The Alaska National Guard was set to send 100 Army and Air National Guard service members to the District this month, but their deployment has been pushed back to May.
Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll requested the deployment from Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, for Guard training in site security, checkpoints, civil disturbance control and critical infrastructure protection, Alaska’s News Source reported. No written directive was found.
The deployment is part of the Pentagon’s broader national effort to prepare National Guard members in all 50 states to train for “civil disturbance operations.”
As of January, 2,700 National Guard troops from across the country are deployed in the nation’s capital, following a directive from President Trump last summer to help drive down crime in the city.
In an interview on Wednesday, Rep. Andrew Gray of Alaska questioned the legality of the deployment. He argued that without a written directive, there should be no formal deployment, and he called it a “misuse of taxpayer dollars.”
Federal courts have repeatedly ruled the Guard deployments in other cities unlawful and have blocked them, finding such deployments are permissible only in cases of rebellion or invasion. The Justice Department has fought those rulings in court, appealing the decisions to keep the deployments in place.
