General Discussion

“I think it’s nice, as a D.C. resident,” said one Guard member. “But there are different things we could be doing.”

More than 2,200 troops, some from as far away as Mississippi and Louisiana, have been deployed in D.C. since Trump’s declaration of a “crime emergency” here. Ostensibly, they were mobilized to support federal law enforcement and local police, but in recent days those orders have expanded to encompass “beautification” tasks such as trash removal and groundskeeping around the National Mall and other federal property. Service members may work on removing graffiti, too.

Typically, custodial work like this falls to the National Park Service, which was already facing staffing shortfalls when the Trump administration this spring directed additional cuts as it gutted the federal workforce. The service used to have 200 people assigned to maintain thousands of acres of trees and gardens in D.C., and now there are 20, a Park Service official told The Post......

Joint Task Force-D.C., which has overseen the Guard’s activities in Washington since Trump declared the crime emergency Aug. 11, said that service members will be working on more than 40 “beautification projects” throughout the city that were identified with input from local and federal agencies. Though the Pentagon has authorized those participating in the deployment to carry weapons, for now troops on cleanup duty will not be armed, an official with the task force said. ......

Pulling Guard members — civilians often with full-time jobs who report for duty once a month and then for two weeks a year — for such missions comes with a trade-off. The time they would have spent focusing on training in their military specialty or participating in battle drills may be spent on groundskeeping or urban foot patrols instead.