# National Guard The **National Guard** is the dual-status reserve component of the U.S. military — soldiers and airmen who normally serve under the command of their **state governors** (the Army National Guard and Air National Guard of each state), but who can be **federalized** and placed under presidential command. This dual character is the whole story: a Guard unit can operate in three modes — **state active duty** (governor commands, state pays), **Title 32** (federally funded but still under the governor, and **not** subject to the [[Posse Comitatus Act]]), or **Title 10** (federalized, under the president, subject to [[Posse Comitatus]]). Who controls the Guard, and under which authority, determines what it can lawfully do. For the KB, the National Guard is the **central institution of the domestic-military-deployment confrontations** of the second term — the place where the [[Insurrection Act]], the [[Posse Comitatus Act]], and the limits of presidential power over the states all collide. It is the most KB-relevant military body precisely because it is the one most likely to be turned inward, against American cities and protesters. ## The 2025 domestic-deployment fights The administration repeatedly sought to deploy the Guard into U.S. cities — framed variously as crackdowns on protests, crime, homelessness, and illegal immigration: - **Los Angeles (June 2025)** — Trump federalized ~2,000 California National Guard troops under **Title 10 (10 U.S.C. § 12406)** on June 7, 2025, over the objection of Governor Newsom — a rare federalization of a state's Guard against the governor's will. On **September 2, 2025**, a federal judge ruled the deployment had **illegally used troops for law enforcement in violation of the [[Posse Comitatus Act]]**. - **Chicago and Portland (fall 2025)** — attempted deployments were **blocked by the courts**. The Supreme Court **rejected the administration's emergency appeal**, keeping the block on the Chicago deployment in place; the courts reasoned that the Title 10 federalization authority did not apply because Trump had not invoked the [[Insurrection Act]] — the only path to using federalized troops for actual law enforcement. - **San Francisco (Oct 2025), called off without a court.** Trump said on Oct 19 he would send troops. Federal agents were staged at Coast Guard Island in Alameda for a surge set for Oct 25. On Oct 23 he called it off after phone calls from Mayor [[Daniel Lurie]], [[Jensen Huang]] and [[Marc Benioff]]. It was the one city stopped by private access to the president rather than by a judge. See [[San Francisco Federal Surge Reversal]]. - **Washington, D.C.** — deployments there leveraged the federal government's unique control over the District, sidestepping the governor problem. - **Wind-down** — on December 31, 2025, the administration announced it would end the LA, Portland, and Chicago efforts; troops were withdrawn in January 2026. ## The D.C. Extension Through 2029 While the city deployments were wound down, the **Washington, D.C. activation persisted** — and expanded. On **July 10, 2026**, a Pentagon official told WJLA that the National Guard presence in the District would remain in place through **Inauguration Day 2029** — the end of Trump's term. The announcement transforms what was framed as a temporary security posture into a **standing military presence in the capital for the duration of the presidency**, an arrangement with no precedent in the modern era outside of wartime. The D.C. deployment sidesteps the governor problem (the District has no governor; the federal government controls it directly) and the [[Posse Comitatus Act]] constraints that blocked deployments elsewhere. Combined with the courts' repeated rejection of the city deployments, the result is a two-track outcome: the judiciary checked the use of the Guard in states, but the administration found an unchecked lane in the federal District. See [[Political Repression]] for the broader pattern. ## The capture lens The Guard fights are the sharpest test of [[Unitary Executive Theory]] applied to coercive force: can the president commandeer state militias and put soldiers on American streets without invoking the [[Insurrection Act]] and over governors' objections? The courts repeatedly said no — making the National Guard episodes one of the few areas where the judicial check on executive overreach largely held, at least so far. Reporting indicated the deployments were not improvised but **planned in advance** and linked to the 2026 mass-deportation program. ## See Also - [[San Francisco Federal Surge Reversal]] — the SF surge called off by phone, not by court - [[National Guard Federalization Flow]] — the structural map: State Active Duty, Title 32 and Title 10 side by side, and the four statutory doors between them - [[Insurrection Act]] - [[Posse Comitatus Act]] - [[Department of Defense]] - [[Combatant Commands]] - [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]] - [[Federal Agencies]]