The Pentagon has ordered thousands of specialized National Guard personnel to complete civil unrest mission training over the next several months, an indication that the Trump administration’s effort to send uniformed military forces into urban centers – once reserved for extraordinary emergencies – could become the norm.
The Defense Department’s newly established “quick reaction force” within the National Guard must be trained, equipped with riot-control gear and ready for deployment by Jan. 1, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The 200 troops will be drawn from National Guard personnel whose primary focus is responding to disasters like nuclear accidents and terrorist attacks, the documents said.
An existing separate but similar structure, the National Guard Reaction Force, is expected to complete civil unrest training and be fully operational by April 1. The total size of the force will be 23,500 troops across all 50 states and three territories, excluding the District of Columbia, the documents say. Most states will supply 500 personnel for the reaction force, with the rest falling between 250 and 450.
Those forces are typically used for emergencies like disaster relief, not on call troops for civil unrest.
The mandate, along with the growing presence of federal and immigration enforcement officers, suggests further military deployments within the United States could grow in size and scope. The deployments, which President Donald Trump has described as a bid to quell violence and crime, have infuriated Democratic governors in multiple states, who have fought the president’s deployments through litigation.
The Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment. A defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe military planning, said the Pentagon is “revising plans for the employment of [National Guard Reaction Forces] to guarantee their ability to assist federal, state and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances.” The Guardian earlier reported details of the documents.
Trump has mobilized thousands of National Guard members in D.C., Los Angeles and Memphis, with deployments to Chicago and Portland, Oregon, delayed by court decisions. He has claimed unfettered authority to deploy military personnel onto American soil, including active duty troops, which by law are prohibited from performing law enforcement duties except in extreme cases or if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.
“We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled,” Trump told assembled service members in Japan on Tuesday. “And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities.”
Trump later told reporters: “The courts wouldn’t get involved. Nobody would get involved. And I could send the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. I could send anybody I wanted.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Trump administration and Illinois officials for additional briefs on their dispute over whether the president can send troops to Chicago, pushing a decision on the matter into mid-November at the earliest. That follows a federal appeals court that said Tuesday it would take a second look at whether Trump can send National Guard troops to Portland, tossing out a ruling last week from a three-judge panel that had authorized the deployment.
The mobilizations, critics have said, could corrode the military’s core mission by turning U.S. troops into foot soldiers fighting the president’s war of political grievance.
“They are increasing their ability to mobilize National Guard forces, federalize them and use them over the opposition of localities and governors,” said Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Pentagon documents obtained by The Post this summer outlined plans to develop a National Guard “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” that could rapidly deploy troops nationwide to counter civil unrest on short notice. The proposal called for troops from multiple states to be on standby at all times, split between military bases in Arizona and Alabama. The plan described the potential for political friction should a state’s governor refuse to work with the Pentagon, and considerable strain on budgets and personnel to keep them on standby.
The White House announced the creation of the quick reaction force in August. The new documents said the force size would be 200 personnel drawn from troops under the Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear Assistance Support Element.
Those troops are specially trained to respond to various man-made and natural disasters and any accompanying civil unrest. The first wave of those troops would be ready to mobilize within eight hours, the documents said, with the full force ready in a day. The documents outline training with Tasers and pepper spray, and require each unit to have 100 sets of crowd-control gear on hand.
The federalized quick reaction force would complement the National Guard Reaction Force, whose troops are on standby for emergencies typically within their own state, according to a National Guard fact sheet.
The National Guard Reaction Force has existed nationwide for about two decades, the defense official said, declining to confirm the size of the force but saying it was already close to the 23,500 number noted in the documents.
While the courts have at times contested Trump’s domestic military deployments, Congress has abdicated its overnight responsibility, Schake said, prompting larger concerns of institutional decay.
“They’re behaving like a parliament, not like a presidential system,” she said. “And it’s going to break the American order, our constitutional order, if Congress and governors can’t check executive power.”
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Mark Berman contributed to this report.
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