A year into Trump’s unprecedented deployment, National Guard is entrenched in DC

On Aug. 3 last year, the assault and attempted carjacking of Edward Coristine, a 20-year-old programmer known online as “Big Balls” who had worked for Elon Musk’s now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency, became a flashpoint for President Donald Trump’s argument that Washington, D.C., had spiraled out of control.

Eight days later, Trump mobilized roughly 800 National Guard troops to the capital, an extraordinary use of military personnel on U.S. soil. He cast the deployment in dire terms, describing a city overwhelmed by violence and disorder and promising that federal intervention would restore control, even as violent crime in Washington had fallen to its lowest level in 30 years, according to the Department of Justice.

The deployment, dubbed “Make DC Safe and Beautiful,” quickly expanded. Some 4,000 troops from states and territories across the country are now deployed to the capital, down from a summer surge for America's 250th anniversary that pushed the force to roughly 5,000. That number is expected to decline further in the coming weeks, with the mission typically hovering between 2,500 and 3,000 troops.

But even as the force shrinks from its summer peak, the deployment is expected to remain a fixture in D.C. through the remainder of Trump’s term, ABC News was first to report.

The mission is unprecedented in its scale and duration. The deployment is projected to cost an additional $1.4 billion, a staggering price tag even as its effectiveness remains murky. Two soldiers were also killed in an attack near the White House last year. Meanwhile, the Guard is juggling competing demands, with thousands of troops deployed to the Middle East amid the war with Iran and others serving on missions around the world.

A departure in deploying the Guard

The sustained presence represents a sharp departure from how presidents have historically used military forces at home. Domestic deployments have generally been reserved for relatively brief moments of extraordinary unrest, major security threats or natural disasters.

In 1794, President George Washington led a force of roughly 13,000 militiamen from Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion. More recently, roughly 20,000 National Guard troops poured into Washington, D.C., following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a mob sought to keep Trump in power after his 2020 election loss.

The Guard is also routinely called up for natural disasters and major public events, largely because it can quickly provide thousands of personnel for basic but labor-intensive tasks such as clearing debris after a hurricane, distributing food and water or helping manage crowds and traffic.

Washington was initially only one piece of a broader push by the administration to deploy troops to American cities. Forces were also sent to Los Angeles and Chicago, though those missions became tied up in legal challenges and troops were eventually withdrawn. The president has substantially broader authority in Washington, D.C., where the National Guard operates under a unique legal framework and ultimately answers to the president.

But the Guard is principally built and trained to fight wars abroad. Today, some 15,000 guardsmen are deployed overseas, according to service data, including thousands in the Middle East amid the ongoing war with Iran. Guard units are also serving across Africa and regularly participate in major exercises in the Pacific aimed at preparing for a potential conflict with China.

At the same time, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic, governors and presidents have increasingly turned to the Guard for missions at home.

Brig. Gen. Leland Blanchard II, the interim commander of the D.C. National Guard, told reporters that units deployed to D.C. continue to carve out time for military training, including marksmanship and medical care, and in some cases may train more frequently than they otherwise would. Some of that training, he said, can also complement the skills troops use on the mission.

In Washington, the National Guard has settled into what is becoming a lengthy deployment, even as the troops carrying out the mission rotate with relative regularity. Much of their time is spent patrolling tourist corridors and downtown transit hubs, areas where crime is generally low. Blanchard says putting guardsmen in those relatively safe areas allows local police to concentrate more officers in parts of the city where crime is higher.

But sustaining that rotation has presented its own challenges. The Guard at times has struggled to find fresh units for the mission, according to people familiar with the situation, in part because Democratic-led states have been reluctant to participate in a deployment strictly associated with the Trump administration.

That effectively takes a large portion of the National Guard off the table, narrowing the pool of available units at a time when the force is also balancing deployments and other commitments overseas. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer threatened to pull her troops from D.C. who were there supporting July 4th events in the city if they were used for Trump’s broader security mission, though in practice, detangling the two is virtually impossible.

Blanchard told reporters that guardsmen have responded to some 800 medical emergencies, including administering Narcan 325 times as well as ancillary things like reuniting lost children with their parents, but the administration has not provided a clear accounting of whether those services could still have been done with civil workers or police officers.

“If you actually want to improve public safety in the District of Columbia, give the District of Columbia Police Department $100 million to go hire competent, qualified, appropriately trained police,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said.

“Don't drag these poor men and women from around the country who have no idea what they're doing in D.C. and, most of them, are not trained for policing anyway, to stand here and wander around.”

An analysis from the Niskanen Center estimated the government spends roughly $607 per Guardsman each day, compared with about $384 for a D.C. police officer. The group found no reduction in violent crime attributable to the Guard deployment, though its presence coincided with a decline in property crime.

Guard units have slowly begun expanding into less visible parts of the capital where crime is more prevalent, a shift that could accelerate as the deployment enters its second year.

“We want to get after that and continue to expand the mission,” Blanchard told ABC News.

A $1.4 billion price tag

The Pentagon is also making increasingly long-term arrangements for the troops. The Trump administration recently signed a $292 million contract to move Guard members into apartments around the region, replacing the costly hotels where troops have been housed at government expense. Blanchard said the move is expected to save roughly $90 million through 2029.

But keeping the Guard in Washington, D.C., through the remainder of Trump’s term will still come with a hefty price tag. The deployment is projected to cost an additional $1.4 billion through 2029, according to Pentagon information provided to Congress and reviewed by ABC News.

The figure serves as the first public accounting from the administration on the mission’s cost, but it's unclear what the mission has cost up to this point. Previously, the Congressional Budget Office estimated its deployment in D.C. costs about $55 million per month, accounting for just under 3,000 troops.

The troops sent to D.C. have overwhelmingly come from Republican-led states. Just under 700 members of the D.C. National Guard are currently serving on the mission, according to Guard data, leaving most of the force to be supplied by governors elsewhere.

South Carolina has kept troops in the capital for virtually the entire year and currently has nearly 500 there. Georgia has roughly 800 Guardsmen deployed and Florida nearly 400. Louisiana, West Virginia and Mississippi are among the other Republican-led states that have maintained a sustained presence.

“South Carolina has a long history of answering the call when our country needs our National Guard,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, said in a statement to ABC News. “They represent our state with professionalism and dedication, and we know they will continue to do so wherever they are called to serve.”

High stakes for a lengthy mission

From the beginning, Army leaders were acutely aware that the political stakes of the deployment extended well beyond what troops were actually being asked to do.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll was on vacation when the mission began and hurried back to Washington as troops mobilized. Officials familiar with the discussions said optics quickly became a major concern. Commanders understood that virtually any encounter involving a guardsman could be filmed and turned into a national controversy, potentially damaging an institution that continues to enjoy broad public confidence.

In 1970, Ohio National Guard members of the 1st Battalion, 145th Infantry Regiment, and 2nd Squadron, 107th Cavalry Regiment, opened fire into a crowd at Kent State University, killing four unarmed students and wounding nine others during protests against President Richard Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia.

The killings became an enduring cautionary tale about putting troops in direct contact with Americans exercising their right to protest and further inflamed antiwar sentiment at a time when the military was already struggling to attract its next generation of officers. Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) enrollment plunged in the early 1970s, leaving the Pentagon with far fewer prospective officers than it needed.

But officials explained they did not need to imagine another Kent State to understand the risks in Washington. Driscoll and others involved in the mission worried that something far less dramatic could derail it, such as an accidental weapon discharge, an isolated confrontation with a protester or a guardsman caught on camera behaving poorly. Until the U.S. and Israel launched the war with Iran in February, the Guard’s presence in D.C. was the Pentagon’s highest-profile mission.

For most of the past year, those fears have not materialized. The mission’s most serious episode instead came in November, when two West Virginia National Guard members were shot just blocks from the White House.

Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died from her injuries. U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, was critically wounded and is still recovering, according to his family.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 30-year-old Afghan national accused in the attack, has pleaded not guilty. The Justice Department said in June that it was determining whether to seek the death penalty.