Eight hundred Air and Army National Guardsmen began their mission in D.C. early Wednesday morning, helping the city’s temporarily federalized police through “monument security, community safety patrols, protecting federal facilities and officers, traffic control posts and area beautification,” Pentagon spokeswoman Kingsley Wilson told reporters.
That includes presence on the National Mall, Wilson said, though she did not answer questions about the specific crimes the Trump administration believes need to be stamped out near the monuments and museums.
“It’s dangerous all around the city,” Wilson said. “I think another important point of having National Guardsmen all around D.C. is that as it is also a deterrent, and it makes people feel safe, and it lets everyone know that D.C. is going to be a city in which we can be proud of, and we are standing alongside our federal partners to execute on the president’s directive.”
Guardsmen from a variety of military specialties, not just military police, have been tapped for the mission, a Defense official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told reporters. Troops will neither be armed nor have weapons in their vehicles, the official said. Though they will be assisting law enforcement, the official didn’t know yet whether the troops would be patrolling alongside police or would be in close enough communication to signal them if a threat occurred.
Though the Guard hasn’t been tasked with arresting suspects or other law enforcement functions, their state active duty designation would allow for that should the president order it.
The designation is distinct from the federalized deployments of Guardsmen in D.C. during the summer of 2020 and winter of 2021, when troops helped with crowd control but were specifically barred from performing law-enforcement functions.
“They will remain until law and order has been restored in the district, as determined by the president, standing as the gatekeepers of our great nation’s capital,” Wilson said.
She did not say how the restoration of law and order would be measured. In a Monday press conference announcing his takeover of the D.C. police and the Guard deployment, President Trump offered false and exaggerated crime statistics to justify his action.
This week, a U.S. district court heard testimony in Newsom v. Trump, a lawsuit brought by the state of California against the administration’s controversial deployment of some 4,700 National Guardsmen and Marines to southern California. The presiding judge has not yet ruled on the suit.
