President Trump and the Pentagon are considering creating a full time “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” that could be called on to quash civil unrest and protest at a moment’s notice, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
The force would be made up of about 600 National Guards troops, half of which would be based on military bases in Alabama and Arizona, ready at all times to fly into any given city or state to lay down Trump’s law. They’d have military-style weapons and riot gear,dispatch from their bases in waves of 100 soldiers, and cycle out after 90 days to “limit burnout.”
The Pentagon documents did list concerns regarding the reduced availability of the National Guard, the program’s cost, logistics, “Public and Political Impact,” and other negative external impacts this program could cause.
Trump is allowed to call upon the National Guard like this under two federal codes, Title 10 and Title 32. While Title 10 gives the president jurisdiction to order the National Guard to aid local police without making any arrests or leading any investigations, Trump would primarily employ Title 32 for this force. That would authorize him to use the Guard’s federally funded status to expand their powers in states with “unrest,”allowing them to make arrests and act more aggressively in general. Trump also invoked Title 32 during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.
If approved, and if it follows the traditional budgetary process, this program would begin in 2027, costing hundreds of millions. But it’s not clear whether Trump would try to speed up that process.
This reporting comes just a day after Trump announced his plans to seize control of Washington, D.C.’s police force in an invocation of Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973. He threatened increased police force and presence to “clean up” homeless people and “slums,” and also announced the deployment of 800 National Guardsmen into the city.
Trump is weaponizing the military on his own whims, shaping the National Guard into a private, militant police force that answers to him and him only. And it seems like no one can do anything about it. He already sent more than 5,000 Guardsmen and active-duty Marines to California in June to shut down protests against his immigration crackdown.
“You don’t want to normalize routine military participation in law enforcement,” Brennan Center for Justice lawyer Joseph Nunn told the Post. “You don’t want to normalize routine domestic deployment.”
Trump is doing exactly that with this “reaction force,” manufacturing emergencies and inflating crime numbers, all with the end goal of having a branch of the military at his immediate beck and call.
“There is a well-established procedure that exists to request additional assistance during times of need,” Carter Elliot, spokesman for Maryland Governor Wes Moore, told the Post. “And the Trump administration is blatantly and dangerously ignoring that precedent.”
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