{"id":327642,"date":"2025-12-03T08:29:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T08:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/327642\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T08:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T08:29:10","slug":"pentagon-says-every-national-guard-soldier-deployed-in-washington-dc-is-now-armed-washington-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/327642\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon says every national guard soldier deployed in Washington DC \u2018is now armed\u2019 | Washington DC"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that every national guard member deployed in Washington DC<\/a> would now be armed with live weapons, and that they had begun conducting joint patrols with the local police department.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can confirm that everybody in DC is now armed, and a lot of our DC national guardsmen are now also doing joint patrols with members of the police department here in DC,\u201d said Kingsley Wilson, the defense department\u2019s press secretary, at a press conference.<\/p>\n

The directivefollows the ambush shooting of two guard members near the White House last week, an incident that has prompted the Trump administration<\/a> to order hundreds of additional troops to the city. One of the national guard members has since died from her injuries.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post first obtained<\/a> an email about the joint patrol with the city\u2019s Metropolitan police department last week.<\/p>\n

Wilson framed the expanded military role as a response to an \u201curgent threat\u201d facing American cities. \u201cOur mission set is critical,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cWe are keeping American cities safe all across this country, and we are going to remain committed to that. These missions aren\u2019t going to stop in Chicago, in Los Angeles, in DC.\u201d<\/p>\n

The move to arm all 2,375 estimated troops currently in the capital \u2013 with an additional 500 ordered<\/a> last week \u2013 marks a significant shift in the rules of engagement for domestic military deployments.<\/p>\n

Although all soldiers in the army national guard complete basic combat training<\/a>, which includes qualification with standard-issue rifles and sidearms, their ongoing weapons proficiency and tactical training vary widely depending on their military occupational specialty. The guard is organized<\/a> into \u201ccombat-arms\u201d, \u201ccombat support\u201d, and \u201ccombat service support\u201d units, and many guard units perform in the support role, which makes carrying live weapons for domestic use a clear risk for potential escalation.<\/p>\n

The escalation also comes as a recent order<\/a> finding the national guard deployment in Washington DC unlawful is on hold, pending consideration of the Trump administration\u2019s appeal.<\/p>\n

The Joint Task Force in DC, which oversees the national guard\u2019s deployment in the capital, told the Guardian: \u201cEvery service member is trained and qualified on their assigned weapon in accordance with Department of War standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNational guard members supporting this mission have been armed with their assigned duty weapons since August 2025, in support of civil authorities and at the request of the lead federal agency,\u201d a JTF-DC spokesperson said. \u201cTheir posture is consistent with their mission requirements, established rules for the use of force, and the training each guardsman receives to safely and professionally carry out their duties.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Wilson emphasized that \u201csafety is, of course, top of mind\u201d, the rapid arming of all reservists in DC for street-level policing brings up questions regarding training and readiness to engage in civil law enforcement.<\/p>\n

The shooting last Wednesday near the Farragut West metro station was blocks from the White House, and resulted in the killing of 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom. A second guard member, 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, remains in critical condition.<\/p>\n

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\u200bThe suspect, identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was also shot during the incident and is being treated for non-life-threatening injuries and is now facing upgraded first-degree murder charges. Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national who served in Afghanistan\u2019s CIA-backed army Zero Unit<\/a>, entered the US in 2021 following the American withdrawal from Afghanistan under Operation Allies Welcome<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u200bThe Trump administration has seized Lakanwal\u2019s ethnic background to launch a sweeping review of immigration policies. In the hours following the shooting, US Citizenship and Immigration Services indefinitely suspended<\/a> the processing of immigration requests for Afghan nationals. The DHS has since said it is expanding its review to include all asylum cases approved under the Biden administration, though it remains unclear if this targets specific nationalities beyond Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u200bThe military deployment in Washington has been a fixture in the capital since August, when the Trump administration declared a \u201ccrime emergency\u201d in an executive order.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cThe national guard is proud to step in alongside our law enforcement partners,\u201d Wilson said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pentagon said on Tuesday that every national guard member deployed in Washington DC would now be armed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-327642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}