Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has approved President Donald Trump’s request to send up to 400 members of the Texas National Guard to other states, including Illinois.
“I fully authorized the President to call up 400 members of the Texas National Guard to ensure safety for federal officials,” Abbott wrote in a post on X. “You can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it.”
The post was in response to one by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who said no federal officials called him to discuss or coordinate the move.
“I call on Governor Abbott to immediately withdraw any support for this decision and refuse to coordinate,” Pritzker said. “There is no reason a President should send military troops into a sovereign state without their knowledge, consent, or cooperation.”
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Hours later, the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago filed a joint lawsuit in a U.S. district court asking a judge to halt Trump’s order.
“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the lawsuit states.
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The suit also asks the court to stop Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s Oct. 4 order to federalize up to 300 members of the Illinois National Guard, as well as “any subsequent effort to achieve the same end with the National Guard of the United States or other U.S. military, immediately and permanently.”
Texas Military Department officials said Monday morning that no Texas National Guard members had received orders to deploy. They referred questions about the deployments to the Governor’s Office.
The plan to deploy Texas National Guard troops came late Sunday just as a federal judge moved to temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying National Guard units to Oregon.
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The state of Oregon mentioned the plan in its court filing late Sunday to block the deployment of National Guard troops to the state.
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The filing included a memo written by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that ordered up to 400 Texas National Guard personnel activated for deployment to Oregon, Illinois and possibly elsewhere.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, who was appointed by Trump in his first term, seemed incredulous that the president moved to send National Guard troops to Oregon from neighboring California and then from Texas on Sunday, just hours after she had ruled the first time.
“How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention to the temporary restraining order I issued yesterday?” she questioned the federal government’s attorney, cutting him off.
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“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she said later. “Why is this appropriate?”
The White House did not immediately comment on the judge’s decision.
This summer, Trump deployed National Guard troops in D.C., saying the move has helped reduce violent crime in the nation’s capital and bolstered public safety. Trump had signaled he would do the same in other cities such as Chicago and New Orleans, and has since begun to follow through.
The Associated Press, Chicago Tribune and staff writer Karen Brooks Harper contributed to this report.
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Senior politics writer Karen Brooks Harper contributed to this report.
The story is developing and will be updated.
[SRC] https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas/2025/10/06/abbott-authorizes-texas-national-guard-trump-request/
