President Donald Trump announced Friday that his next domestic military deployment will hit a red-state city — Memphis, Tennessee.
“We’re going to Memphis,” Trump said on “Fox and Friends,” suggesting he had the approval of the city’s mayor, Paul Young and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.
“Memphis is deeply troubled, and the mayor is happy, he’s a Democrat mayor, the mayor’s happy, and the governor of Tennessee,” Trump said. “The governor’s happy. Deeply troubled.”
“We’re gonna fix that just like we did Washington. By the way, we’ll bring in the military too if we need it, but National Guard, but Memphis is, look, it’s a great, music city.”
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Young addressed rumors of deployments Thursday to local media outlets. Memphis is considered one of the U.S.’s most dangerous cities in terms of violent crime rates, according to FBI statistics.
“What we need most are financial resources for intervention and prevention, additional patrol officers, and case support to strengthen MPD’s investigations,” Young wrote in a statement. “Memphis is already making measurable progress in bringing down crime, and we support initiatives that help accelerate the pace of the work.”
Lee said that the FBI and the Tennessee National Guard will work in partnership with various state law enforcement agencies to help Memphis police tackle local crime in the city, in a statement provided to NOTUS.
The National Guard would join “an ongoing FBI mission in Memphis with a dedicated task force of federal, state, and local law enforcement that has already arrested hundreds of the most violent offenders,” Lee said in the statement.
The governor was scheduled to speak with Trump Friday afternoon “to work out details of the mission,” per the statement.
“For months, I have been in constant communication with the Trump Administration to develop a multi-phased, strategic plan to combat crime in Memphis,” Lee said. “I’m grateful for the President’s unwavering support and commitment to providing every resource necessary to serve Memphians.”
The governor mobilized the state’s National Guard to help assist Trump’s immigration enforcement operations in Tennessee last month.
Two weeks ago, Lee said he had “no plans” to send troops to Memphis to help fight crime. Just last week, though, he told reporters that “nothing is off the table,” according to the Nashville Tennessean.
“Everything is a possibility,” Lee said last week. “We are aggressively pursuing the right strategy to lower the crime rate in Memphis. It’s a great city, but it has a real challenge that needs to be addressed.”
Some local leaders have already spoken out against the deployments. In an interview with WREG of Memphis, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris asked the governor to “please reconsider” the plans, since he thought there’s “no reason to bring them.”
“To have individuals with military fatigues, semi-automatic weapons and armored vehicles patrolling our streets is way too far, anti-democratic and anti-American,” he said, after saying he wouldn’t mind increased federal partnerships with local and state police.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn praised Trump for the move in a statement, saying she would work with the president “to hold left-wing officials accountable for the consequences of soft-on-crime agendas.”
“Today, President Trump answered my call to do whatever it takes to Make Memphis Safe Again, and I applaud his decision to send the National Guard to Memphis,” Blackburn said in the statement.
The president has repeatedly threatened blue-state cities with troops and influxes of federal agents for over a month. Trump also floated sending troops to New Orleans, another red-state city that had the second-highest homicide rate in 2024, just last week.
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