By Nathaniel "Beltway" Steele
One year after President Trump ordered National Guard troops and federal agents into the streets of Washington, D.C., the deployment has proven expensive — and its effectiveness remains genuinely debatable, according to the New York Times.
The Times' review does not settle whether the show of force reduced crime, deterred disorder, or simply cost taxpayers money without a clear return; it frames the results as contested rather than conclusive, and this article follows that lead rather than pretending otherwise.
The anniversary arrives alongside other consequential moves in the capital. The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered a three-hour closure of a D.C.-area airport for a Grand Prix event, one of several disruptions tied to the nation's 250th-anniversary observances, the Times reported. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has renamed Joint Base Charleston as Joint Base Lindsey Graham, honoring the South Carolina senator, who served as a judge advocate general before retiring as a colonel in 2015.
Taken together, the moves reflect an administration willing to use federal power — military, aviation, and now naming rights — visibly and often, in the capital and beyond. What any of it costs, in dollars or in precedent, is a harder question than a press release will answer. The Times' own accounting of the Guard deployment's price tag was not fully detailed in the reporting available to us, and we flag that gap rather than guess at a figure.
— Compiled from reporting by the New York Times.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."