Chicago’s radical and deeply unpopular Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson is urging his residents to “rise up” and take to the streets to oppose the legal enforcement of federal immigration laws even as the nation braces for a series of protests in big cities across the nation this weekend.
With the threat of mass riots during the so-called “No Kings” protests, Johnson is dangerously egging the protests on in his cash-strapped city.
On Wednesday, when asked about the coming protests, Johnson praised the “No Kings” plans and said he hoped his constituents would join the demonstrations.
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“This is a necessary fight for all of us to be able to push back. Whether we use the courts or whether we continue to protest and raise our voices, dissent matters in this moment,” Johnson said, according to the Chicago Sun Times.
“It’s a war on our culture. It’s a war on our democracy. It’s a war on our humanity. I am counting on all of Chicago to resist in this moment because, whatever particular vulnerable group is being targeted today, another group will be next. … None of us are immune from this disease,” he railed.
Still, he added that anyone who acts “outside of their constitutional protection” will “be held responsible and accountable.”
Johnson added that no one is really protesting about immigration. Instead, they are struggling to take control of America.
“What we have seen in Los Angeles is really not about immigration,” he wildly exclaimed. “This is not about policy. It’s about power. We have a tyrant in the White House who has a complete disregard for our Constitution and the dismissing of our democracy,” the mayor said. “This is a terrible moment in our nation’s history. … He continues to show how low he will stoop. … It is sick and demented. I didn’t know you could look worse than George Wallace.”
Of course, George Wallace was a Democrat, a fact Johnson conveniently overlooked.
A protester leaps off a burning Waymo taxi near the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, Sunday, June 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)
Johnson’s chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, joined the press conference and insisted that ICE was going to put “mini tanks” in the streets to oppose Chicago’s citizenry.
“There will be tactical teams. There will be mini-tanks. There will be other tools that they use in which they plan to do raids, as we saw in Los Angeles. That information is actually pretty public. It has been out there and, in fact, on official channels,” Pacione-Zayas insisted.
The mayor’s rant is just the latest example of his historically flawed screeds against Donald Trump.
Earlier in the week he claimed that the Trump administration is “what our country would look like had the Confederacy won.” He delivered this line despite that in a “Confederate victory,” being a black man, he would not be allowed to even be a mayor.
That wasn’t the first time he compared the Trump administration to the Confederacy. He pulled the same stunt in January, saying, “That White House is being ran in one of the most raggedy forms of government that I’ve ever seen. If anybody is questioning whether or not what our country would look like had the Confederacy won, there should be no question now. They want us to be afraid. Do not be afraid, Chicago.”
Meanwhile, the last approval ratings poll showed that Johnson is one of the least liked mayors in the country. In February, polls placed his favorability rating at a disastrous 6.6 percent favorable with a whopping 79.9 percent outright disapproving of him.
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