of those lost" and called illegal guns a root cause of the violence.
Shootings Began at a Juneteenth Block Party
The violence started Friday night, June 19 — Juneteenth, the federal holiday marking the end of slavery. Gunmen opened fire on a crowd at a block party in the North Lawndale neighborhood at around 9:45 PM, striking six people and killing one, the Chicago Tribune reported. The holiday weekend typically sees a 25–30% spike in shooting incidents in Chicago compared to regular weekends, according to The Marshall Project.
The killing continued into Saturday. A drive-by shooting in Englewood at 2:15 AM left two dead and four wounded. Later that night, a triple shooting in the Austin neighborhood killed a 17-year-old boy. Chicago police deployed 1,200 additional officers on Saturday afternoon to try to stop retaliatory attacks, WRAL reported.
Trump Threatens Military Deployment, Cites "War Zone"
On Sunday morning, Trump posted on social media and issued a White House press release calling Chicago "a war zone." He said he was "prepared to send in the National Guard and, if necessary, the military" if Governor J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Johnson refused to act. The statement renewed a push Trump has made repeatedly throughout his political career, WTOP reported.
A CNN legal analyst warned that the legal bar is high. Using the Insurrection Act — the law Trump would need — requires a total breakdown of civil order that a state cannot fix on its own. Seven deaths, while tragic, do not legally meet that threshold, the analyst said. If Trump moved troops in without the governor's request, it could trigger a showdown over the 10th Amendment and the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits military involvement in domestic law enforcement, the Wall Street Journal has noted.
Pritzker Stays Silent as 2028 Ambitions Complicate His Response
Governor Pritzker's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment, The Star reported. His staff confirmed only that he was in a "heightened state of monitoring." Pritzker has previously called federal intervention "political grandstanding" and insisted that "public safety is a local and state priority, not a theatre for federal overreach," according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
The silence carries political risk. Pritzker is a widely mentioned potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate. Analysts at MSNBC argue Trump is deliberately using Chicago's violence to paint Pritzker as weak on crime before any campaign begins. At the same time, engaging Trump directly risks amplifying a fight that benefits the president politically.
City Spent $150 Million on Violence Programs — With Little to Show
Chicago has poured $150 million into "Violence Interruption" programs in the 2025–2026 budget year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Those figures are now under intense scrutiny from the City Council after another deadly holiday weekend. CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling pushed back on the idea that police had failed. "This is not a policing failure," he said at a Sunday briefing. "It is a societal failure where illegal firearms are more accessible than jobs."
A June 2026 Reuters/Ipsos poll found 54% of Americans support using the National Guard to help with city violence, but only 22% back sending active-duty military. That gap matters — it suggests public appetite for a show of force stops well short of the full military deployment Trump is proposing. Chicago's $15 billion tourism industry and its corporate investment climate are also at stake if the federal standoff drags on, the city's Chamber of Commerce has warned, according to The Star.
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