A MAGA congressman was caught making a gross exaggeration of murder rates in Portland and Chicago as he sought to defend his boss defying the courts to send troops there.
North Carolina Rep. Pat Harrigan, a former Green Beret who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, waved away concerns about Donald Trump’s use of federalized National Guard to “protect ICE and federal facilities” in the Democrat-run states.
He told CNN that calling places like Chicago and Portland “war zones” wasn’t wrong because they’re “putting up stats of about 50 murders a weekend.”
But his wild claim is simply untrue.
Portland has reported a 51 percent decrease in homicides in the first half of the year, with some months recording zero killings, according to the mayor’s office. The Oregonian’s tracker confirms a modest 2025 tally.
While there have been more murders in Chicago—which is four times bigger than Oregon’s largest city—it is far from a “war zone” either.
On the weekend of Sept. 13–15, police tallied 26 people shot—three fatally—across 18 incidents, according to ABC7 Chicago.
Year-to-date data further undermines Harrigan’s spin. Chicago officials say homicides and shootings were down more than 30 percent through the first half of 2025 amid what its City Hall called “historic declines.”
And the idea that these cities are national outliers on murder also collapses under broader data. A February working paper from Rochester Institute of Technology’s Center for Public Safety Initiatives lists St. Louis, Missouri, and New Orleans, Louisiana, among the highest homicide rates in 2024—both states led by Republican governors.
Harrigan also glossed over the legal mess around Trump’s deployments.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut—a Trump appointee—temporarily blocked the administration’s gambit to pour out-of-state Guard troops into Oregon.
Despite that, the Pentagon boasted of reassigning California Guard units to Portland to bolster ICE, prompting fresh lawsuits from Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In a follow-up ruling, Immergut issued a second injunction blocking any “federalized members of the National Guard” from deploying to the state and pressed government lawyers on why bringing in California troops didn’t flout her order—stating that “this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Rep. Harrigan for comment.
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