An American City, With Troops on Its Streets

The sight of military troops patrolling in a peaceful American city would once have been strange, if not outright alarming.

But since last August, when Donald Trump first deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., residents have become accustomed to seeing men and women in camouflage military fatigues on duty throughout the city and its public-transit system.

Sometimes, they trail federal officers from agencies such as the FBI and U.S.

Marshals Service, dispatched by Trump to patrol the district in bulletproof vests.

More often, the troops wander around unaccompanied, in small groups.

D.C. has now entered its second year with federal troops on its streets.

President Trump initially ordered the Guard into the capital city, sent federal agents to work as beat cops, and briefly seized control of D.C.’s local police department following the attempted carjacking of a former member of Elon Musk’s DOGE team.

The early days of the D.C.

Safe and Beautiful Task Force produced dramatic headlines.

As the year dragged on, though, its activities faded from national news coverage, even as armed troops and federal agents continued to patrol.

The Pentagon says it plans to keep the Guard in D.C. through January 2029—which will cost taxpayers more than $1 billion.

For all that money, the Guard’s purpose here is largely inscrutable.

“They don’t bother nobody; they just go back and forth, and back and forth,” Aundrea’ Pulliam, a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority employee at the Dupont Circle Metro stop, told us. (As we spoke, a few Guard members walked by, heading toward the escalators.) Occasionally, Pulliam said, she has seen Guards help a rider who’s “super drunk,” or check out an abandoned backpack.

But most of the time, a station manager, Deidra Foster, told us, it seems like “they’re really bored.” Whereas other American cities targeted by Trump with National Guard deployments found success in court, D.C.’s lack of statehood limits its ability to fight back.