WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to allow the deployment of National Guard troops in the Chicago area, escalating President Donald Trump's conflict with Democratic governors over using the military on U.S. soil.
The emergency appeal to the high court came after a judge prevented, for at least two weeks, the deployment of Guard members from Illinois and Texas to assist immigration enforcement. A federal appeals court refused to put the judge’s order on hold.
The conservative-dominated court has handed Trump repeated victories in emergency appeals since he took office in January, after lower courts have ruled against him and often over the objection of the three liberal justices. The court has allowed Trump to ban transgender people from the military, claw back billions of dollars of congressionally approved federal spending, move aggressively against immigrants and fire the Senate-confirmed leaders of independent federal agencies,
In the dispute over the Guard, U.S. District Judge April Perry said she found no substantial evidence that a “danger of rebellion” is brewing in Illinois during Trump’s immigration crackdown.
But Solicitor General D. John Sauer, Trump's top Supreme Court lawyer, urged the justices to step in immediately. Perry's order, Sauer wrote, “impinges on the President’s authority and needlessly endangers federal personnel and property.”
Eleven people were arrested at a Friday protest outside a U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement facility in the west Chicago suburb of Broadview. Law enforcement had urged demonstrators to stay in designated “protest zones.”
In recent weeks, the Broadview ICE facility has been the site of tense protests, where federal agents have previously used tear gas and other chemical agents on protesters and journalists.
A federal judge in Oregon also has temporarily blocked the deployment of National Guard troops there.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, Democratic elected officials sued Friday to try to stop the ongoing Guard deployment in Memphis. They said Republican Gov. Bill Lee, with Trump's support, violated the state constitution, which says the Guard can be called up during “rebellion or invasion” but only with the blessing of state lawmakers.
The deployment "sets a dangerous precedent for military intrusion into local communities,” Memphis City Council member JB Smiley said.
Since their arrival on Oct. 10, troops have been patrolling areas of downtown Memphis, including near the iconic Pyramid, wearing fatigues and protective vests that say “military police,” with guns in holsters. Officials have said Guard members have no arrest power.
“We’re in a unique spot in this city to have the resources available to us to remove the crime element in Memphis,” Lee said recently.
For years, Memphis has dealt with high violent crime, including assaults, carjackings and homicides. While this year’s statistics show improvement, many people acknowledge that violence remains a problem.
In California, a judge in September said deployment in the Los Angeles area was illegal. By that point, just 300 of the thousands of troops sent there remained and the judge did not order them to leave.
Associated Press writers Christine Fernando in Chicago, Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, and Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.
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)
MILAN (AP) — Milan’s storied Teatro alla Scala celebrates its gala season premiere Sunday with a Russian opera for the second time since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But this year, instead of drawing protests for showcasing the invader’s culture, a flash mob will demonstrate for peace.
La Scala’s music director Riccardo Chailly will conduct Dmitry Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” for the gala season opener that draws luminaries from culture, business and politics for one of the most anticipated events of the European cultural calendar.
Shostakovich's 1934 opera highlights the condition of women in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and was blacklisted just days after the communist leader saw a performance in 1936, the threshold year of his campaign of political repression known as the Great Purge.
The Italian liberal party +Europa announced a demonstration outside the theater as dignitaries arrive “to draw attention to the defense of liberty and European democracy, threatened today by Putin’s Russia, and to support the Ukrainian people.’’
The party underlined that Shostakovich's opera exposes the abuse of power and the role of personal resistance.
Due to security concerns, authorities moved the protest from the square facing La Scala, to another behind City Hall.
Chailly began working with Russian stage director Vasily Barkhatov on the title about two years ago, following the 2022 gala season premiere of the Russian opera “Boris Godunov,” which was attended by Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, both of whom separated Russia’s politicians from its culture.
But outside the Godunov premiere, Ukrainians protested against highlighting Russian culture during a war rooted in the denial of a unique Ukrainian culture. The Ukrainian community did not announce any separate protests this year.
Chailly called the staging of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth" at La Scala for just the fourth time “a must.’’
“It is an opera that has long suffered, and needs to make up for lost time,’’ Chailly told a news conference last month.
La Scala’s new general manager, Fortunato Ortombina, defended the choices made by his predecessor to stage both Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth” and Modest Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov " at the theater best known for its Italian repertoire, but which has in recent years showcased other traditions.
‘‘Music is fundamentally superior to any ideological conflict,’’ Ortombina said on the sidelines of the press conference. “Shostakovich, and Russian music more broadly, have an authority over the Russian people that exceeds Putin's own.’’
American soprano Sara Jakubiak is making her La Scala debut in the title role of Katerina, whose struggle against existential repression leads her to commit murder, landing her in a Siberian prison where she dies. It’s the second time Jakubiak has sung the role, after performances in Barcelona last year, and she said Shostakovich's Katerina is full of challenges.
“That I’m a murderess, that I’m singing 47 high B flats in one night, you know, all these things,’’ Jakubiak said while sitting in the makeup chair ahead of the Dec. 4 preview performance to an audience of young people. “You go, ‘Oh my gosh, how will I do this?’ But you manage, with the right kind of work, the right team of people. Yes, we’re just going to go for the ride.”
Speaking to journalists recently, Chailly joked that he was “squeezing” Jakubiak like an orange. Jakubiak said she found common ground with the conductor known for his studious approach to the original score and composer’s intent.
“Whenever I prepare a role, it’s always the text and the music and the text and the rhythms,'' she said. “First, I do this process with, you know, a cup of coffee at my piano and then we add the other layers and then the notes. So I guess we’re actually somewhat similar in that regard.''
Jakubiak, best known for Strauss and Wagner, has a major debut coming in July when she sings her first Isolde in concert with Anthony Pappano and the London Symphony.
Barkhatov, who has a flourishing international career, called the choice of “Lady Macbeth,” “very brave and exciting.”
Barkhatov's stage direction sets the opera in a cosmopolitan Russian city in the 1950s, the end of Stalin’s regime, rather than a 19th-century rural village as written for the 1930s premier.
For Barkhatov, Stalin’s regime defines the background of the story and the mentality of the characters for a story he sees as a personal tragedy and not a political tale. Most of the action unfolds inside a restaurant appointed in period Art Deco detail, with a rotating balustrade creating a kitchen, a basement and an office where interrogations take place.
Despite the tragic arc, Barkhatov described the story as “a weird … breakthrough to happiness and freedom.’’
“Sadly, the statistics show that a lot of people die on their way to happiness and freedom,’’ he added.
Stage director Vasily Barkhatov sits during an interview with The Associated Press prior to the dressed rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
A wig receives final touches ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
A wig receives final touches ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
External view of Teatro all Scala ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
Soprano Sara Jakubiak has her makeup done ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
The stage is prepared ahead of the dressed rehearsal of the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, by Dmitri Shostakovich, at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
