Topline
Disputes over the deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. reignited this week following the shooting of two soldiers that left one dead and the other in critical condition as of Friday, underscoring questions around President Donald Trump’s deployment of the guard throughout the U.S.
The National Guard was deployed to D.C. in August.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Key Facts
The New York Times reported Wednesday on a memo from August warning National Guard troops of a “heightened threat environment” and warned specifically of threats based on “grievance based violence” as well as acts inspired by foreign terrorism.
A member of the California National Guard told the Times they were not surprised by the shooting. The soldier, who deployed with the National Guard to Los Angeles this summer, said he and his commanders worried their mission “increased our risk of us shooting civilians or civilians taking shots at us.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W. Va., defended the presence of West Virginia National Guardsmen in D.C. in an interview with Fox News, saying troops are “there to indicate to citizens, to visitors, to dignitaries, to whoever is in the capital city, that peace is there and you’re going to feel safe.”
Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, snapped back at a reporter who asked about criticism against Trump’s deployment of the National Guard, saying in a Thursday press conference, “I don’t even wanna talk about whether they should have been there.”
Pirro said, “We ought to kiss the ground and thank god” Trump deployed the troops in D.C., noting the city’s 2024 homicide rate of 27.3 per 100,000 people, which marked a steep decline from 2023, when the rate was 39.4 per 100,000 people, according to a February report from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
In a statement condemning the shooting of the two National Guardsmen, veteran-led grassroots movement Common Defense said the two soldiers, who hail from West Virginia, should have not been deployed to D.C., calling the deployment of troops in D.C. a “political stunt.”
Army veteran Perry O’Brien Hill, Common Defense’s senior campaigns director, added in the statement, “As veterans who have served overseas, we have tried to sound the warning that this administration is trying to manufacture a war on American streets.”
Former assistant Department of Homeland Security secretary Juliette Kayyem told PBS the “politics have thrust the National Guard into this gray zone that they’re not built for, but that has made them vulnerable,” referring to troops who are not typically tasked with non-military patrolling of metropolitan areas for the sake of crime prevention.
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Big Number
2,188. That is how many National Guard soldiers are assigned to D.C. as of November. That number is slated to increase, as Trump said this week he will deploy an additional 500 troops to the Capital.