Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered that National Guard troops patrolling the streets of D.C. for President Donald Trump’s crackdown will be armed, the Pentagon said Friday.
The Defense Department didn’t immediately offer any other details about the new development or why it was needed.
The step is a escalation in Trump’s intervention into policing in the nation’s capital and comes as nearly 2,000 National Guard members are stationed in the city, with the arrival this week of hundreds of troops from several Republican-led states.
