President Donald Trump’s plan to send federal troops and National Guard units into several major American cities has ignited a fierce national debate. Trump has framed the deployments as a matter of necessity. In speeches and social media posts, he has portrayed Democratic-run cities like Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia as symbols of decline. He argues that these are places where liberal governance has failed and crime has surged. But critics view the military deployments as a political stunt, an effort to manufacture a crisis and project the image of a wartime president battling chaos within his own borders. n18oc_world n18oc_crux