National Guard troops deployed to Washington, D.C., will remain in place through at least February after an extension of the order that had been scheduled to expire at the end of November. The extension was issued by Pete Hegseth, who is described in the order as leading the US Department of Defense. As of Wednesday there were nearly 2,400 Guard members in the capital, a deployment CNN estimated is costing about $1 million per day.
The prolonged presence follows a lawsuit filed by District of Columbia officials this month challenging the deployments. D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb has characterized the federal deployments as an “involuntary military occupation” and argued they represent an unlawful use of the military for domestic law enforcement.
A separate federal judge in California ruled in September that the president’s earlier deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles after protests over immigration raids in June was unlawful. That decision does not directly govern the Washington deployment, however, because the federal role and presidential authority over the Guard differ between the District and the states.
The extension is part of a wider pattern of federal intervention in local policing this year. After sending forces to Washington, the administration also deployed Guard units to Chicago and has threatened similar deployments to other Democratic-run cities such as San Francisco, Portland and New York. Those moves have prompted condemnation from Democratic officials and local organizers, who say they amount to an unprecedented federal escalation into municipal law enforcement.
In a related development, an internal Pentagon directive signed on 8 October by Maj Gen Ronald Burkett, director of operations for the National Guard Bureau, ordered all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories to establish “quick reaction forces” trained in riot-control tactics. The directive requires training in use of batons, body shields, Tasers and pepper spray, and sets a target of roughly 500 Guard members to be trained in most states — about 23,500 troops nationwide — with monthly reporting on progress.
The extension of the Guard in Washington, the broader deployments to other cities and the new training requirements are likely to remain focal points of legal and political debate in the coming months.