All Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have come together to request that the Republican chair of the committee summon Pentagon officials and address the escalating utilization of U.S. military forces in domestic urban locales by the Trump administration. They issued a collective appeal to the committee chair, Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, highlighting the fact that both the committee and the wider American populace are entitled to a detailed account of the expenditure involved in stationing personnel and hardware in U.S. cities, the resultant impact on the military’s state of readiness, and its subsequent relations with civilians.
Members of both active duty and National Guard have been posted in cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., in order to aid local and federal enforcement agencies with their duties which range from crime control, safeguarding against demonstrations, to managing immigration-related missions. Furthermore, President Trump paved the way for establishing a task force in Memphis, Tennessee on Monday, an operation aimed at deploying the National Guard and federal law enforcement officials to help in curbing crime, a move similar to earlier initiatives in Washington, D.C.
Additionally, official sources from the administration have mentioned the possibility of stationing troops in cities like New Orleans, Chicago, and Baltimore. ‘Such deployments may severely undermine our military readiness, as well as the time-honored trust that exists between the citizenry and the servicemembers who are pledged to shield them from foreign threats,’ remarked the Democratic senators in their letter addressed to Wicker.
In their letter, the senators urged leaders from the Defense Department to appear before the committee, so as to give a detailed account of the ways in which military resources are being expended. They further argue that the operations lack the necessary degree of transparency, both in terms of their cost and how the expenditures compare with other potential courses of action.
In a Pentagon that primarily values warfighters, they observed that, ‘an increasing amount of DoD and military personnel are being tasked with providing administrative and logistical support for enforcement activities within the country, with undisclosed effects on the intensive, realistic training necessary to enhance lethality and readiness for core military missions.’
There have been concerns raised over the legality of these deployments as well. In a congressional hearing held in June focused on the Pentagon’s budget, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth justified President Trump’s decision to post thousands of troops in Los Angeles — including a force of 700 active-duty Marines — in response to protests against the administration’s immigration policies, describing it as a move towards ‘maintaining law and order.’ However, he was unable to offer clarification as to the legal basis that permitted the president to dispatch federal troops onto domestic streets in support of law enforcement activities.
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