President Donald Trump unleashed an extraordinary late-night attack after a progressive think tank questioned whether his deployment of National Guard troops to American cities had actually reduced violent crime.
But Trump did not stop at challenging the report’s conclusions.
In an overnight Truth Social barrage, the president threatened to sue the Center for American Progress—and suggested he may also pursue some of the major corporations, charitable foundations and foreign organizations that have contributed to it.
“Liars, at this level, must be held accountable!” Trump declared.
The confrontation began with an analysis associated with Chandler Hall, the Center for American Progress’ associate director for public safety. Hall argued that National Guard deployments authorized under Trump had cost taxpayers nearly $1.7 billion without producing a measurable reduction in violent crime.
“What we find is that across multiple cities, multiple data sets, and multiple time windows, we find no effect that violent crime actually did change post the National Guard deployments in any of the cities,” Hall said.
The finding directly challenged one of Trump’s central claims: that the deployment of troops into American cities restored order and caused crime to fall.
Trump responded by attacking Hall personally, mocking the organization as the “Center for American Lack of Progress” and describing the report as a “Radical Left SCAM.”
“How crazy is that,” Trump wrote, claiming Hall’s assertion had been met with “furious dissent.”
The president then expanded his target list far beyond the report’s author.
Trump identified a long list of entities he said had supported the think tank, including George Soros, the Gates Foundation, Google, Apple, Visa, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Walmart, Toyota, T-Mobile and NBCUniversal.
He also named several foreign organizations, including the Embassy of Japan, the Korea Foundation, Taiwan’s representative office and the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates.
The president offered no evidence that those donors directed the report, participated in its production or endorsed its conclusions. Financial support for a policy organization does not ordinarily make every donor legally responsible for each publication or statement produced by its employees.
Nevertheless, Trump said attorneys were preparing a lawsuit.
“This will be met with a lawsuit, which is being drawn now,” he wrote. “I am also strongly considering adding some of the contributors to this Fake Organization.”
The threat immediately raised significant legal and constitutional questions.
Public officials face an exceptionally high threshold when bringing defamation claims over commentary concerning their conduct. Under the Supreme Court’s landmark New York Times v. Sullivan standard, a public figure generally must demonstrate that a false factual statement was published with “actual malice”—meaning the publisher knew it was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
A disagreement over statistical analysis is not automatically defamation.
Policy researchers frequently debate how crime rates should be measured, what time periods should be compared and whether an intervention actually caused a change. Unless a report fabricated evidence or knowingly made false factual assertions, an unfavorable conclusion about a government program is generally protected political speech.
Trump insisted that the report’s conclusion was false.
“Crime is way down since I took Office, and they know it,” he wrote.
But even if national or local crime figures declined during his presidency, that would not necessarily prove the National Guard deployments caused the decrease. Establishing causation would require comparing trends across cities, examining when deployments began and controlling for other factors—including policing strategies, seasonal fluctuations, demographic changes and longer-term crime patterns.
That appears to be the dispute at the center of Hall’s analysis.
Trump views the deployment as an obvious success. Hall’s research contends that available evidence does not show a measurable change attributable to the troops. The validity of either position depends on the underlying data and methodology, not the intensity of the rhetoric surrounding it.
The financial question is similarly important.
A reported cost approaching $1.7 billion would inevitably attract scrutiny, particularly if researchers cannot identify a clear public-safety benefit. National Guard deployments involve personnel, transportation, accommodation, equipment and operational expenses, all ultimately borne by taxpayers.
Supporters may argue that a visible military presence deters crime, reassures communities or prevents unrest in ways difficult to capture through short-term statistics. Critics counter that using military forces for domestic law enforcement is expensive, potentially intimidating and no substitute for sustained investment in local policing and community services.
Trump’s response, however, shifted the controversy away from that substantive debate and toward a presidential threat against those who financed an organization that criticized him.
That distinction matters.
Presidents are free to condemn reports, dispute statistics and challenge their critics publicly. Using the threat of costly litigation against researchers—and potentially against donors with no demonstrated involvement in the contested work—can produce a chilling effect even when a lawsuit has little chance of succeeding.
Organizations may spend substantial amounts defending themselves. Donors may reconsider supporting politically controversial research. Smaller institutions may avoid scrutinizing powerful officials altogether.
Trump’s overnight post therefore represents more than another angry social media message. It tests the boundary between a president defending his record and the nation’s most powerful office pressuring private organizations over protected criticism.
Whether Trump ultimately files the threatened lawsuit remains uncertain. He has repeatedly announced potential legal action that did not always materialize, while other threats have turned into lengthy court battles.
For now, the underlying question remains unanswered: Did nearly $1.7 billion in National Guard deployments meaningfully reduce violent crime?
Trump could respond with competing research and transparent data. Instead, his first answer was a promise to take his critics—and perhaps their financial supporters—to court.
