Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court rejected President Donald Trump’s emergency request to allow him to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago to deal with rising crime. The 6-3 decision left in force a lower court ruling that has blocked the troop deployment since October 9 on the basis that “the government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois.”

• The court’s most conservative justices dissented from the ruling. Justice Samuel Alito wrote, “The court fails to explain why the president’s inherent constitutional authority to protect federal officers and property is not sufficient to justify the use of National Guard members in the relevant area for precisely that purpose.”
• Justice Clarence Thomas joined Alito’s dissent, while Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a separate dissent that also argued for granting the Trump administration’s request, but on a different legal basis: that the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago had forfeited the argument about the meaning of “regular forces” by failing to present that issue in the lower courts.

These conservative justices raise good points. The president is the chief executive officer of the federal government. So while he does not have constitutional authority to overrule state and local officials to use “the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” as the majority characterized it, he does have constitutional authority to protect federal property.

• On December 17, the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump could deploy National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., due to the city’s unique federal status. Chicago does not have such federal status, but it does contain several federal properties. So if the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago fail to take measures to protect these properties from criminals, President Trump has the authority to protect them.

The fact that the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago are not taking action to reduce crime has encouraged mass lawlessness. And the fact that they sued President Trump for trying to do their job for them shows that this lawlessness is not the result of carelessness. Chicago Democrats are willing to actively fight to prevent the law from being enforced. They don’t want to police the city of Chicago, and they don’t want anyone else to either.

• President John Adams told the Massachusetts Militia in 1788, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

As long as the people of Chicago keep electing lawless leaders, the city will remain lawless. The federal government has only limited authority to protect federal properties, and the Supreme Court is currently denying it even that authority.