Over the weekend, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster authorized the deployment of 200 South Carolina National Guard troops to participate in President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of Washington, D.C.
“President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard is an intimidation tactic by an authoritarian administration, and Governor McMaster is complicit,” said ACLU of South Carolina Executive Director Jace Woodrum. “The President has once again demonstrated his willingness to use our military against our country’s own people. Governor McMaster is empowering this extraordinary abuse of power instead of keeping our troops at home where they’re needed.”
The Trump administration called National Guard units to the nation’s capital last week under the pretext of crime control, despite violent crime in the District being at a 30-year low. The Wall Street Journal has reported that National Guard troops may receive orders “to start carrying weapons in the coming days.” As the national ACLU has warned, National Guard troops are generally not trained in local policing or de-escalation and should never be used for federal immigration purposes.
The ACLU of the District of Columbia has also condemned the actions of the Trump administration and of the governors who authorized National Guard deployments to Washington D.C. In a statement on Sunday, ACLU of the District of Columbia Executive Director Monica Hopkins said the following:
“The deployment of out-of-state National Guard troops and more federal agents onto D.C. streets is a brazen abuse of power meant to intimidate and create fear in the nation’s capital. This is an unnecessary overstep to micromanage D.C. under a phony emergency, causing real harm to residents and visitors — all to advance the Trump administration’s political agenda. The ACLU-D.C. will continue to monitor the use of D.C. police and federal law enforcement to ensure that the constitutional rights of our community are protected. We need the nation to join us in the fight for statehood so that D.C. residents are treated like those in every other state and have the same guardrails against federal overreach.”
