JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Today marks one year of President Trump's anti-crime deployment of the National Guard here in Washington, D.C. It's the longest and largest of his domestic military deployments, and it's challenging democratic norms in a way that has many experts and residents concerned. NPR's Kat Lonsdorf has been following this deployment from the beginning, and she's in our D.C. studios now. Hi.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Hey.
SUMMERS: So, Kat, I mean, there have been armed troops patrolling the streets here in D.C. for a year now. For people who haven't been here, like you and I have, can you just give people a sense of what that looks and feels like?
LONSDORF: Yeah. I mean, those patrols have really become ubiquitous in a lot of neighborhoods in the cities now. The number of guard members has steadily increased throughout the year. It started at around 800, and now we're at nearly 5,000 from more than 20 different states. Just to give you an idea of kind of what that means, I counted how many I saw on my 40-minute walk into work today - 26. Their presence has become very routine in the city. Sometimes you'll see people interact with them. But generally, life in D.C. has kind of settled around this new norm.
SUMMERS: But there has been pushback here in D.C. to the deployment as well, right?
LONSDORF: Yeah, absolutely. But D.C. is in a unique situation since it's not a state. Local officials, from the mayor to the city council, have come out against this deployment. Activists have also been very vocal against it. And like all of Trump's domestic National Guard deployments in the past year or so, this deployment has been challenged in court, but it's with a federal appeals court now. Those judges have suggested the administration is likely to win. And many residents here are frustrated because they feel like this has been forced on them, and there's no recourse. Adding to that is the fact that this deployment was quietly extended until January 20, Inauguration Day, 2029. So there will likely be thousands of troops patrolling the city for another 2.5 more years.
SUMMERS: Let's zoom out for a second, to the bigger picture beyond...
LONSDORF: Yeah.
SUMMERS: ...D.C. What are the concerns there?
LONSDORF: Yeah. Many of the experts I've been talking to over the past year - legal experts, former military officials - are really worried that this extended deployment is normalizing armed uniform troops in American cities during nonemergency situations. Here's Beau Tremitiere, a counsel at the nonprofit legal center Protect Democracy.
BEAU TREMITIERE: A normalized, ongoing, yearslong deployment in D.C. makes it much easier for the government to attempt to deploy troops in other communities.
LONSDORF: Particularly in places where state leadership might agree to such a deployment. There are already similar federal anti-crime National Guard deployments in Memphis and New Orleans. Trump has repeatedly called them a success, despite a lack of evidence. Two different studies have found that the National Guard presence here in D.C. has had no effect on violent crime, but Trump has said repeatedly he wants to replicate such deployments elsewhere. And many of the people I've been talking to are particularly worried about what that means for upcoming elections. Here's retired Air Force Major General Steven Lepper. He's a former military lawyer.
STEVEN LEPPER: All Americans should be concerned about this progression toward the use of the military in situations like the midterms that will essentially impose the will of the people commanding those forces on our fellow citizens.
LONSDORF: He is part of a group of former military lawyers that recently sent Congress a report outlining such concerns.
SUMMERS: And those concerns, Kat, are they that realistic?
LONSDORF: Well, there are very clear and strict federal laws in place that prevent the military from being used around polling places. Republicans have dismissed such concerns as alarmist. But, you know, I've had a lot of conversations over the past year about this deployment and increasingly, they lead to worries about the midterm elections very quickly.
SUMMERS: NPR's Kat Lonsdorf, thank you.
LONSDORF: Thank you.
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