DC protests President Trump’s criminal crackdown and military deployment
Protesters in Washington, DC oppose President Donald Trump’s criminal crackdown and military deployment.
Republican governors of three states have deployed hundreds of National Guard troops in Washington at the request of President Donald Trump’s administration.
The announcement of the military hundreds of miles away in West Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio on August 16 came the day after DC officials. The Trump administration negotiated a contract to take charge of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s appointed police chief Pamela Smith after D.C.’s power of attorney Brian Schwarb filed a lawsuit to block the federal election.
Republican Trump said this week that he deployed hundreds of DC National Guard members in Washington and temporarily took over the city’s police department, which leads Democrats, suppressing what he portrayed as a crime and homeless emergency.
However, Department of Justice data showed its first decline in 30 years in 2024 in Washington, an autonomous federal district under Congress’s jurisdiction.
West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrissey’s office said in a statement that it has deployed between 300 and 400 National Guard personnel in DC, “a show of commitment to public safety and community cooperation.” The statement said he offers equipment and professional training.
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster responded to the Pentagon’s request by announcing that 200 state national guards would be sent.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said he would send 150 military police members in the coming days, adding that he “currently serves as state law enforcement officers.”
Mayor Bowser posted on X after the announcement: “It is #Unamerican that American soldiers and American citizens will police in American soil.”
Armies to other cities?
The National Guard will act as a militia responding to governors of 50 states, except when convened for federal services. The DC National Guard reports directly to the President.
Suggesting that he could do similar things in other Democrat-controlled cities, Trump sought to expand the power of the presidency into a second term, inserting it into the work of major banks, law firms and elite universities.
In June, Trump ordered 700 Marines and 4,000 Marines to Los Angeles, contrary to the wishes of the California Democratic governor during a protest against a massive immigration attack by federal officials.
McMaster of South Carolina said his troops will soon return to South Carolina if necessary to respond to hurricanes and other natural disasters. Hurricane Erin, now northeast of Puerto Rico, is becoming a catastrophic Category 5 storm that could lead to ocean expansion on the US East Coast early next week, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
The National Guard often responds to natural disasters and rarely police American civilians.
Drew Garan, a spokesman for Morrissey in West Virginia, said the state National Guard had been working to organize the deployment after receiving an order to send equipment and personnel to DC late Friday.
The White House said on August 16, DC National Guard members patrolled on foot and on vehicles around National Mall and Union Station. The White House said the National Guard had not arrested it now and could be armed.
It is not clear how the administration can deploy National Guard elsewhere. It is expected in the coming weeks that a federal judge in San Francisco will issue a ruling on whether Trump violated the law in his Los Angeles development.
(Reporting by AJ Vicens of Detroit, Richard Cowan of Washington, and Balgaff Acharya of Toronto, Edited by Dona Bryson, Matthew Lewis, Paul Simao and William Mallard)
