Armed troops have patrolled D.C. for 1 year now. It's challenging democratic norms

Thousands of National Guard members have been patrolling the streets of Washington D.C. for a year now, in an anti-crime deployment that was quietly extended until Inauguration Day of 2029. While homicides are down this year, violent crime is actually up compared to 2025, according to data from the city. "I worry about these troops standing on street corners fading into the background, and people starting to accept this as just a fact of life," says Joseph Nunn, counsel at the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security program. "Armed military personnel standing on the street corners in an American city should never be normal." Throughout the past year, the number of National Guard members deployed to D.C. – which started at around 800 – has steadily increased more than five-fold to around 4,700. The most recent influx came as part of a "summer surge" of law enforcement announced by federal officials ahead of the America 250 events in the city. Headline chart: National Guard deployment to D.C. started with 800 troops, now more than 4,500. A report last year by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that this deployment costs about $600 a day per guard member, meaning at the current troop levels, it costs roughly $3 million per day. The Pentagon recently told Congress extending the deployment will cost an additional $1.4 billion. A recent estimate from the nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog Project on Government Oversight found the total cost of the deployment until 2029 to be around $3 billion.