Illinois and Chicago Sue to Block National Guard Deployment — Take Swipe at Trump Admin Over ‘Department of War’

Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP

The state of Illinois and the city of Chicago filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday against the Trump administration objecting to the deployment of federal troops, and included an admonition that the renaming of the Department of Defense was not legally valid.

The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against President Donald Trump and several other federal agencies and officials including the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, the Department of Defense, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Chicago and other blue cities around the U.S. have been sparring with the Trump administration over sending ICE agents and National Guard troops into cities to crack down on immigration, crime, and protests, over the objections of local and state elected officials.

At a press conference Monday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker lambasted the Trump administration for what he called an “unconstitutional invasion” of Chicago and other cities, accusing the president of “using our service members as political props and pawns in his illegal effort to militarize our nation’s cities.” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) has been similarly outspoken about the deployment of federal agents and the military in the city.

The complaint voiced strenuous objections to the president’s “long-declared ‘War’ on Chicago and Illinois” as “unlawful and dangerous,” asking the court to “immediately and permanently” block the deployment of federal officers, federalization of the Illinois National Guard and the deployment of Texas National Guard troops to Illinois, over the objections of the governor.

“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 complaint argued. “To guard against this, foundational principles of American law limit the president’s authority to involve the military in domestic affairs. Those bedrock principles are in peril.”

The “unprecedented, brute force tactics for civil immigration enforcement” used by the federal agents, including “repeatedly [shooting] chemical munitions at civilians that included “media and legal observers” and “dozens of masked, armed federal
agents…parad[ing] through downtown Chicago in a show of force and control,” are “patently unlawful” and have been done with “no legal or factual justification,” the complaint continued.

Notably, the complaint names as defendants the “Department of Defense” and Hegseth ” in his official capacity as Secretary of the Department of Defense” — not the “Department of War” moniker that Trump and Hegseth have started using.

In September, Trump signed an executive order purporting to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, a controversial name change, both for the multi-billion dollar expense and the massive administrative undertaking redesigning and relabeling seals, uniforms, stationery, logos, signage, insignia, and other graphics throughout the more than 700,000 DOD facilities throughout the U.S. and around the world. Hegseth cheered the move and changed his official social media profiles and agency websites to say “Department of War,” “Secretary of War,” etc.

The problem for the Trump administration is that to officially change the name of this Cabinet department, Congress has to pass legislation.

An amendment to enact a name change was filed for the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act, but there were not enough votes in the GOP majority House Rules committee for that language to be included in the version of the bill that moved forward for debate and votes. The name change faces Republican objections in the Senate as well and is unlikely to pass anytime soon.

The complaint takes issue with the Trump administration’s messaging about the “Department of War,” mentioning a social media post the president shared of “an image of the Chicago skyline in flames, stating ‘Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,’ including a depiction of himself in the image of the fictitious warmonger character Lt. Col. Kilgore from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now, titling the post ‘Chipocalypse Now.'”

In a footnote, the complaint noted Trump’s executive order and rejected the purported name change:

On September 5, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14347, entitled “Restoring the United States Department of War,” purporting to assign “Department of War” as the secondary chosen name for the Department of Defense. However, this Complaint will refer to the agency by its statutory name, the Department of Defense, as only Congress is vested with the authority to change the name of cabinet-level executive agencies, and it made no change.

—