Trump sends authoritarian signal by extending D.C.’s National Guard presence

President Donald Trump’s authoritarian publicity stunt of deploying members of the National Guard throughout Washington, D.C., will continue through the end of his term, MS NOW has confirmed.

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The news, which was originally reported by ABC News, comes as Trump and his allies launch numerous illiberal gambits to try to impose their will on electoral processes in ways that give Republicans an advantage.

At this point, it seems obvious that Trump’s wasteful Guard deployment in the nation’s capital serves little purpose other than to fuel his own delusions that he is a kinglike figure and to act on his campaign vows to “take over” Washington, which is just one of several largely Black cities that he has portrayed as overrun with crime. During the 2024 presidential race, Trump falsely said D.C. is a “nightmare of murder and crime,” and he has since repeatedly spread misinformation about the city’s crime to justify his troop deployment.

In reality, various studies have shown that the deployment of the National Guard has had virtually no impact on violent crime in Washington. Furthermore, a recent study from the Center for American Progress found that Trump’s National Guard deployments across the country have failed on this front, not just in D.C.

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“Moreover, if these deployments are extended and continue through the end of 2026, they could cost American taxpayers more than $1.7 billion,” the liberal activist group’s analysis found.

The waste has been clear in photos, too. As my colleague Steve Benen noted last summer, we’ve seen images of Guard members picking up trash in uniform, which certainly doesn’t seem like an efficient use of the armed forces.

What the deployment has done, however, is set Americans’ tax dollars on fire while subjecting Guard members to public backlash and mockery as they have effectively been turned into toy soldiers for a president who has mused about a Constitution-defying third term. And now Trump’s regime is planning to keep troops on the streets of the nation’s capital through the time when he’s scheduled to leave office.

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Every part of this story screams “dictator-in-waiting.” Americans should beware.