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Why does Trump want the National Guard doing crowd control?
Trump’s National Guard “quick reaction forces,” briefly explained.
Cameron Peters is a staff editor at Vox.
Welcome to The Logoff: The Pentagon is moving to create new National Guard “quick reaction forces” to be used for crowd control around the country.
What’s happening? National Guard quick reaction forces aren’t new, but the focus on crowd control — “quelling civil disturbances” — is. Existing quick reaction units focus primarily on responding to natural disasters, and aren’t intended for nationwide deployment on short notice.
The creation of these new units dates back to an August executive order, but new reporting this week sheds light on the plan’s implementation. The forces will consist of about 23,500 total National Guard troops across 50 states and three territories, and are intended to be operational by the start of 2026.
What’s the context? President Donald Trump has already expanded the domestic use of National Guard troops in unprecedented ways, deploying soldiers to Washington, DC, Chicago, and other cities — including, briefly, to Portland, Oregon, despite a federal court order to the contrary.
Many deployments have come over the objections of state leaders, including in several cases where Trump has sent Guard troops from one state into another. Both the Chicago and Portland Guard deployments are currently on pause pending litigation; if the Supreme Court sides with Trump, my colleague Ian Millhiser recently wrote, it “could turn the National Guard into Trump’s personal army.”
Why does this matter? Trump has long expressed an eagerness to deploy the US military against Americans, dating back to his first term in office when he reportedly asked if soldiers could “just shoot” racial justice protesters.
More recently, he told reporters this week that he could “send the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. I could send anybody I wanted” into American cities, apparently a reference to the Insurrection Act.
What’s the big picture? The Trump administration’s National Guard deployments already represent an extraordinary extension of US military force domestically. The Pentagon planning documents reported this week suggest those deployments may only be the start.
And with that, it’s time to log off…
Hi readers, here’s a cool weather phenomenon for your evening. In New Zealand earlier this month, three photographers hoping to capture the Milky Way ended up seeing something much more rare: “red sprites,” a type of electrical discharge more than 30 miles above the planet. They’re extraordinary to look at, especially with the Milky Way overhead. You can see photos and read the New York Times story about them here (it’s a gift link). Thanks for reading, have a great evening, and we’ll see you tomorrow!
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