One year after President Trump deployed National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., for a claimed crime emergency, the forces remain in place with plans to stay until the end of his term, transforming a temporary measure into a standing military presence that performs civilian functions such as patrols, arrests support, and even beautification work. 

This normalization of soldiers on American streets blurs the constitutional separation between military and civilian roles, violates the spirit of the Posse Comitatus Act, and risks turning the armed forces into a presidential national police force. 

The deployment establishes a dangerous precedent that conditions the public to accept military force for domestic political purposes, undermines civil liberties, and threatens the fundamental distinction between a constitutional republic and a police-state presidency.

The National Guard was just the beginning.

One year after President Trump deployed military troops to the nation’s capital, we find ourselves navigating a posse comitatus presidency in which the visual trappings of martial law are the norm, not the exception.

The Founders warned against standing armies on American soil, fearing that the military might someday be used not to defend the people but to control them. They understood something Americans are being encouraged to forget: soldiers and police serve fundamentally different purposes.

When the president sends troops to police domestic unrest that civilian authorities are capable of handling, he crosses a dangerous constitutional line.

When soldiers are stationed indefinitely on American streets, assisting police operations, patrolling subway stations, tourist attractions, neighborhoods and parks, that line becomes even harder to see.

When troops become so commonplace that they are used for everything from snow removal and medical emergencies to groundskeeping and beautification projects, something more insidious happens.

Military occupation begins to look normal.

And when the president uses that military presence as a demonstration of his personal power over the nation’s capital, the warning embedded in the Posse Comitatus Act becomes impossible to ignore.

The military is not supposed to be the president’s national police force.

Yet that is increasingly what Donald Trump is turning it into.

One year ago, when Trump declared a supposed “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C., called in the National Guard, unleashed federal law enforcement throughout the city and temporarily seized control of the Metropolitan Police Department, we warned that the police state had found a new playbook: martial law, one city at a time.

The emergency is long over.

The troops never left.

Now the Pentagon says the National Guard deployment can remain in Washington until January 20, 2029—the final day of Trump’s presidency—unless Trump himself decides to terminate it sooner.

That is not an emergency response.

That is a standing military presence.

The government expects American taxpayers to spend another $1.4 billion maintaining it.

What began in August 2025 as an extraordinary response to a supposedly “extraordinary” crime crisis has become part of the architecture of everyday government.

Thousands of military personnel have remained deployed in the capital. Armed Guard members patrol streets, Metro stations, parks and tourist attractions. They have supported arrest operations. They have responded to medical calls.........

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