Imposing federal control in Washington out of the mission of the “National Guard”

US President Donald Trump’s decision to impose federal control over the “Washington DC” force, and to deploy the National Guard forces for the patrol of the capital, a departure from the ruling norms.

Since Trump, last week, hundreds of National Guard forces have deployed in the streets of the capital, while hundreds of other days are expected to arrive in the coming days.

The National Guard is a military branch different from others, as its soldiers are subject to the governments of the states and the federal government, but the president has the authority to activate the National Guard of the state, without cooperation from the ruler, and since “Washington, DC” does not enjoy the state, the National Guard follows the president directly.

The presence of the National Guard forces was familiar in times of crisis. It is often deployed to help in the cases of disastrous weather and riots, and even used even during the repercussions of the Corona virus.

During the 2020 ethnic justice protests, which followed the killing of American citizen George Floyd, dozens of states, the National Guard, summoned to assist local law enforcement authorities, including in Washington, DC, where more than 5,000 soldiers, on Trump’s orders, were patrols in the city to largely monitor peaceful protests.

However, the US President’s decision to impose the federal regime as a comprehensive reaction to the crime in Washington, DC, which he repeatedly described as “out of control”, despite the significant decrease in the crime rate in the city, is a departure from the intended mission of the National Guard.

It is not uncommon for the rulers of states or the president, the National Guard in times of turmoil, but this was not always the case.

The founders of the American nation were initially cautious about military intervention in internal affairs, and the lawyer in the Program of the Freedom and National Security of the Brennan Center, which focuses on the American army, Joseph Nun: “Their decisive experience in the local deployment of the army was the Boston massacre, and the accommodation of the forces in private homes,” referring to the events of March 1770 in Boston.

He added, “The constitution’s authors were very skeptical of using military force, to the point that sharp discussions took place at the Constitutional Conference on whether it should be allowed to establish a permanent national army, or whether the new state should rely exclusively on the state militias.”

In the end, the founding parents decided that the state militias should be deployed in internal affairs only in emergency situations, and it is a precedent of what was later known as the “National Guard”.

President Abraham Lincoln called on state militias at the beginning of the civil war to help fight the Confederation in the south.

In modern history, American presidents were usually subjected to the wishes of the rulers to assess the necessity of the presence of the National Guard, but during the civil rights movement, presidents on some occasions used their authority to cancel the rights of states to activate the National Guard.

In 1965, President Lindon Johnson practiced his authority to control the National Guard in Alabama, to protect civil rights defenders who were walking from “Silma” to the state capital, “Montgomery”.

Over the course of 60 years, that was the last time that an American president, a governor of a state, and asked to deploy its forces, as President Trump broke this ancient tradition this year, by deploying thousands of National Guard forces in California in Los Angeles, in response to the protests against immigration raids, which is rare, according to the lawyer. About NPR

. American presidents in modern history are usually submitted to rulers’ desires to assess the need for the existence of the National Guard.