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In today's issue:

▪ Chicago braces for ICE enforcement

▪ Congress looks for shutdown workaround

▪ Trump lauds RFK Jr. amid CDC, vax uproar

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Is President Trump about to send troops and federal officers to Chicago?

The president this weekend signaled the long-reported Chicago federal force was coming, alarming local officials on Saturday with a social media post that imposed Trump’s face on Robert Duvall’s in an “Apocalypse Now”-like scene with Chicago’s skyline in the background.

Yet Trump on Sunday said a decision on what’s next for the crime crackdown is still under discussion.

“We’re going to make a decision about where we’re going to go in the next day or two,” he said while insisting he’s not the one talking about Chicago — it is his political opponents.

White House immigration czar Tom Homan said Sunday that Chicago and other “sanctuary cities” should “absolutely” expect federal immigration enforcement actions this week. Interviewed on CNN, he said Illinois officials have been aware of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Chicago since early this year.

It's easy to see why Chicago and Illinois officials — and Democrats across the country — would see Trump’s social media post as a threat to the Windy City.

“Chicago’s about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” Trump’s post said.

And this a day after Trump officially said the Defense Department will now be known as the War Department to better reflect its mission.

But his remarks Sunday to reporters were a bit less threatening, as he cast any action in Chicago as less a military offensive and more a plan to “clean up our cities … so they don’t kill five people every weekend. That’s not war. That’s common sense.”

▪ CNN: Here’s how Chicago is bracing as possible National Guard deployment looms.

Trump’s controversial federalization of domestic law enforcement, including ICE arrests, involves operations in Boston, a National Guard deployment in the nation's capital since Aug. 11 and Trump’s renewed criticism of Portland, Ore.

The president’s vows to send armed federal troops and law enforcers to roam big-city streets, applauded by his base but criticized by many Americans, involves locations led by Democrats in blue states in which governors are seen as potential 2028 presidential candidates.

A CBS News poll released Sunday found people who live in cities generally oppose sending troops to other cities. Opinions are also tied to partisanship: 89 percent of Republicans said they think deploying the National Guard to cities reduces crime while 86 percent of Democrats say it doesn't.

A majority of Americans say they are opposed to Trump’s crime crackdown and believe he’s motivated by politics more than crime prevention, according to the poll. To those in favor, largely in Trump’s base, it's not a case of red-versus-blue cities. They'd support the National Guard being sent to either Democratic- or Republican-led locations and say they’d welcome the Guard in their own local areas.

The president has been accused of trying to shift public attention away from a weakening U.S. economy and to divert some in the GOP from the Jeffrey Epstein saga to try to paint the minority party as soft on public safety, policing, border security and justice — issues on which Trump led during his 2024 presidential campaign.

Democratic officials and party operatives are split about the political utility of attacking the accuracy of Trump’s urban crime statistics versus challenging him to work with Democratic mayors and governors to thwart violent crime — putting White House muscle behind policies they think are effective, such as community policing, adding resources to hire additional police and reinforcing violence intervention programs focused on crimes perpetrated by gangs and teens. Democrats also favor tougher gun laws, which Trump opposes.

Rahm Emanuel — a former Chicago mayor and former top White House official under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who has himself been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2028 — suggests Trump may not gain the political traction he seeks using the National Guard.

“Every city is facing a challenge on [police] recruitment; help there,” Emanuel rhetorically advised Trump during a “Hacks on Tap” podcast before Labor Day with fellow Democratic strategist and Chicagoan David Axelrod. “Invest in license plate readers so you can deal with carjacking. Invest in after-school programs for kids,” Emanuel added, noting National Guard deployments are not a sustainable, long-term urban policy.

Trump “is making himself the focal point of the disorder, and people do not like that dissonance and disorder,” he added.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) this weekend juggled criticism amid public confusion about her stated intention to cooperate with Trump’s federalization of law enforcement in the nation’s capital. “What I care about is protecting this city, our home rule and preserving our autonomy at every step,” Bowser said.

Washington, unlike Chicago and other major metro areas, is a federal district, not a state. It has 700,000 residents.

It’s unclear if the president’s 30-day emergency control of D.C.’s police department will expire on Wednesday as scheduled.

National Guard and Marine troops sent by Trump into Los Angeles in June rotated out a month later amid legal challenges filed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). The president has been jousting with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), who assailed Trump on Saturday as a “wannabe dictator.”

Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D) told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that Trump "essentially just declared war on a major city in his own nation," referring to his Saturday post and remarks to reporters about Chicago. But she conceded she had no “indications” the administration was poised to send troops into the nation's third-largest city.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), speaking during a Saturday parade near Chicago to celebrate Mexican Independence Day, told constituents Trump’s social media post referencing “war” in Chicago was “disgusting” and “an embarrassment.”

Other flashpoints in Trump's ramped-up ICE enforcement continue to play out elsewhere in the country.

In Georgia, 475 people, most of whom were South Korean nationals detained by ICE last week at a Hyundai factory, will be repatriated to South Korea after the administration and the South Korean government reached an agreement over the weekend. Trump on social media on Sunday said international companies need to hire and train American workers at factories they build in the U.S. The raid was a result of a monthlong investigation into illegal hiring at the site, where Hyundai has teamed up with LG Energy Solution to manufacture batteries to power electric vehicles.

Smart Take with Blake Burman

While the renaming of the Department of Defense to the Department of War received a lot of attention and headlines last week, President Trump over the weekend continued to keep foreign policy in the forefront. When asked if he was considering attacking cartels inside of Venezuela, the commander in chief responded by saying, "Well, you're going to find out."

Trump is known for sticking to a public line that all options are on the table, and that answer certainly mirrors the sentiment. However, the comments also come just days after the military took out a Tren de Aragua-operated boat from Venezuela carrying drugs. The U.S. is also staging fighter jets in Puerto Rico.

Much of the foreign policy issues before the president so far in his second term have been halfway around the world (Iran, Russia/Ukraine and the Middle East). Now, there's a new........

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