AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Trump is doubling down on deploying the National Guard to Chicago. Here he is speaking to the press at the Oval Office on Tuesday.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: There's no place in the world, including - you can go to Afghanistan. You can go to places that you would think of. They don't even come close to this. Chicago is a hellhole right now.
RASCOE: And yesterday, referring to his rebranding of the Defense Department, the president posted on Truth Social, Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of War. He also posted what looked like an image of Chicago's skyline on fire. We're joined now by NPR senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning.
RASCOE: So, you know, President Trump was campaigning on being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. So what's going on here with this focus on a war department?
LIASSON: Trump considers himself a master brander. You know, he paves over the Rose Garden and calls it the Rose Garden Club. He invents biting, denigrating nicknames for his opponents that sometimes hit the mark. Remember Little Marco? And he decided that the department needed a rebranding. So he gave it a secondary title. Officially renaming it would take an act of Congress. So he's come up with this name, the Department of War. It could backfire. As you said, he ran as the guy who was going to keep us out of wars. And it raises the question, does he want to get into a war, or is this just an effort to make the U.S. sound tougher?
And the rebranding does come at a time when he's been accused by his critics of being too deferential when he's confronted with tough adversaries like Russia and China. But now he's talking about instigating a conflict with Democratic-controlled cities like Chicago and possibly federalizing the National Guard there.
RASCOE: OK. So in Illinois, Democratic Governor JB Pritzker - he pushed back on the president's claims, saying in a post on Bluesky that Trump is, quote, a "wannabe dictator" and adding that the president is going to war with Chicago. But the president said he's moving ahead with this plan, right?
LIASSON: Sounds like it. He has talked about sending troops to Democratic-run cities for quite some time. Unlike the District of Columbia, where he did send National Guard troops, the district is a federal district, not a state. It's unclear whether courts are going to allow him to do this in places where governors control their state National Guard troops. He's already had one court ruling against him about sending troops to Los Angeles over the objections of the governor there.
And part of this, as Trump himself has explained, is political. He says the midterm elections will be about crime. He wants them to be about crime. He says the crime issue is good for Republicans, and he doesn't want them to be about the Jeffrey Epstein files or vaccines or the economy.
RASCOE: Well, I mean, but speaking of the economy, the job numbers that came out, they don't look too good. Like, is there a positive spin for President Trump here?
LIASSON: There could be. Polls show that majorities of Americans are very unhappy about the economy. They disapprove of his performance on trade, on the economy. His One Big Beautiful Bill Act is very unpopular. But there could be a positive spin if Trump can get people to focus on the tax cuts in that bill because that's the only part of the bill that people do like.
Now, we might get an idea of what one part of the public thinks about Trump today because he's attending the men's final at the U.S. Open. There have been reports that broadcasters of the match have been told not to cover any potential protests, but everyone has a camera.
RASCOE: In keeping with the rebranding theme, you talked about the problems with the Big Beautiful Bill. Are they trying to rebrand that now? (Laughter) Is it...
LIASSON: Yes, they certainly are. President Trump said a few weeks ago that the original branding, One Big Beautiful Bill, was, quote, "good for getting it approved, but not good for explaining to people what it's about." So now Republicans are trying to call it the Working Families Tax Cut Act.
RASCOE: OK, so things are heating up also with this redistricting fight. Texas is redrawing its map, and California's voters will decide if they'll do the same. What are you watching for there?
LIASSON: Well, Republicans have a clear advantage when it comes to redistricting because they control more trifectas, meaning they control more governors' mansions and state legislatures in the same states. So it's easier for them to pass new maps. It's also easier for them to gerrymander - draw districts that give them a partisan advantage - because Democratic voters are inefficiently clustered in cities and along the coasts. But Democrats are trying to do the same thing. And California voters are going to vote on redistricting in November.
And this brings us back to the top of our conversation - the National Guard being sent to Democratic cities. Some Democrats worry it has more to do with elections than anything else. Here is Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois, talking to MSNBC's Jen Psaki on Friday.
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JB PRITZKER: Honestly, sending National Guard in has nothing to do with immigration, either. It - what it has to do with is he's trying to set the stage for interference in the elections in 2026 and in 2028.
LIASSON: And that's what Democrats worry about.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Mara Liasson. Thank you, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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