National Guard members from Texas are in Illinois in Trump's latest move to send troops to cities

ELWOOD, Ill. (AP) — National Guard members from Texas were getting settled at an Army Reserve center in Illinois on Tuesday, the most visible sign yet of the Trump administration's plan to send troops to the Chicago area despite a lawsuit and vigorous opposition from Democratic elected leaders.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has accused President Donald Trump of using troops as “political props” and “pawns,” said he didn't get a heads-up from Washington.

The Associated Press saw military personnel in uniforms with the Texas National Guard patch at the U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, 55 miles (89 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. Trucks marked Emergency Disaster Services pulled in and out, dropping off portable toilets and other supplies. Trailers were set up in rows. Extra fencing was spread across the perimeter.

The Guard's exact mission was not immediately clear, though the Trump administration has an aggressive immigration enforcement operation in the nation’s third-largest city, and protesters have frequently rallied at an immigration building outside Chicago in Broadview. The president repeatedly has described Chicago in hostile terms, calling it a “hell hole” of crime, although police statistics show significant drops in most crimes, including homicides.

Trump’s bid to deploy the military on U.S. soil over local opposition has triggered a conflict with blue state governors. Illinois and Chicago are urging a federal judge to intervene and stop “Trump’s long-declared ‘War’” on the state. A court hearing on their lawsuit is scheduled for Thursday. In Oregon, a judge over the weekend blocked the Guard’s deployment to Portland, Oregon.

Pritzker had predicted Monday that Illinois National Guard troops would be activated, along with 400 from Texas. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott posted a picture on social media showing troops boarding a plane and declared, “ever ready.”

Pritzker said he “literally canceled everything” Saturday in anticipation of a call from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

"They have not picked up the phone and called me. Not once,” Pritzker said Tuesday at a gathering of business, cultural and political leaders in Minneapolis.

The nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act limits the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws. However, Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered flight restrictions over the Army Reserve Center for security reasons until Dec. 6.

Robert Hartley, 62, who works at Raceway Pizza & More near the site, said he has doubts about putting the Guard on duty.

“I think the president might be overstepping his boundaries," Hartley said.

The sight of armed Border Patrol agents making arrests near famous landmarks has amplified concerns from Chicagoans already uneasy after an immigration crackdown that began last month. Agents have targeted immigrant-heavy and largely Latino areas.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order Monday barring federal immigration agents and others from using city-owned property, such as parking lots, garages and vacant lots, as staging areas for enforcement operations.

In Memphis, Tennessee, meanwhile, police Chief Cerelyn Davis said Guard troops could arrive by Friday. She said a small group of commanders were already in the city, working on planning and logistics.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who supports the effort, has said the troops will be deputized by the U.S. Marshals Service to “play a critical support role” for local law enforcement, though that role hasn’t been precisely defined yet.

Since starting his second term, Trump has sent or talked about sending troops to 10 cities, including Baltimore; Memphis; the District of Columbia; New Orleans; and the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Most violent crime around the U.S. has declined in recent years. In Chicago, homicides were down 31% to 278 through August, police data shows. Portland's homicides from January through June decreased by 51% to 17 this year compared with the same period in 2024.

In Portland, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility has been the site of nightly protests for months, peaking in June when local police declared a riot, with smaller clashes occurring since then. Over the weekend, larger crowds gathered outside the facility, and federal agents fired tear gas.

An appeals court has scheduled arguments for Thursday in the government's bid to overcome a lower court's rulings and deploy the Guard in Portland.

Oregon Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek said she met Tuesday with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and told her there’s “no insurrection” in the state.

“Oregon is united against military policing in our communities,” Kotek said.

Portland Police Chief Bob Day said Tuesday that the department needs to work more closely with federal agents as it looks put more officers at the ICE facility.

“We’ve been trying to coordinate that with the federal response because we have differing policies, differing expectations around procedures," he said.

Noem told Fox News on Tuesday that she told Portland Mayor Keith Wilson that if the city did not boost security at the ICE building, get backup from local law enforcement, and take other safety measures then “we were going to send four-times the amount of federal officers here."

A federal judge in September said the administration “willfully” broke federal law by putting Guard troops in Los Angeles over protests about immigration raids.

Fernando reported from Chicago. Associated Press reporters Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, Sarah Raza in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, and Ed White in Detroit contributed to this story.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, center, stands on the roof of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

Military personnel in uniform, with the Texas National Guard patch on, are seen at the U.S. Army Reserve Center, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, in Elwood, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

Military personnel in uniform, with the Texas National Guard patch on, are seen at the U.S. Army Reserve Center, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, in Elwood, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

Military personnel in uniform, with the Texas National Guard patch on, are seen at the U.S. Army Reserve Center, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, in Elwood, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

Military personnel in uniform, with the Texas National Guard patch on, are seen at the U.S. Army Reserve Center, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, in Elwood, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

Protesters confront federal law enforcement officers outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., Monday, Oct. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

Police and Federal officers stand guard an area by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore. on Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

A protester is doused with milk, water, and saline after tear gas in the Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago, on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025, after protesters learned that U.S. Border Patrol shot a woman Saturday morning on Chicago's Southwest Side. (Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

Federal officers hold down a protester in the Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago, on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025, after protesters learned that U.S. Border Patrol shot a woman Saturday morning on Chicago's Southwest Side. (Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

Federal enforcement officers stand guard near a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., Monday, Oct. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

NEW YORK (AP) — More than a dozen millennials gathered in a brownstone apartment in Brooklyn and placed their phones in a metal colander before two hours of reading, drawing and conversation — anything but staring at screens.

A similar scene played out a few miles away, in an early 20th-century cardboard box factory turned high-end office space. Nearly 20 people in their 30s stared at their cellphones for a few minutes. Then they set them down and looked at their bared palms for a while. Then those of their neighbors.

The exercise was meant to drive home the importance of paying attention to real life, not the gleaming little screens that have taken over our world.

Two decades after Steve Jobs premiered the iPhone, a small but passionate movement — with offshoots in several countries — is rebelling against the omnipresent screen.

“The products have become more insidious and more extractive, exploitative,” said Dan Fox, 38, who hosted the house gathering. Members of the nascent movement “want to start a revolution,” he said.

But can an “attention activism” movement of millennials and Generation Z members break free of the world’s largest companies? The raw numbers say no. But cultural changes start small, and the rebellion is growing against what many call “human fracking.”

Apple and other Big Tech firms say they've taken steps to help users reduce time spent on their devices, including features that track usage and a less enticing gray mode.

Activists say it's not enough.

“They want to take down Big Tech,” says Fox, a stand-up comedian who works in marketing for Brooklyn-based Light Phone, one of several “dumb phones” with only basic functionality.

Unlike most modern products, the company boasts of its phones’ lack of features, like “social media, clickbait news, email, an internet browser, or any other anxiety-inducing infinite feed.”

Fox was inspired to join the movement when he attended a 2015 Tame Impala concert at Radio City Music Hall. It felt as if everyone in the audience was filming the concert on their phones instead of immersing themselves in the music.

“I realized the phones are literally getting in the way of the things I love,” Fox said.

Mobile internet access has so thoroughly permeated modern life that one of the few places in the world where it’s not readily available is wartime Iran, where authorities shut down the internet during mass protests in January.

D. Graham Burnett is a historian of science at Princeton University and one of the authors of “Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement,” making him a pillar of the growing backlash against the corporate harvesting of human attention.

Along with MS NOW host Chris Hayes’ bestselling “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource,” his work is part of a growing body of literature calling for people to move away from screens and pay attention to life.

Burnett says the “attention liberation movement” is about throwing off the yoke of time-sucking apps. People “need to rewild their attention. Their attention is the fullness of their relationship to the world.”

The people in Fox's living room started the evening by introducing themselves, as if at a support group.

“I don’t feel good about my relationship with my phone. I feel like an addict,” said Riley Soloner, who teaches theatrical clowning and works as an usher at Carnegie Hall. He arrived with a backpack full of books — the paper kind.

Across the Atlantic Ocean in the Netherlands, people filed into a neo-Gothic cathedral late last month for a meeting of the Offline Club.

“We create our events and gatherings with different themes. One of them is connecting with yourself through creative activities or reading or writing or puzzling,” said co-founder Ilya Kneppelhout. “Really something that makes you slow down and reflect, go inward.”

There are several dozen “attention activism” groups across the United States and Canada, and the movement has also cropped up in Spain, Italy, Croatia, France and England. Burnett said he expects it to spread further.

Members of Oberlin College's Harkness Housing and Dining Co-op decided to run their organization without emails and spreadsheets in January, expanding to a ban on technology in the shared spaces of the 1950s brick building.

“People expressed a feeling of relief about not needing to be checking their emails, or checking their texts or checking the news. That allowed us to spend a lot of time just talking to each other,” said junior Ozzie Frazier, 21.

During the monthlong co-op project, Frazier said, people started checking out CD’s from the library, and enjoying arts and crafts nights, live music and the board game Bananagrams.

“A lot of people felt very connected to each other. Not having the devices gave them some kind of mental space,” Frazier said.

Wilhelm Tupy read “Attensity” after stumbling across it at a Vienna bookstore and visited the School of Radical Attention in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood on a trip last month.

He felt he had found something that united his sporting career as a judo champion — with its need for focused “flow” — and his postretirement work as a business consultant.

“Discipline is not enough nowadays,” he said. “It’s becoming more and more difficult to keep the attention and to keep the focus on goals and whatever you want to achieve and want to do.”

Participants take part in a digital detox evening of the Offline Club in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Tuesday, April 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Guests collect their smartphones at the end of a weekly phone-free gathering at the home of organizer Dan Fox in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)