A Year Later, Trump's National Guard Deployment Is Entrenched in DC
What began as an emergency response to an assault on a former DOGE staffer has become a sustained, $1.4 billion military presence in the nation's capital.
A year after President Donald Trump mobilized roughly 800 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., the deployment has become a fixture of the capital, with no clear end date and a projected cost of $1.4 billion through the remainder of his term, ABC News was first to report.
Trump ordered the mobilization on Aug. 11, 2025, eight days after the assault and attempted carjacking of Edward Coristine, a 20-year-old programmer known as "Big Balls" who had worked for Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. Trump described a city overwhelmed by violence, even though violent crime in Washington had fallen to its lowest level in 30 years, according to the Justice Department.
The mission, called "Make DC Safe and Beautiful," grew quickly. Roughly 4,000 troops from states and territories are now deployed, down from a summer peak of about 5,000 tied to America's 250th anniversary events. That number is expected to settle between 2,500 and 3,000 troops.
The sustained presence is a sharp break from historical precedent, when domestic deployments were reserved for brief periods of unrest or disaster, such as roughly 20,000 troops sent to Washington after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Two soldiers were killed in an attack near the White House last year.
Similar deployments to Los Angeles and Chicago became tangled in legal challenges and were withdrawn, but Trump has broader authority in Washington, where the Guard operates under a unique legal framework and answers directly to the president.
Brig. Gen. Leland Blanchard II, the interim commander of the D.C. National Guard, said troops mostly patrol tourist corridors and transit hubs where crime is low, freeing police to focus on higher-crime areas. He said guardsmen have responded to about 800 medical emergencies, including administering Narcan 325 times.
The Guard has struggled at times to staff the rotation, in part because Democratic-led states have resisted participating. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer threatened to pull her state's troops if they were redirected from July Fourth event support to the broader security mission.
A senator criticized the approach, saying the money would be better spent funding the D.C. police department directly to hire trained officers.
This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI), in accordance with our editorial policy.
