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Trump Ignores Red State Murder Capitals to Attack ‘Most Dangerous’ Chicago

The president has spent days targeting the Democratic state for his next crime crack down.

President Donald Trump has accused Chicago of being the “murder capital of the world” despite data showing cities in several Republican states fare much worse.

As the White House considers extending its D.C. crime crackdown to other states, Trump on Tuesday escalated his attacks on the Windy City, citing unsourced figures suggesting that at least 54 people were shot in Chicago over the Labor Day long weekend.

“The last two weekends were similar,” he insisted. “Chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the world, by far… I will solve the crime problem fast, just like I did in D.C.”

In a subsequent all-caps post, he later added: “CHICAGO IS THE CRIME CAPITAL OF THE WORLD.”

However, recent research shows that while crime in Chicago remains a problem, other cities in the US have higher murder rates, including six cities in the Republican-led states of Missouri, Louisiana, Ohio, Nevada and Tennessee.

The figures, based on available crime data and compiled by civil rights policy group Freedom for All Americans, found that Chicago, the most populous city in Illinois, has the tenth-highest per capita murder rate in the U.S, with 24 murders per 100,000 residents.

The city with the highest murder rate is St Louis, Missouri (69.4 per 100,000); followed by Baltimore, Maryland (51.1); New Orleans, Louisiana (40.6); Detroit, Michigan (39.7); and Cleveland, Ohio (33.7).

Other international cities, such as Tijuana in Mexico and Port Au Prince in Haiti also have higher crime rates than Chicago.

The president has nonetheless ramped up his attacks against Illinois’ Democratic Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson as he threatens to send in National Guards to clean up the city.

However Pritzker and local Chicago officials have rejected this, with the Illinois governor describing the move as “un-American” and tantamount to an “invasion.”

“National Guard troops, any kind of troops on the streets of an American city don’t belong, unless there is an insurrection, unless there is truly an emergency. There is not,” he told CBS News’ Face the Nation.

Johnson, meanwhile, signed an executive order Saturday afternoon aimed at holding federal law enforcement in the city to municipal rules on policing.

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Under the initiative, the Chicago Police Department would remain a city agency and federal law enforcement would be urged to abide by city laws on policing. Johnson threatened legal action if they didn’t.

Trump was also dealt a blow on Tuesday when a federal judge found that the administration’s use of military force in Los Angeles earlier this year violated federal law.

In his 52-page opinion, Judge Charles Breyer also noted the president has indicated plans to deploy the National Guard for “federal service in other cities across the country—including Oakland and San Francisco, here in the Northern District of California—thus creating a national police force with the President as its chief."

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Farrah TomazinPolitical Correspondent

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