'Trying to take over': Red states follow Trump's lead by taking aim at their bluest cities

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President Donald Trump with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry on March 24, 2025 (Wikimedia Commons)

As President Donald Trump continues to ramp up his threats against big cities in predominantly Democratic states — including a new Department of Homeland Security mobilization in Chicago, Illinois – some Republican state governments are trying out their own methods of cracking down on their own majority-Democrat urban centers.

The Washington Post reported Monday on several ways GOP-run states are escalating oversight of blue cities, justifying their approach as an effort to reduce violent crime (which is at a 50-year low according to 2024 FBI statistics). In Louisiana, which has a Republican trifecta state government, Gov. Jeff Landry (R) has signaled to Trump that he would welcome the intervention of the National Guard in New Orleans, which is heavily Democratic and has a Black mayor.

The Post also reported that Missouri is also taking a harder stance toward St. Louis — another Democratic stronghold. The Show Me State's majority-Republican legislature in March voted to take over the St. Louis Police Department, and also passed legislation allowing Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) to appoint a special prosecutor to the state's second-largest city.

Georgia and Indiana — both of which have Republican-dominated state legislatures and deep-blue capital cities – have also taken action to expand police forces in their largest urban centers while also launching state boards aimed at reining in local prosecutors. The Post reported that the Hoosier State's new oversight board over the office of Indianapolis' top prosecutor is due to their refusal to enforce the state's abortion ban.

But perhaps the most extreme example of Republican micromanagement of a Democratic city could be found in Jackson, Mississippi. The Post reported that the Magnolia State's legislature not only expanded the size and influence of the state capitol police's influence over the city of Jackson itself, but also created a separate court system that is almost completely unaccountable to the people of Jackson — whose population is more than 81 percent Black, according to U.S. Census figures.

While judges in Hinds County (which houses Jackson ) are elected, the judges on Jackson's new court are all appointees of the Republican chief justice of Mississippi's supreme court. And its prosecutors are selected by Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R). Jackson Mayor John Horhn (D), who was a Democratic state senator who opposed the legislation imposing the new court system, blasted the bill as an attempt to strip an autonomous city of its ability to self-govern.

“The question has been raised whether the state is trying to take over the city of Jackson,” Horhn told local media. “Well, if it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck — it’s a duck.”

Click here to read the Post's full report (subscription required).

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