Plans are in the works for the U.S. military to prime National Guard forces for active duty in Washington, D.C., indicating a stern response by President Trump to criminal activity in the metropolitan sector. Concrete deployment orders hadn’t been given the green light by the President by the dawn of Monday. However, it is anticipated that he will reveal, during a White House press briefing, that a number uniting to several hundred from the National Guard in the District of Columbia will be drafted to reinforce the existing law enforcement capacity in the capital city.
Details beyond this were scant as of early Monday. Despite a trend of decreasing crime rates in Washington, D.C., the President has put forth the narrative that criminal activity has escalated to an uncontrollable level. He has even hinted at a possible federal intervention to curb the purported rise in crime.
The activation of the National Guard, a move also discussed in earlier reports by Reuters, doesn’t imply they will be vested with the power to make arrests. Their role will be situated more in the context of offering assistance to law enforcement agencies, or liberating those agents to perform active patrol duties.
Accompanying this move, there’s also an intention within the Trump administration to provisionally redirect 120 agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (F.B.I.) towards patrol duties during the night-time hours. This decision is also part and parcel of Trump’s more active stand against the city’s crime. A majority of these redeployed agents will be drawn away from their standard responsibilities at the F.B.I’s Washington branch office.
The impending activation of troops in Washington trails the previous deployment of almost 5,000 National Guard personnel to Los Angeles. This earlier deployment was a measure taken in response to protests triggered by controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. The National Guard was also tasked with providing protection to the federal operatives managing these enforcement actions.
Since that deployment, all but around 250 members of the National Guard have been withdrawn from Los Angeles. President Trump, during his initial term in office, summoned the National Guard along with federal law enforcement agents to disperse peaceful demonstrations taking place during the Black Lives Matter protests. Those protests took a sharp rise after the incident of George Floyd’s fatal encounter with the police back in 2020.
In the case of Washington D.C., the unique status of the city means that unlike other states who have their governors controlling the National Guard units, the District doesn’t have the similar right. Instead, it is the President who holds a wide range of power to deploy these troops, giving him more discretion in the matter compared to other regions. With the ground situation evolving constantly, the future role of the National Guard in Washington D.C. is poised to attract more attention and scrutiny.
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