National Guard, deployed in DC for a year, will stay through January 2029

By Alvin Wu
Domestic Affairs
National Guard, deployed in DC for a year, will stay through January 2029

National Guardsmen patrol the streets of Navy Yard on Aug. 6, 2026. ZFJ/Alvin Wu

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 (ZFJ) — The National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C., has been extended through January 2029, when President Donald Trump’s term ends.

Trump initially declared a crime emergency, deployed 800 D.C. National Guardsmen to the nation’s capital, and temporarily seized control of the local police department on Aug. 11, 2025, claiming that doing so was necessary to control violent crime. Per the D.C. Guard, as of Monday, Sept. 7, there are currently 3,124 soldiers deployed from a host of states. The number surged by several hundred this summer due to Freedom 250 events, and since Aug. 3, over 9,700 guardsmen have been part of the deployment.

ACTIVITY SO FAR

The guardsmen are a key component of Trump’s D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force (which also consists of many federal law enforcement officers), and have assisted in arrests, responded to medical emergencies, and participated in beautification projects like cleaning garbage and snow.

Soldiers standing around at Metro stations or patrolling tourist areas and neighborhoods have become a daily sight for district residents. Many locals have reported not seeing them do much in general, such as refusing to intervene when witnessing fare evasion.

Brig. Gen. Leland Blanchard, interim commanding general of the D.C. National Guard and commander of Joint Task Force-D.C. (JTF-DC), told media at a roundtable on Aug. 3 that, since the deployment began, soldiers have assisted in 1,897 incidents.

D.C.’s local police force, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), said in an annual report that it responded to 502,771 calls for service in 2025, which would be an average of about 1,377 calls each day. MPD had 3,187 sworn law enforcement officers in FY25.

POSITIONING

Many guardsmen told ZFJ editor-in-chief Alvin Wu that they had never been to D.C., or even any city, before. Some of them had never even seen snow or used a rapid transit system like Metro before either.

When the deployment first began, Wu observed soldiers patrolling the National Mall, Union Station, and Metro stations, but not neighborhoods. Over this spring and summer, he saw guardsmen occupying many more areas, including H Street, Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, and Southern Waterfront. Also, this summer, two eyewitnesses told the ZFJ that they saw guardsmen at Anacostia station (but not in the community).

So far, this fall, Wu has additionally seen guardsmen posted outside George Washington University (GWU)’s Foggy Bottom campus as well as the Kennedy Center and behind the Lincoln Memorial. Wu additionally saw soldiers riding the Green Line all the way into Maryland to Greenbelt station. When asked if they were restricted to D.C. only, as Maryland is under no such crime emergency declaration by Trump, the guardsmen said they just followed whatever orders they got.

National Guardsmen stand outside of the entrance to the Navy Yard-Ballpark Metro station on Aug. 6, 2026. ZFJ/Alvin Wu National Guardsmen stand outside of the entrance to the Navy Yard-Ballpark Metro station on Aug. 6, 2026. ZFJ/Alvin Wu

Blanchard told reporters that the Guard works with law enforcement to determine where to conduct high-visibility patrols to free up police officers to focus on other areas. The general also said that soldiers have been in Anacostia for a while and have been asked to be in Ward 8 (Southeast D.C.), Trinidad, and some other parts of the city.

PISTOLS AND RIFLES

While soldiers were not initially armed when the deployment began, they were issued M4 rifles and M17 pistols before the end of August 2025. Most soldiers that Wu has seen in the past few months only carried pistols. The military maintains that guardsmen can use their guns “only in times where they would have to preserve human life.”

The National Guard has not reported any incidents in which a D.C. local, or anyone from the D.C. metropolitan area, used violence against a soldier, although JTF-DC did sustain two casualties during Trump’s deployment so far.

In November 2025, a man shot two West Virginia guardsmen a few blocks away from the White House in what authorities believe was a targeted attack. The U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. alleges that the suspect drove across the country from Bellingham, Washington, to the district with a stolen firearm and later opened fire on the guardsmen “without provocation.”

Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, was killed, and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, was critically wounded. Wolfe is alive and recovering. The suspect was shot during the incident, then detained by two nearby soldiers, and is facing federal charges that include first degree murder.

PEACETIME MILITARY OCCUPATION

National Guardsmen have so far not engaged in widespread violence against residents. However, several well-documented instances have arisen in which they have used force against people and had a key role in unjustified arrests.

The district is not officially under martial law, and local civilian authorities are still fully operational. As a result, while at least some National Guardsmen have been deputized as special deputy U.S. Marshals, granting them limited federal law enforcement authority, the military maintains that the soldiers cannot perform arrests and can only detain suspects until police arrive.

Sam O’Hara began protesting after the deployment began by walking behind National Guard patrols while playing “The Imperial March”—the evil Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars—on his phone while recording. He has been publishing the videos on his TikTok account @freedc20009 and has garnered hundreds of thousands of views.

On Sept. 11, 2025, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia (ACLU-D.C.), he peacefully followed an Ohio National Guard patrol at 14th and Q Streets NW when one soldier, Sgt. Devon Beck, called MPD to “handle” him and had him detained for 15-20 minutes.

ACLU-D.C. sued on behalf of O’Hara for First Amendment violations and false arrest and, as reported by The Associated Press, secured a $50,000 settlement from MPD in June 2026. The case against Beck remains ongoing.

Retired Army captain and Purple Heart recipient Anna King, backed by ACLU-D.C., alleges in a lawsuit that, on May 8, 2026, she had been sitting on her front patio when three guardsmen entered her gate and “violently restrained her.” The soldiers alleged that King, a “vocal critic” of the deployment, had assaulted guardsmen two days earlier, but arriving police officers didn’t have a warrant for her arrest. ACLU-D.C. says King suffered injuries when the guardsmen tightly cuffed her and needed wrist surgery.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Video depicts National Guard soldiers using force against a civilian. National Guard soldiers detain Anna King, combat veteran, on May 8, 2026. ACLU-D.C./Handout

In summer 2026, Trump awarded $16 million in no-bid jobs to contractors he personally knew in order to paint the pool “American flag blue” and purge its algae. Once the sealant peeled due to poor installation and the algae returned, Trump falsely claimed that vandals were responsible for the damage, and National Guardsmen were assigned to patrol the pool.

National Guard soldiers and U.S. Park Police (USPP) officers arrested at least seven people on flimsy vandalism charges. One such person, former Olympian David Hearn, was indicted on a felony charge after he touched peeling sealant in the pool. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro later dropped all charges against the people arrested and conceded in court that the state of the pool was due to shoddy contractor work and not vandals, drawing Trump’s ire.

When asked if the Guard would support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, Blanchard told reporters that they have “not been involved in a lot of that to date” but would “focus on our mission set as given to us by our federal law enforcement partners.”

National Guardsmen have been filmed standing and patrolling with agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), one of two ICE immigration enforcement directorates, including in a Reddit post showing them at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and an Instagram Reel showing them near 7th and O Streets NW in August 2026. A Redditor posted a photo of guardsmen with HSI agents near Minnesota Avenue on Wednesday, Sept. 2.

Local protest groups like Free DC have been working to counter the normalization of the Guard’s presence and federal occupation and defend district home rule by organizing regular demonstrations and documenting soldiers’ interactions with members of the public.

“Trump’s occupation of DC is killing and hurting people here,” wrote Free DC in a statement on the anniversary of the deployment. “He wants everyone to believe this occupation is making the District more ‘safe and beautiful’ but the truth is that from Julian Bailey and Nolberto Meza, to the 16,000 people arrested, to their lies in court, to the hundreds of children separated from their parents due of immigration enforcement, to the Black youth forced to interact with armed soldiers on their way home, to workers being attacked on the job and our unhoused neighbors being displaced, Trump’s destructive occupation has hurt thousands of people in DC over the last year.” Bailey was fatally shot by federal law enforcement, and Meza was a bystander killed in a Park Police chase, this year.

Wu has seen people going about their regular business as Guard patrols pass by, so it is clear that some locals have since become used to seeing camouflage uniforms by now.

Critics of the deployment continue to warn against the normalization of military involvement in civilian policing, and with midterm elections soon, are also raising concerns about potential military interference in the democratic process.

COST

Military operations are always costly, and this operation is no exception. In a report released January 28, 2026, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) assessed that the D.C. deployment cost $223 million through the end of December 2025 and would cost $55 million per additional month with a force of 2,950 soldiers.

More recently, Jules W. Hurst III—Trump’s nominee for Pentagon comptroller—provided Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) with a cost estimate that she released on Aug. 5. Hurst wrote to the senator that the D.C. deployment is set to cost an additional $1.4 billion from October 2026 through the end of the Trump administration in January 2029.

Members of the Iowa National Guard patrol U Street NW on Aug. 9, 2026. ZFJ/Alvin Wu Members of the Iowa National Guard patrol U Street NW on Aug. 9, 2026. ZFJ/Alvin Wu

On July 23, the National Guard Bureau (NGB) announced that it awarded a $292 million task order to Placemakr to provide up to 2,000 “apartment-style lodging units” for JTF-DC soldiers. NGB framed the move as “providing a long-term housing solution” while “reducing costs to taxpayers.”

“Up to this point, mobilized troops stayed in hotels scattered over the region,” says an NGB press release, which also says that, using a General Services Administration (GSA) program, the government “negotiated pricing about 49% below projected short-term commercial hotel costs and 27% below standard GSA schedule pricing for lodging and housekeeping services.”

The entire MPD budget for FY26 is $599,133,934 and for FY27 is $687,896,179. The Placemakr apartment contract is nearly half of MPD’s budget for a year and further cements the D.C. operation as a long-term commitment.

Wu asked three guardsmen from Iowa on the street on Aug. 9 if they were going to get apartments. They said that they did not know and would just go with whatever they were told.

When pressed by reporters on whether or not the deployment is cost-effective, Blanchard said that he will “continue to assess” and changed the subject to discuss at length several individual cases in which guardsmen assisted.

IMPACT ON CRIME

Preliminary year-to-date MPD crime data as of Friday, Aug. 28, reports drops in homicide (-30%), robbery (-12%), motor vehicle theft (-51%), theft from auto (-34%), total property crime (-21%), and total crime (-18%). Increases are reported for assault with a dangerous weapon (+39%) and total violent crime (+5%).

The moderate think tank Niskanen Center said in a May 28 report that the deployment resulted in a 24% drop in opportunistic property crime but also had no measurable impact on violent crime. Contrary to Blanchard’s statements, its report adds that “MPD’s deployment patterns didn’t change in response to the Guard’s presence, so it is unlikely that strategic coordination occurred.”

In a July 13 report on Trump’s National Guard deployments in cities as a whole, left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) said its analysis found that “violent crime and homicides were already dropping in American cities in 2023 and 2024” and that it saw “no evidence that National Guard deployments have reduced violent crime.”

In response to the CAP report, Trump threatened to sue the organization for $5 billion for defamation if it didn’t issue a retraction. CAP is standing by its analysis.

PENDING LEGAL ACTION

Trump tried to deploy National Guard forces to multiple cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, but was blocked by the Supreme Court. However, since D.C. is a federal district, Trump has tighter control over its affairs and he, rather than a governor, is the direct commander-in-chief of the D.C. Guard.

D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb has been suing Trump over the use of the Guard, and he managed to secure a ruling from U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb on Nov. 20, 2025, that the deployment is illegal. Cobb’s ruling was paused on appeal pending further legal proceedings.

HISTORICAL DISCUSSION

Home rule—the ability for D.C. to govern itself locally—is a longstanding issue for district residents. Unlike MPD, which answers to the D.C. mayor, who can be voted out by residents, the National Guard is directly subordinate to Trump—not the people they are currently policing.

Military enforcement of the law on American soil is rare. The Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) generally prohibits the use of military forces for domestic law enforcement unless authorized by Congress or the Constitution. One such exception is the Insurrection Act, under which soldiers can be used in the event of a “rebellion against the authority of the United States.”

America has grappled with the use of soldiers to enforce laws before, from the Boston Massacre predating the country’s existence to the Reconstruction era following the Civil War to the George Floyd protests in 2020.

There is precedent for the National Guard shooting unarmed civilians in America. For example, in the Kent State shootings in 1970, Ohio National Guard soldiers shot and killed four and wounded nine unarmed college students protesting the Vietnam War, sparking immediate outrage nationwide. The guardsmen were acquitted of federal deprivation of civil rights charges in a bench trial after a judge ruled that, although they may have used excessive force, the prosecution had failed to prove that the soldiers had specifically intended to violate the students’ civil rights.

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