By AJ Vicens
(Reuters) -The Republican governors of West Virginia and South Carolina are deploying hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., at the request of the administration of President Donald Trump, who has portrayed the nation’s capital as awash in crime.
West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey’s office said in a statement on Saturday he was deploying 300 to 400 National Guard troops to D.C. in “a show of commitment to public safety and regional cooperation.” The statement said he also was providing equipment and specialized training.
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster responded to a Pentagon request by announcing late on Saturday that 200 of his state’s National Guard troops would be sent.
Trump, a Republican, said this week he was deploying hundreds of D.C. National Guard troops to Washington and temporarily taking over the Democratic-led city’s police department to curb what he depicted as a crime and homelessness emergency.
Justice Department data, however, showed violent crime in 2024 hit a 30-year low in Washington, technically a self-governing federal district under the jurisdiction of Congress.
The announcement of more troops from two Republican-controlled states hundreds of miles away came a day after D.C. officials and the Trump administration negotiated a deal to keep Mayor Muriel Bowser’s appointed police chief, Pamela Smith, in charge of the police department after D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit to block the federal takeover of the department.
In June Trump ordered 700 Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles, against the wishes of California’s Democratic governor, during protests over mass immigration raids by federal officials.
South Carolina’s McMaster said his troops would immediately return to South Carolina if needed to respond to a possible hurricane or other natural disaster. Hurricane Erin, now northeast of Puerto Rico, has become a catastrophic Category 5 storm that could bring ocean swells to the U.S. East Coast early next week, the U.S. National Hurricane Center on Saturday.
National Guard troops often respond to natural disasters and rarely police U.S. civilians.
TROOPS TO OTHER CITIES?
Drew Galang, a spokesperson for West Virginia’s Morrisey, said the state’s National Guard received the order to send equipment and personnel to D.C. late on Friday and was working to organize the deployment.
A White House official said on Saturday that more National Guard troops would be called in to Washington to “protect federal assets, create a safe environment for law enforcement officials to carry out their duties when required, and provide a visible presence to deter crime.”
A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said a formal order was expected to go out that would authorize National Guard troops in D.C. to carry firearms. The official said this order would affect mostly military police officers with sidearms. Reuters has reported that the National Guard troops would have weapons nearby, such as in their vehicles.
The White House said on Saturday that D.C. National Guard members have conducted patrols on foot and in vehicles around the National Mall and Union Station. The White House said the National Guard troops are not making arrests now and that they may be armed.
Trump, who has suggested he could take similar actions in other Democratic-controlled cities, has sought to expand the powers of the presidency in his second term, inserting himself into the affairs of major banks, law firms and elite universities.
It is not clear how the administration could deploy National Guard troops elsewhere. A federal judge in San Francisco is expected in the coming weeks to issue a ruling on whether Trump violated the law with the Los Angeles deployments.
The National Guard serves as a militia that answers to the governors of the 50 states except when called into federal service. The D.C. National Guard reports directly to the president.
(Reporting by AJ Vicens in Detroit and Richard Cowan in Washington; Editing by Donna Bryson, Matthew Lewis, Paul Simao and William Mallard)
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