Chicago mayor calls DOGE 'an act of war,' compares second Trump term to Third Reich

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Chicago Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson laid into the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and President Donald Trump's economic policies during his weekly press availability, drawing parallels between the Third Reich in Germany and Trump's second term in the White House.

Johnson said the Windy City is the most "pro-worker" city in the U.S., but faces "hostility" from Washington.

"The fact that the President of the United States of America is cutting off food supply and medicine to working people and families across this country - that is an act of war," Johnson fumed.

"And we're going to need leaders who are prepared and willing to stand up for working people, because this battle has reached our front doors all across America where people are struggling and suffering. And in order to alleviate that pain and discomfort, it's going to require bold leadership. We can't tippy toe."

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Addressing a reporter who asked how to work with the Trump administration for the benefit of the city from such an adversarial position, Johnson cited Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker's State of the State address in February, which referenced how it "took the Nazi's one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a Constitutional Republic."

"Governor Pritzker… offered up a warning," Johnson said. "You have a president that is cutting off medicine and food, a president that is working to erase culture. I mean, you can't make this up. He's doing it in plain sight."

Pritzker had compared the rise of former German Chancellor Adolf Hitler to Trump's popularity, in that the eventual national-socialist dictator was seen as the answer to "inflation and [the public] looking for someone to blame." 

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In his remarks, Johnson noted how people have wondered how Germany could have descended into Nazism and anti-Semitism so quickly and dreadfully, saying that Trump is "carry[ing] out the playbook that was done against an entire people-group."

"He's doing it right here in this country, against working people, erasing Black folks from museums and the history and the culture. So, when you ask how we balance that, you have to fight it and resist it with everything that's in you," he said.

"The President of the United States of America is capturing the hopes and aspirations of working people and holding us hostage as he works to implement and annihilate democracy," Johnson said, returning to comment on lawsuits the city has joined to halt DOGE-type efforts.

Chicago is party to a lawsuit filed by several municipalities, including Baltimore; Santa Clara, California; and the county that encompasses Houston, which seeks to stop DOGE's slashing of the federal bureaucracy.

"Congress created these federal agencies. It funded them. But the president is trying to fire all these people and gut these agencies that Congress created," Chicago Deputy Corporation Counsel Steve Kane told the city's ABC affiliate, calling the situation unconstitutional.

DOGE-driven cuts affecting the Windy City have included the Energy Department's 2025 Small Business Expo, originally pinned for June.

The cut came as part of billions in spending reductions for cabinet agencies, and other closures of clean-energy-centric operations have affected the city, according to reports.

Earlier in May, Chicago hired Ernst & Young, an international consulting firm, to find ways to bridge its own budget gaps, according to Bloomberg. The Trump administration has threatened to withhold funding from sanctuary cities, a definition within which Chicago falls.

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While city-specific data was not immediately available for DOGE-related cuts, the Trump administration saw the Department of Health & Human Services cut its regional office in Illinois, which served 28,000 low-income families.

Efforts to consolidate federal real estate and office space affected America's third-largest city as well. The Federal Transit Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission, Labor Relations Authority and Civil Corps of Engineers all saw their offices there shut down. A federally-owned art collection in Chicago also sees some of its staffing on the chopping block, according to Axios.

Fox News' Remy Numa and Patrick McGovern contributed to this report.