The TOI correspondent from Washington: In echoes of the 1861 Civil War, alarming talk of Texas invading Illinois erupted across America as a complement of 400 troops from the National Guard flew out of Fort Bliss in El Paso on a US military transport plane on Monday evening for deployment in Chicago against the wishes of the state’s Democratic leaders and local officials. Texas governor Greg Abbott posted a photo of troops boarding a C-17 Globemaster III military aircraft with the caption “Ever ready. Deploying now,” as partisans on both sides of the political and ideological divide accused each other of inciting a civil war, invoking the 1861 clash when an estimated 750,000 people died to forge what was supposed to be a more perfect union.Instead, political pundits fear old wounds and warts are resurfacing. Republicans, who fought to abolish slavery in 1861 under Abraham Lincoln (who was from Illinois) and Southern Democrats, who defended slavery, have traded places amid fervid talk of a reverse invasion and a replay of 1861.Also read: What is the ‘insurrection act’? Donald Trump’s new favourite term – All you need to know about“We are getting awfully close to 1861,” Randy Fine, a Republican Congressman from Florida said in a post on X, while Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson wrote: “The right wing in this country wants a rematch of the Civil War. The president has declared war on the people of Chicago and people across America.”The so-called “invasion” followed a federal judge in Illinois declining to immediately block the National Guard deployment while scheduling a full hearing for Thursday, in contrast to another judge in Oregon who temporarily halted a deployment in Portland. Separately, president Trump warned he would use the Insurrection Act if states and cities balked at the deployment. The 1807 federal law grants the president the power to deploy the US military and/or federalise the National Guard to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion.Civil liberties activists are horrified by the dramatic escalation in both rhetoric and enforcement over what is widely seen as endemic but localised crime and law and order issue in a few blocks of almost every US city that is usually the remit of local authorities. Trump has characterised this as an “invasion” by illegal aliens that requires enforcement by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who in turn need protection of troops. He has also invoked vivid images of cities like San Francisco, Portland, and Chicago being “war-ravaged” and going up in flames even though crime and law-and-order issues are typically restricted to a few city blocks. Democrats say he is exaggerating the problem to demonise immigrants and minorities — their vote banks — and eventually disenfranchise them to take over American cities that typically tend to vote blue. “Illinois is not a war zone, and our people are not props,” Illinois Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi said on Tuesday as troops headed to Chicago, calling the deployment over Democrat Governor Pritzker’s objections “a shocking abuse of power that turns troops against our own citizens.” Democrat partisans also wondered what would have happened if president Obama, a sometime Chicagoan, had sent the Illinois National Guard into Texas. In the 1861 Civil War, Lincoln’s Union troops did indeed attack Confederate forces in Texas. While the tension and teargassing have so far been restricted to a few city blocks in Portland and Chicago, corrosive rhetoric and polemical pointscoring is now infecting normally civil political discourse. After Texas governor Greg Abbott posted an image of urban disorder in California on X, California governor Gavin Newsom clapped back by citing CDC data showing Texas’s homicide rate 39% higher than California’s and urging Abbott to address his state’s crime issues.Activists on the ground from both sides are less restrained. In Portland, emboldened MAGA “patriots” bearing the American flag pushed their way into protest, triggering a lot of shoving and jostling – a powderkeg situation in one of the most heavily armed countries in the world.
