Duckworth Joins Slotkin, Colleagues in Push to Protect Against Abuse of National Guard Domestic Deployments
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Combat Veteran and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) joined U.S. Senators Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) in introducing legislation that would place limits on the Trump Administration’s ability to deploy the National Guard into American communities, while also injecting $1 billion in new resources to fight crime in American communities. The No Troops in Our Streets Act gives Congress the ability to stop a military deployment in the United States with a simple majority of votes, at any time.
“Our brave military men and women signed up to defend the Constitution and our rights, not to be used as political props or silence dissent,” said Duckworth. “These un-American, unjustified deployments of troops into our cities do nothing to fight crime—they only serve to intimidate Americans in their own neighborhoods. I’m introducing this legislation with my colleagues to stop Trump’s gross misuse of our military and devote more resources toward efforts that would actually help our local law enforcement—which Trump has actually defunded to the tune of $800 million.”
In recent months, Donald Trump has deployed U.S. military troops into the streets of American cities with no coordination with or approval from state and local officials. He has also threatened to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to authorize raids, arrests and detentions by U.S. military forces in domestic communities. The No Troops in Our Streets Act would apply to the deployments to Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles. If the President invokes the Insurrection Act in the future, it will also apply to those deployments. It does not restrict state-level deployments ordered by governors, responses to natural disasters or when the military is supporting law enforcement functions like securing the border.
Full text of the legislation is available on Senator Duckworth’s website.
Duckworth has forcefully pushed back against Donald Trump’s abuse of our nation’s servicemembers and his attempts to blur the lines between law enforcement and the military—from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., and Chicago, Portland and Memphis. Last month, Duckworth successfully pushed for and secured a U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing to investigate Trump’s deployment of troops into American cities, which followed Duckworth and U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) leading Illinois Democrats in calling on Trump rescind his order to deploy the National Guard to Chicago.
In September, Duckworth helped introduce legislation to enhance oversight and accountability of the President’s domestic deployment of the National Guard. She also joined her colleagues in filing an amicus brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the lawsuit brought against Trump after he deployed thousands of members of the California National Guard and U.S. Marine Corps to Los Angeles without legal justification or approval from state or local officials. Additionally, Duckworth joined Durbin in sending a letter to Attorney General Bondi, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Noem, Department of Defense Secretary Hegseth and FBI Director Patel requesting immediate information regarding President Trump’s imminent actions to send the military and increase federal law enforcement presence in Chicago.
In the wake of Trump’s deployment of Marines and National Guard to California, Duckworth introduced the Military in Law Enforcement Accountability Act to reform gray areas in laws that Trump is exploiting to deploy members of our military to police their fellow Americans, diverting taxpayer dollars and attention away from the military’s core mission and undermining the Administration’s own stated goal to focus our military on warfighting.
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