{"id":1240,"date":"2026-07-10T22:12:44","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T22:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1240"},"modified":"2026-07-10T22:12:44","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T22:12:44","slug":"whats-behind-the-latest-national-guard-surge-in-d-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1240","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Behind the Latest National Guard Surge in D.C."},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is an edition of The<\/i> Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. <\/i>Sign up for it here.<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n

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Donald Trump summoned the National Guard to Washington, D.C., last August in an attempt to \u201crescue\u201d the city from \u201ccrime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.\u201d Since then, the number of soldiers in the capital has ebbed and flowed as states have lent their own Guardsmen to the cause. A month ago, there were just under 3,000 members of the National Guard in the area; now there are more than 5,000.<\/p>\n

Officially, this \u201csummer surge\u201d was framed as a way to address an anticipated spike in visitors and activity around the capital for America\u2019s ongoing 250th-birthday celebrations. But the National Guard is also involved in a much broader project known as the Safe and Beautiful mission\u2014a federal initiative to clean up the city that Trump once described as a \u201crat-infested, graffiti-infested shithole.\u201d Troops from across the country are currently stationed in the city, but their remit is not entirely clear, and their effect on violent crime remains limited. Eleven months into Trump\u2019s experiment, they remain an ever-present symbol of the administration\u2019s power.<\/p>\n

Last year, Trump declared a \u201ccrime emergency\u201d in the city. Crime is a real problem in D.C., as it is in all cities. But the president\u2019s framing of the situation as an emergency meriting the immediate assistance of outside forces (which are usually called in for dramatic upticks in civic unrest) doesn\u2019t align with the numbers: Around the time when Trump first sent in the National Guard, violent crime in D.C. was hitting 30-year lows, in line with a national trend.<\/p>\n

The precise tasks involved in keeping D.C. \u201csafe and beautiful\u201d have so far been ill-defined; troops have spent time directing traffic, clearing out homeless encampments, raking leaves, and mulching flower beds. Their presence has had mixed results on crime in the city. In May, the Niskanen Center released data showing that the deployment seemed to have decreased opportunistic property crime, such as theft, by 24 percent\u2014a notable downturn. The data also showed that the deployment had had no measurable effect on violent crime, which had already been declining when the National Guard arrived. (The Guardsmen whom Trump deployed to D.C. are not authorized to make arrests, but they can detain individuals.) The advantage of the National Guard is its flexibility, Richard Hahn, one of the study\u2019s co-authors, told me. D.C. police have been \u201cstruggling to hire police officers for 10 years,\u201d he said, but with the Guard, \u201cyou can command these soldiers to go to the city and police it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s decision to deploy these soldiers has thoroughly spooked a populace that already distrusts the president. Roughly 80 percent of D.C. residents opposed the arrival of Guardsmen last year, according to one survey. The fear, as my colleagues Ashley Parker and Nancy A. Youssef put it at the time, is that \u201cWashington is being used as a test case\u2014the blueprint for Trump to deploy the National Guard across the country as a paramilitary police force\u2014and that Americans are being conditioned to accept authoritarianism.\u201d In February, a from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security indicated that the National Guard was using a variety of advanced data-collection tools (including the Defense Department\u2019s AI-enabled Maven Smart System) in support of its duties, raising \u201cpotential privacy and civil liberties concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ever since the National Guard arrived in D.C., troops have been criticized for seeming to spend a lot of time just standing around. Just standing around<\/i> can be a component of law enforcement\u2014being a visible presence on the street is one way to deter opportunistic crime\u2014but it also generates unease. Jeffrey Butts, the director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told me that the fear this deployment has created is likely part of the point. \u201cThis is not about crime, and it\u2019s not about policing,\u201d he argued. \u201cIt\u2019s politics and demonstrations of state power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many Republican-led states have dispatched their Guardsmen to the capital, but a few states with Democratic governors have also quietly lent their support. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer sent approximately 170 of her state\u2019s Guardsmen to D.C. as part of the summer surge. This week, a coalition of watchdogs and observers signed a letter urging her to withdraw the state\u2019s troops and expressing concern that Guardsmen are carrying out operations unrelated to the July 4th celebrations. \u201cWhen the governors put their Guard forces in the hands of the Trump administration, they are trusting the Trump administration not to misuse their Guard forces,\u201d Elizabeth Goitein, a contributor to The Atlantic<\/i> and a senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice\u2014an organization that signed the letter\u2014told me. \u201cThe administration, to put it mildly, has not earned that trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whitmer herself has expressed some skepticism about the administration\u2019s plans for the troops. About two weeks ago, she wrote her own letter to the head of the Michigan National Guard warning him to \u201ctake all necessary measures\u201d to keep the state\u2019s troops focused on bolstering security for the festivities\u2014and to keep them away from the more nebulous Safe and Beautiful mission. She added that if Michigan National Guard leadership is unwilling or unable to keep them focused solely on security for the anniversary festivities, she plans to withdraw the troops altogether.<\/p>\n

Another blue-state governor, Tim Walz, recently made the decision to pull Minnesota\u2019s Guardsmen from D.C. earlier than expected, although a spokesperson for the state\u2019s National Guard told the AP that the decision was due to \u201cthe successful conclusion of festivities.\u201d The AP also reported this week that the one member of the Kentucky Guard who\u2019d been sent to D.C. had been diverted away from the 250th-anniversary celebrations \u201cwithout the knowledge or consent\u201d of the state\u2019s governor or its Guard command, per a spokesperson for the Democratic governor. The Guardsman returned to Kentucky before the main events began. Hawaii\u2019s adjutant general, Major General Stephen F. Logan, confirmed to me that the state\u2019s troops, who began their duties in D.C. on Monday, will not be supporting the Safe and Beautiful mission either.<\/p>\n

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The longer these troops remain in the city, the more fear and anger they may inspire. The tension between the people and the troops has already exploded into violence; in November, two Guardsmen were shot and seriously injured. The deployment may have reduced some kinds of crime, but there\u2019s more than one way to measure its effect on the city.<\/p>\n

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