WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in response to a supposed “crime emergency” in the nation’s capital could be a warmup for troops patrolling other American cities.
In an executive order on Monday, the president outlined plans for a “specialized unit” within the D.C. National Guard for fighting crime in the capital, plus similar units in every state, along with “a standing National Guard quick reaction force” available for quick deployment nationwide.
Randy Manner, a retired major general and former acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, said Trump is deploying armed National Guard soldiers to further his authoritarian political ambitions.
“It will intimidate the population and desensitize Americans to the fact that it’s normal for uniformed, armed military to be in our streets,” Manner, now with a group called National Security Leaders for America that warns of threats to democracy, told HuffPost in an interview.
On Tuesday, Trump joked about the criticism that his police power grab represents a dictatorial threat.
“The line is that I’m a dictator, but I stop crime. So a lot of people say, if that’s the case, then I’d rather have a dictator,” Trump said during a televised cabinet meeting. “But I’m not a dictator, I just stop crime.”
The White House has touted hundreds of arrests made with assistance from federal law enforcement officers since Trump took over the D.C. police department and surged federal agents to the city earlier this month.
So far, the National Guard hasn’t been directly assisting police as they make arrests. Instead, troops have posted up at places like Union Station and the National Mall, chatting with tourists and posing for photos, though their mission seems to shift from day to day. Over the weekend, the previously unarmed soldiers started carrying guns — and also picking up trash.
The D.C. Home Rule Act gives Trump control of the city’s police — separate from the military or federal officers — for just 30 days, because a state of emergency isn’t supposed to be permanent. And a longstanding federal law generally disallows the government from using the military as police.
But Trump’s order on Monday envisions a continued role for a new team of National Guard troops “that is dedicated to ensuring public safety and order” in the city. Separately, it calls on the Secretary of Defense to make sure each state’s National Guard has a unit ready for “rapid mobilization” for “quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety and order whenever the circumstances necessitate.” On top of that, the order says there should be a similar team “available for rapid nationwide deployment.”
It’s not clear if the White House intends for National Guard troops to be more directly involved in street policing or if the new units would merely offer an assuring and presumably crime-deterring presence as they’ve done so far in D.C.
Trump declared the crime emergency earlier this month following an attack by city youth on an administration staffer, despite statistics suggesting D.C. crime, while still high, has fallen in recent years, as it has in other big cities. The White House has defended the surge of federal officers and troops as a common-sense solution to the situation on the ground.
“The National Guard troops deployed in our Nation’s Capital are here to provide additional security for residents, visitors, and law enforcement officers from the dangerous criminals that have been allowed to murder, assault, carjack, rape, distribute deathly drugs with minimal consequences,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in an email, adding that Trump’s crackdown has already “restored law and order in our cherished capital.”
Trump previously federalized the California National Guard and sent troops into Los Angeles in response to protests against immigration enforcement. California sued, citing a federal law disallowing the military from performing law enforcement duties except under rare circumstances. The case, which is ongoing and could wind up at the Supreme Court, will test the limits of presidential power regarding the military and domestic policing.
In the meantime, Trump is musing about sending troops to Chicago next, despite Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) urging him not to.
“We may or may not,” Trump said at the White House on Monday. “We may just go in and do it, which is probably what we should do. The problem is, it’s not nice when you go in and do it and somebody else is standing there and saying, as we give great results, [they] say, ‘Well, we don’t want the military.’”
Matt Cleary, as associate professor of political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, said the U.S. has stricter rules against deploying troops domestically than most other countries. The mere presence of troops on American streets, however, including in the most recent instance in Washington, is not necessarily evidence of democratic “backsliding” in the U.S., he said.
“It is something that is done in other democracies when it really, really has to be done. It’s never ideal, and it should only be done in the U.S. or in any other democracy when it’s a true emergency, when there’s no other solution, and it should always be temporary,” Cleary told HuffPost. “But I’m gonna keep my eyes open.”
Trump and his recent predecessors in the White House have sent National Guard troops to the southern border to help with immigration enforcement, but most other activations of the National Guard have been in response to major public disturbances or natural disasters, such as hurricanes or mass public protests and riots like the ones that erupted in response to police brutality in 2020. National Guard soldiers’ most common activities include clearing roads, transporting supplies and controlling traffic. Their most infamous deployment resulted in the shooting of unarmed student protesters at Kent State University in 1970.
The crime situation in D.C. does not resemble a hurricane or a mass protest, and the large Army vehicles designed to protect soldiers from improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan have seemed out of place parked on city sidewalks. One such “mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle,” or MRAP, as they’re known, ran a red light and crashed into an SUV driving on a neighborhood street last week. First responders had to use specialized equipment to pry the SUV’s driver free from their crushed vehicle.
Manner, the former No. 2 in charge at the National Guard Bureau, said the accident showed the inappropriateness of the way the Guard has been deployed. The vehicles they’ve brought to the city were designed for moving troops through actual war zones, after all.
“You can barely see out of those in an urban setting to watch for cars,” Manner said. “These vehicles are not designed to be used in regular traffic in U.S. cities. Now, the resulting question is, Why are they using it? I can only think of one reason: It’s just an intimidation factor.”