Where are the police? Is the police force and now the national guard not controlled by the DC Mayor's office?
I don't understand how they weather 1000 protests a year in the capitol and weren't prepared for this.
I don't understand how they weather 1000 protests a year in the capitol and weren't prepared for this.
No. National Guard units are normally controlled by state governors, but since DC is not a state and has no governor, the DC National Guard is the only guard unit that reports directly to the president [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_National_...
> Because D.C. does not have a governor, the designated commander of the city’s National Guard is Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy. Any D.C. requests for Guard deployments have to be approved by him.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-politics-e...
In any event, where are the Capitol Police? How were they not prepared for this?
> Supervision and control of D.C. National Guard was delegated by the president to the defense secretary pursuant to Executive Order 10030, 26 January 1949 with authority to designate National Military Establishment officials to administer affairs of the D.C. National Guard. The Army secretary was directed to act in all matters pertaining to the ground component, and the Air Force secretary was directed to act in all matters pertaining to the air component.
> The National Guard may be called into federal service in response to a call by the president or Congress.
So control is apparently shared in some way between the president, secdef, congress, and secretaries of the army and air force. But it does seem that the Army secretary's authority is delegated by the president, who remains the "commander in chief" of the guard unit.
Of course the president is commander in chief of all guard units when they're called into federal service, but I wonder if service in DC is considered "federal" in that sense. DC is a federal entity, but a guard unit serving its home jurisdiction isn't usually what's meant by "federal service".
Military organization is weird.
In any case, it's not controlled by the mayor of DC. She can only request an activation (which she did).
It would sure be nice if these kind of histrionics stayed off of HN.
Don’t be disparaging. This is a real conversation even if you don’t like what it brings to light.
An actual alternative narrative is that the executive branch willfully did not defend the capital. That makes this a more standard coup.
Yes, our military does not do that. That is the job of law enforcement. Look up the Posse Comitatus Act.
There's a lot to be said about the evils of the military industrial complex, but you're making that point in the worst possible way. Complaining that your tax dollars are being wasted because the military is too lazy to perform duties that they are explicitly not allowed to perform for very good reasons does not bring anything to light.
> An actual alternative narrative is that the executive branch willfully did not defend the capital.
It isn't a matter of narrative, it is a simple fact that the executive branch chose not to authorize an exception to Posse Comitatus in this case, which is what the National Guard does and requires specific authorization each and every time. Without that authorization, the military has no more authority in D.C. than the NYPD does. It's quite simply outside of their jurisdiction.
This was either an unforgivable lack of intelligence/preparation OR another example of the gross disparity in treatment between the armed MAGA crowd and for instance black Americans and BLM protestors.
As a comparison, the feds deployed thousands of officers in the District and across the county during BLM protests, often times pushing beyond fed building perimeters which many don't think is legal. Some of the videos with scary unmarked officers/arrests which are terrifying. I use this photo as an example of the crazy policing Trump ordered to scare voters
https://s.abcnews.com/images/US/national-guard-lincoln-memor...