The National Guard is a concerning, weaponized force
- Matilda Ziegler
- Sep 11
- 2 min read
Despite the fact that, according to a Sept. 1 New York Times article, many cities in red states (such as Memphis, Tennessee) have much higher rates of crime and homicide than our nation’s capital, President Trump issued an executive order entitled “Additional Measures to Address the Crime Emergency in the District of Columbia” on Aug. 25.
In section d(ii) of the order, Trump orders “the Secretary of Defense shall immediately begin ensuring that each State’s Army National Guard and Air National Guard are resourced, trained, organized, and available to assist Federal, State, and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety and order whenever the circumstances necessitate, as appropriate under law.”
As a historian, I find section d(ii) incredibly concerning. Trump’s training of soldiers specifically to “quell civil disturbances” reminds me of the Kent State Massacre; especially in a time like today, where, according to Time magazine, the vast majority of protests are peaceful. In this instance, armed National Guard troops fired on unarmed and peaceful college students. Precedents such as those set by the Kent State Massacre, or those set by the response to BLM protesters in Portland, Oregon, along with Trump’s long history of autocratic behavior, tells us that “quelling civil disturbances” is likely less about safety and more about quashing anti-Trump protests.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in Portland, Oregon, in 2020, racial justice protesters were beaten, shot and abducted by federal law enforcement that was sent to Oregon by Donald Trump to “quell a civil disturbance.” According to an ACLU of Oregon Jan. 21 article titled “Racial Justice Protesters who were Beat, Shot, and Abducted by Feds Settle Lawsuit with U.S. Government,” the types of chemical weapons that were unleashed by the Trump administration upon Portlanders exercising their constitutional right to free speech are banned under international law due to their “severe and indiscriminate impact on human life and health.”
Nichol Denison, one of the clients of the ACLU who was affected by these weapons, who is also a veteran of the United States military, said, “it shocked the conscience that this level of force was used against veterans, moms, and other nonviolent protesters. The way our own government treated us violated everything we learned in the military.”
Reader, the fact that this level of force was unnecessarily used by Donald Trump’s administration against other human beings does not bode well for the future of our nation’s capital. Trump has shown he is willing to weaponize the military to attack those he is supposed to serve.
D.C. will not go down without a fight. The city’s Attorney General, who believes Trump has “run roughshod over a fundamental tenet of American democracy — the military should not be involved in domestic law enforcement,” has announced Washington is suing the Trump Administration for its arguably unconstitutional “involuntary military occupation.
The future is bright for the aforementioned legal challenger – according to CBS News, a federal judge has ruled Trump’s deployment of National Guard soldiers to Los Angeles violated federal law.
Due to the precedent set by this ruling, it is likely that Trump’s administration will be unable to continue to “run roughshod" over our democracy.
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