Army Secretary Dan Driscoll signed a memo Wednesday extending the National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C., through the end of 2026, according to a copy reviewed by the Associated Press. The memo cited “the conditions of the mission” as the basis for pushing the mission well past its prior end date of late February, framing the continuation as support for President Donald Trump’s “ongoing efforts to restore law and order.”
About 2,600 National Guard troops are currently stationed in the capital — approximately 700 from D.C. itself and the rest contributed by 11 states, including Indiana, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.
Washington’s status as a congressionally established federal district gives Trump direct authority over the D.C. National Guard, allowing the administration to extend the mission without the legal exposure that has stalled comparable deployments elsewhere. That constitutional distinction has enabled Trump to sidestep the challenges that, at least temporarily, halted plans to send Guard troops to Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon.
From crime-fighting to cleanup
Trump activated 800 members of the D.C. National Guard in August under an emergency order, citing public safety. Those numbers were quickly augmented by troops contributed by Republican governors from other states.
The mission’s scope expanded well beyond its original crime-fighting mandate. In one of the task force’s last official updates, troops in early October cleared 1,150 bags of trash, spread 1,045 cubic yards of mulch, removed 50 truckloads of plant waste, cleared 7.9 miles of roadway, painted 270 feet of fencing, and pruned 400 trees.
Troop killed in D.C.
Two National Guard members from West Virginia serving in the D.C. mission were shot the day before Thanksgiving. Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died from her injuries.
Pullbacks elsewhere
While the D.C. deployment continues, Trump has retreated — at least for now — on efforts to extend such operations to other American cities. He dropped the push for deployments in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland after those moves drew legal challenges. On Friday he also backed off a threat made the prior day to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops to quell protests in Minnesota.
Trump’s most significant deployment outside D.C. came in June, when he federalized the California National Guard in response to protests over a surge of immigration arrests in Los Angeles. The administration ultimately deployed about 4,000 troops and 700 Marines to guard federal buildings and, later, to protect agents conducting immigration arrests. The California force dwindled over subsequent months and was removed from the streets in December after a judge ordered control of the state Guard returned to Gov. Gavin Newsom. A federal appellate court upheld that ruling. On Dec. 31, Trump said he was dropping his push, for now, to expand such deployments to additional cities.