Donald Trump’s lawyers have threatened a $5 billion defamation lawsuit against Center For American Progress unless it retracts a report on National Guard deployments. The dispute now puts the group’s published analysis — and the Friday 5 p.m. deadline set for it — at the center of a wider fight over public criticism of Trump’s use of federalized troops in American cities.
Alexander Brito sent the warning on Monday and gave the organization until 5 p.m. Friday to retract the report and apologize to Donald Trump. The report said the deployments had no measurable impact on violent crime rates and found that the president’s decision to send federalized troops into American cities was largely ineffective at a cost of roughly $1.7 billion.
Neera Tanden Defends The Report
Neera Tanden said the group’s work is “grounded in rigorous, evidence-based research and analysis.” She also said, “Based on analysis of crime data, our report demonstrated facts about the National Guard deployments that are inconvenient to the Trump administration.”
Her statement pushed back hard on the threat. “This threatened lawsuit’s attack on facts and evidence is baseless,” she said, adding that “A fundamental protection of the First Amendment is to allow for the publication of facts and analysis that are contrary to the arguments and claims of any administration.”
Trump’s Legal Pressure
The clash is not limited to this report. Trump has repeatedly threatened to revoke broadcast licenses for news networks over critical coverage or stories he does not like, and he has unsuccessfully sued top networks and newspapers for defamation. He also tried to sue The Des Moines Register by arguing that an unfavorable poll published before the 2024 election amounted to fraud and election interference.
The Center for American Progress report analyzed the administration’s National Guard deployments across the country, making the dispute about more than a single document. It is about whether a policy analysis can be answered with a $5 billion legal threat when the findings cut against the administration’s claims.
Friday At 5 P.M.
That deadline leaves the organization facing a straight choice: retract the report and apologize, or keep the findings in place and wait to see whether Donald Trump files the lawsuit Alexander Brito warned about. Tanden said, “A lawsuit is a transparent attempt to silence us. We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it.”
