A similar turn of events happened in June 2020, when the National Guard was sent into the streets of U.S. cities amid protests of police brutality. “Stingrays” and “dirtbags” were deployed to track cellphones. And spyplanes and Predator drones traced the skies, a world away from the war zones they were built for. 

Now, with federal agencies and entities working with military personnel under declared-emergency circumstances, new gear could enter domestic use, Tucker writes. And local officials or the civilian review boards that normally oversee police use of such technologies may lack the power to prevent or even monitor it. For example, in 2021, the D.C. government ended a facial-recognition pilot program after police used it to identify a protester at Lafayette Square. But local prohibitions don’t apply to federalized or military forces. Read more, here.

ICYMI: Trump federalized the DC police, and declared an emergency as crime hit a 30-year low. Defense One’s sister publication, GovExec explains. The New York Times and Associated Press have more.

Anatomy of a decision: Trump had long planned a takeover, the Washington Post reported Tuesday morning, with “an informal playbook for how he would use the powers of the presidency to take control of the District of Columbia, with options prepared for him such as deploying more federal law enforcement officers or taking over the entire municipal government.”

Developing: Pentagon mulls military “reaction force” for civil unrest. A “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” of 600 National Guard troops—split between military bases in Alabama and Arizona—would be kept ready to deploy in as little as one hour to American cities facing protests or other unrest, according to documents reviewed by the Post’s Matt Viser, Emily Davies and Perry Stein. The documents say the cost could reach “hundreds of millions of dollars” if military aircraft and aircrews are used instead of cheaper charter aircraft.

The proposal “represents another potential expansion of President Donald Trump’s willingness to employ the armed forces on American soil. It relies on a section of U.S. Code that allows the commander in chief to circumvent limitations on the military’s use within the United States,” the Post reports. More, here.  

Related reading:

• “US military was deployed to LA protests despite low risk, general testifies,” Reuters reports off testimony by Army Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman, who until recently commanded the military operations in Los Angeles;
• “DC facing $20 million security funding cut despite Trump complaints of crime,” Reuters reports after DHS cut funds to various cities to align with the “current threat landscape”;
• “Trump's terror-prevention cuts leave Americans exposed,” with cuts and closures to five key agencies, argued Kris Isman of Georgetown University, writing Sunday for Defense One;
• “FBI report: U.S. crime rates fell nationwide in 2024, Stateline reports off an Aug. 5 report;
• Commentary: “The President’s Police State.” Trump is delivering the authoritarian government his party once warned about, writes David Graham at The Atlantic.

Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2017, 32-year-old Heather Heyer was killed and nearly three dozen others were wounded at a rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned violent when one drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.

Russian troops charge ahead

Ahead of his Friday summit with Trump in Alaska, Vladimir Putin’s invasion forces advanced another six miles or so in Ukraine’s east, toward ​​Dobropillya in Donetsk, almost fully encircling a Ukrainian logistical hub at Pokrovsk. 

“The advance is one of the most dramatic in the last year,” Reuters reports. “Ukrainian troops must pass through a narrow 10-mile corridor to enter [Pokrovsk], leaving them vulnerable to drone attacks,” the New York Times reports.

How it happened: “the Russians found a gap in Ukrainian lines this week after weeks of probing attacks, and then used their vast reserves of manpower to break through the lines,” a Ukrainian officer told the Wall Street Journal. Analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted parallels to previous recent gains for Moscow: “Russian forces used a similar tactical penetration in mid-April 2024 to facilitate the seizure of operationally significant territory northwest of Avdiivka,” ISW wrote Monday. 

However, “It is premature to call the Russian advances in the Dobropillya area an operational-level breakthrough, though Russian forces very likely seek to mature their tactical advances into an operational-level breakthrough in the coming days,” ISW’s analysts write. “The next several days in the Pokrovsk area of operations will likely be critical for Ukraine’s ability to prevent accelerated Russian gains north and northwest of Pokrovsk.” Read more, here. 

New: Officials in Ukraine have successfully tested a new direct-to-cell satellite technology from Elon Musk’s Starlink, Reuters reported Tuesday. The new gear “aims to provide reliable connectivity when terrestrial networks are unavailable, a critical asset for war-torn Ukraine where Russian attacks on infrastructure regularly disrupt communications,” the wire service explains. “Space X-owned Starlink has signed deals with telcos in 10 countries for a direct-to-cell service, with Kyivstar set to become the first operator in Europe to roll it out.” Read more, here. 

Developing: Russia’s Geran drones are allegedly laying anti-tank mines along “an unspecified logistics route in Ukraine,” ISW warned in its Monday assessment. The War Zone has more on the video purporting to show the drones at work, here.  

Developing: Trump says he’s preparing to discuss territorial changes for Ukraine at Friday’s summit with Putin in Alaska. “Russia has occupied a big portion of Ukraine…We’re going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine,” Trump told reporters Monday. Politico has a tiny bit more.And in commentary: “This isn’t how wars are ended: a veteran diplomat puts Trump-Putin summit in context,” via Donald Heflin of Tufts University, speaking Monday to The Conversation.

Pacific region

South Korea's military is more than 20% smaller than it was six years ago, Reuters reported Sunday citing a new report from Seoul’s defense ministry. There were about 450,000 troops in uniform last month, down from 560,000 in 2019. 

What’s going on: There are far fewer men of enlistment age across the country, and South Korea has the world’s lowest birth rate. As a result, “the military is 50,000 troops short of the number of troops adequate for maintaining defence readiness,” Reuters reports. 

Developing: America’s acting ambassador to Seoul is visiting Hyundai’s shipyards in Ulsan with Foreign Minister Cho Hyun on Wednesday, Yonhap news agency reports. Trump is expected to meet with Seoul’s new President Lee Jae Myung in Washington on August 25. 

China is about to merge two state-run shipbuilders to create the world’s largest, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The new entity is the result of combining China State Shipbuilding with another entity called China Shipbuilding Industry. The two companies totaled about 17% of the world market for shipbuilding, with an annual revenue of around $18 billion. 

“CSSC’s main business is commercial, but it is also an important contractor for the Chinese navy,” the Journal notes. “The company it is absorbing designed and built China’s first homegrown aircraft carrier, the Shandong.”

By the way: Two Chinese ships collided while trying to harass Philippine Coast Guard vessels in the South China Sea on Monday. A Chinese cutter and guided-missile destroyer ran into each other in a confrontation captured on video that you can see on YouTube, here. USNI News called it “one of the most severe incidents among Chinese forces to date,” and “the most severe incident to occur between the two countries since last year’s June 17th incident, when the two countries clashed at Second Thomas Shoal.” Read more, here. 

Additional reading: “Documents detail China's AI-powered propaganda push,” Nextgov reported Monday, citing the work of Vanderbilt University researchers. 

Around the Defense Department

Coast Guard commissions first new icebreaker since the 1990s, USNI News reports. The medium icebreaker USCGC Storis (WAGB-21) was commissioned Saturday in a ceremony in Juneau, Alaska, joining the only two other U.S. icebreakers: Healy (WAGB-20) and Polar Star (WAGB-10).

The Coast Guard needs about nine to do the job properly, officials have testified. Get up to speed with the Congressional Research Service’s January report.

Additional reading:

• “Hegseth reposts video on social media featuring pastors saying women shouldn’t be allowed to vote,” the Associated Press reported Friday; 
• “West Point and Air Force Academy Affirmative Action Lawsuits Are Dropped,” the New York Times reported Tuesday; 
• “Can COFFEE filters calm the spectrum tug-of-war?” DARPA is making tiny chips that can help military and civil radios operate on nearby frequencies, Defense One’s Lauren C. Willams reported last week;
• “Will 2026 be military lasers’ breakthrough year?” The Army is preparing to issue a production contract, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker has more, writing Friday;

• “What Does Palantir Actually Do? Even former employees struggle to explain it,” WIRED reported Monday.

Lastly today: The Air Force wants to buy two Tesla Cybertrucks for target practice. “Testing needs to mirror real world situations,” said one document cited by Fortune. “The intent of the training is to prep the units for operations by simulating scenarios as closely as possible to the real world situations.” Read on, here.

Brushing aside statistics that show violent crime in D.C. at a 30-year low, Trump on Monday described a new level of coordination between D.C. National Guard units and federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, ICE, and and the newly federalized D.C. police force. 

“We will have full, seamless, integrated cooperation at all levels of law enforcement, and will deploy officers across the district with an overwhelming presence. You'll have more police, and you'll be so happy because you're being safe,” he said at a White House press conference. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, standing beside Trump, promised close collaboration between the Pentagon and domestic authorities. “We will work alongside all DC police and federal law enforcement to ensure this city is safe.” 

What comes next? The June 2020 deployment of National Guard units to work alongside D.C. police offers a glimpse: citywide use of sophisticated intelligence-gathering technologies normally reserved for foreign war zones.

Some surveillance platforms will be relatively easy to spot, such as spy aircraft over D.C.'s closely guarded airspace. In 2020, authorities deployed an RC-26B, a military-intelligence aircraft, and MQ-9 Predator drones. The FBI contributed a Cessna 560 equipped with “dirtboxes”: devices that mimic cell towers to collect mobile data, long used by the U.S. military to track terrorist networks in the Middle East.

Other gear will be less obvious.The 2020 protests saw expanded use of Stingrays, another type of cellular interception device. Developed to enable the military to track militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, Stingrays were used by the U.S. Secret Service in 2020 and 2021 in ways that the DHS inspector general found broke the law and policies concerning privacy and warrants. Agency officials said “exigent” circumstances justified the illicit spying.

Now, with federal agencies and entities working with military personnel under declared-emergency circumstances, new gear could enter domestic use. And local officials or the civilian review boards that normally oversee police use of such technologies may lack the power to prevent or even monitor it. In 2021, the D.C. government ended a facial-recognition pilot program after police used it to identify a protester at Lafayette Square. But local prohibitions don’t apply to federalized or military forces. 

Next up: AI-powered surveillance 

How might new AI tools, and new White House measures to ease sharing across federal entities, enable surveillance targeting?

DHS and its sub-agencies already use AI. Some tools—such as monitoring trucks or cargo at the border for contraband, mapping human trafficking and drug networks, and watching the border—serve an obvious public-safety mission. Last year, DHS used AI and other tools to identify 311 victims of sexual exploitation and to arrest suspected perpetrators. They also helps DHS counter the flow of fentanyl; last October, the agency cited AI while reporting a 50 percent increase in seizures and an 8 percent increase in arrests.

TSA uses facial recognition across the country to match the faces and documents of airline passengers entering the United States in at least 26 airports, according to 2022 agency data. The accuracy has improved greatly in the past decade, and research suggests even better performance is possible: the National Institute of Standards and Technology has shown that some algorithms can achieve 99%-plus accuracy under ideal conditions. 

But conditions are not always ideal, and mistakes can be costly. “There have been public reports of seven instances of mistaken arrests associated with the use of facial recognition technology, almost all involving Black individuals. The collection and use of biometric data also poses privacy risks, especially when it involves personal information that people have shared in unrelated contexts,” noted a Justice Department report in December. 

On Monday, Trump promised that the increased federal activity would target “known gangs, drug dealers and criminal networks.” But network mapping—using digital information to identify who knows who and how—has other uses, and raises the risk of innocent people being misidentified. 

Last week, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request concerning the use of two software tools by D.C.’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. Called Cobwebs and Tangles, the tools can reveal sensitive information about any person with just a name or email address, according to internal documents cited in the filing.

Cobwebs shows how AI can wring new insights from existing data sources, especially when there are no rules to prohibit the gathering of large stores of data. Long before the capability existed to do it effectively, this idea was at the center of what, a decade ago, was called predictive policing. 

The concept has lost favor since the 2010s, but many law-enforcement agencies still pursue versions of it. Historically, the main obstacle has been too much data, fragmented across systems and structures. DHS has legal access to public video footage, social media posts, and border and airport entry records—but until recently, these datasets were difficult to analyze in real time, particularly within legal constraints.

That’s changing. The 2017 Modernizing Government Technology Act encouraged new software and cloud computing resources to help agencies use and share data more effectively, and in March, an executive order removed several barriers to interagency data sharing. The government has since awarded billions of dollars to private companies to improve access to internal data.

One of those companies is Palantir, whose work was characterized by the New York Times as an effort to compile a “master list” of data on U.S. citizens. The firm disputed that in a June 9 blog post: “Palantir is a software company and, in the context of our customer engagements, operates as a ‘data processor’—our software is used by customers to manage and make use of their data.”

In a 2019 article for the FBI training division, California sheriff Robert Davidson envisioned a scenario—now technologically feasible—in which AI analyzes body-camera imagery in real time: “Monitoring, facial recognition, gait analysis, weapons detection, and voice-stress analysis all would actively evaluate potential danger to the officer. After identification of a threat, the system could enact an automated response based on severity.”

The data DHS collects extends well beyond matching live images to photos in a database or detecting passengers’ emotional states. ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, for instance, handles large volumes of multilingual email. DHS describes its email analytics program as using machine learning “for spam classification, translation, and entity extraction (such as names, organizations, or locations).”

Another DHS tool analyzes social-media posts to gather “open-source information on travelers who may be subject to further screening for potential violation of laws.” The tool can identify additional accounts and selectors, such as phone numbers or email addresses, according to DHS documentation.

Meanwhile, ICE’s operational scope has expanded. The White House has increased the agency’s authority to operate in hospitals and schools, collect employment data—including on non-imigrants, such as “sponsors” of unaccompanied minors—and impose higher penalties on individuals seen as “interfering” with ICE activities. Labor leaders say they’ve been targeted for their political activism. Protesters have been charged with assaulting ICE officers or employees. ICE has installed facial-recognition apps on officers’ phones, enabling on-the-spot identification of people protesting the agency’s tactics. DHS bulletins sent to local law enforcement encourage officers to consider a wide range of normal activity, such as filming police interactions, as potential precursors to violence.

Broad accessibility of even legally collected data raises concerns, especially in an era where AI tools can derive specific insights about people. But even before these developments, government watchdogs urged greater transparency around domestic AI use. A December report by the Government Accountability Office includes several open recommendations, mostly related to privacy protections and reporting transparency. The following month, DHS’s inspector general warned that the agency doesn’t have complete or well-resourced oversight frameworks. 

In June, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and several co-signers wrote to the Trump White House, “In addition to these concerning uses of sentiment analysis for law enforcement purposes, federal agencies have also shown interest in affective computing and deception detection technologies that purportedly infer individuals’ mental states from measures of their facial expressions, body language, or physiological activity.” 

The letter asks the GAO to investigate what DHS or Justice Department policies govern AI use and whether those are being followed. Markey’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Writing for the American Immigration Council in May, Steven Hubbard, the group’s senior data scientist, noted that of DHS’ 105 AI applications, 27 are “rights-impacting.”

“These are cases that the OMB, under the Biden administration, identified as impacting an individual’s rights, liberty, privacy, access to equal opportunity, or ability to apply for government benefits and services,” Hubbard said.

The White House recently replaced Biden-era guidance on AI with new rules meant to accelerate AI deployment across the federal government. While the updated guidelines retain many safety guardrails, they do include some changes, including merging “privacy-impacting” and “safety-impacting” uses of AI into a single category: “high impact.”

The new rules also eliminate a requirement for agencies to notify people when AI tools might affect them—and to offer an opt-out.

Precedents for this kind of techno-surveillance expansion can be found in countries rarely deemed models for U.S. policy. China and Russia have greatly expanded surveillance and policing under the auspices of security. China operates an extensive camera network in public spaces and centralizes its data to enable rapid AI analysis. Russia has followed a similar path through its “Safe Cities” program, integrating data feeds from a vast surveillance network to spot and stop crime, protests, and dissent.

So far, the U.S. has spent less than these near-peers, as a percent of GDP, on surveillance tools, which are operated under a framework, however strained, of rule-of-law and rights protections that can mitigate the most draconian uses.

But the distinction between the United States and China and Russia is shrinking, Nathan Wessler, deputy director with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in July. “There's the real nightmare scenario, which is pervasive tracking of live or recorded video, something that, by and large, we have kept at bay in the United States. It’s the kind of thing that authoritarian regimes have invested in heavily.” 

Wessler noted that in May, the Washington Post reported that New Orleans authorities were applying facial recognition to live video feeds. “At that scale, that [threatens to] just erase our ability to go about our lives without being pervasively identified and tracked by the government.”

The company, GoLaxy, has built data profiles for at least 117 sitting U.S. lawmakers and more than 2,000 other American political and thought leaders, according to the researchers that assessed the documentation. GoLaxy also appears to be tracking thousands of right-wing influencers, as well as journalists, their assessments show.

“You start to imagine, when you bring these pieces together, this is a whole new sort of level of gray zone conflict, and it’s one we need to really understand,” said Brett Goldstein, a former head of the Defense Digital Service and one of the Vanderbilt faculty that examined the files.

Goldstein was speaking alongside former NSA director Gen. Paul Nakasone, who heads Vanderbilt’s National Security Institute, in a gathering of reporters on the sidelines of the DEF CON hacker convention in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“We are seeing now an ability to both develop and deliver at an efficiency, at a speed and a scale we’ve never seen before,” said Nakasone, recalling his time in the intelligence community tracking past campaigns from foreign adversaries to influence public opinion.

Founded in 2010 by a research institute affiliated with the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences, GoLaxy appears to operate in step with Beijing’s national-security priorities, although there is no public confirmation of direct government control. Researchers said the documents indicate the firm has worked with senior intelligence, party and military elements within China’s political structure.

The firm has launched influence campaigns against Hong Kong and Taiwan, and uses a propaganda dissemination system dubbed “GoPro” to spread content across social media, according to the researchers.

Goldstein, as well as his Vanderbilt colleague Brett Benson, first detailed the research in a New York Times guest essay. The Times then separately reported on the findings and confirmed the efforts, citing current and former U.S. officials. 

The cache was sent to Vanderbilt from a security researcher in April, Goldstein told reporters. Nearly all of the documentation was written in Mandarin, he added.

The firm has recently altered content on its website that removed references to its work with Beijing and denied the findings. A since-removed blog post, for instance, reveals GoLaxy pitched its AI tools to senior Chinese police and security officials.

“GoLaxy’s products are mainly based on open-source data, without specially collecting data targeting U.S. officials,” the firm told the Times.

“To my knowledge, China is rapidly building an AI governance system with distinct national characteristics. This approach emphasizes a balance between development and security, featuring innovation, security and inclusiveness,” said Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington, D.C.. “The government has introduced major policy plans and ethical guidelines, as well as laws and regulations on algorithmic services, generative AI, and data security. Together, these frameworks aim to improve the safety, fairness, and governance capacity of AI technologies in China.”

China’s use of GoLaxy’s technology is not the first time a U.S. adversary has leveraged AI to conduct influence operations at scale, but GoLaxy’s operation goes further, said Max Lesser, a senior emerging threats analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 

“While AI can certainly augment influence operations, it remains unclear whether it increases their impact,” he told Nextgov/FCW.

The Trump administration has largely dismantled offices that track influence operations, amid accusations that they have in the past censored Americans’ online speech when they coordinated with social media platforms to remove false information about contentious topics like the 2020 election and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy. 

Under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the White House has also sought to diminish previous intelligence community findings that determined Russia launched an influence campaign to sway the outcome of the 2016 election in favor of President Donald Trump. Multiple reviews, including a comprehensive bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win.

ODNI under former President Joe Biden tracked influence operations launched by Russia, China and other foreign adversaries in the lead-up to the 2024 election. But they were never able to provide an assessment of the campaigns’ effectiveness because it would require intelligence analysts to pore through Americans’ social media posts and compromise their free speech rights, officials previously said.

Asked about whether the intelligence community should be drilling down on the effectiveness of influence campaigns, Nakasone said that the spy community needs to use its already given authorities to track threats overseas, but that there’s a “private sector piece” as well.

“You’re going to need a team, and it’s going to be a team that needs to think how they’re going to do this effectively and also creatively in the future,” he said.

That may require a regulatory structure. But Goldstein dismissed the idea of new regulations to solve the budding problem of more advanced influence operations.

“How do we have better detect methods, and how do we spur that research, academically [with the] private sector? Pieces like that,” he said. “I don’t know how regulation gets at that. I would be growing the private sector ecosystem. I’d be focused on academic research.”

The documents also suggest that there are accounts and personas hiding on Chinese-aligned infrastructure that can be taken down through standard U.S. operations that have dismantled launch points for hacks, Goldstein said.

“I think I come back to the concept of persistent engagement,” Nakasone said. “We should always be involved with our adversaries here. This is a really good case study of: it’s out there, and we need to find it and we need to be able to take it down.”

The show of force was necessary to tame Washington’s out-of-control criminal activity, Trump said, though actual crime in the city is at its lowest point in decades. Some 800 National Guard troops will deploy in the city, joining about 500 federal agents diverted from various agencies to patrol the streets. 

Only between 100 and 200 National Guard soldiers will be supporting law enforcement at any given time; they will perform duties including administrative tasks, logistics and “physical presence in support of law enforcement,” Army officials said in a statement. They will join officers and agents from the FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Drug Enforcement Agency; Park Police; U.S. Marshals Service; and the Secret Service. 

Additional military deployments are possible, the president said. 

Last week, Trump deployed federal law enforcement to supplement Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department. At a Monday-morning press conference at the White House, the president said they have already made dozens of arrests and will crack down on gang violence and homeless populations. He announced that decision after a former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency appeared to be injured by individuals engaging in a carjacking. 

The president also said his efforts would ensure the safety of the federal workforce. 

“Every American has a constitutional right to be able to access and petition their government in safety, and countless federal officials and employees likewise have the right to carry out their jobs in peace without being shot,” he said. 

The president is federalizing Washington’s police force under a provision of the Home Rule Act, the 1973 law that allowed the capital city to mostly govern itself independently. Trump can only maintain federal control of the force for 30 days before requiring legislation from Congress. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said he would soon introduce a bill to overturn Trump's actions. Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, however, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., praised Trump's decision. 

The president predicted federal staff would cooperate well with local police, and that Washington residents would welcome FBI agents and other federal law enforcement on their streets. 

“We will have full, seamless, integrated cooperation at all levels of law enforcement, and will deploy officers across the district with an overwhelming presence,” Trump said. 

Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum, who oversees U.S. Park Police, said at the White House Monday his employees were celebrating Trump’s announcement. He noted the Park Police have already been involved in removing graffiti and homeless encampments. 

“They've been doing a fantastic job, but they are so pleased, the rank and file, that President Trump is now allowing them to enforce the law,” Burgum said. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the career staff in the Justice Department would ensure a smooth deployment of federal staff in Washington. 

“We have some of the best career law enforcement and prosecutors in the country who are ready to take this on,” Bondi said. 

Mayor Muriel Bowser, D-D.C., said Trump’s actions were “unsettling and unprecedented.” She said her administration had received no warning of them, but was unsurprised. She said she would continue to work with his administration to ensure the city’s economy “is supported by rational federal workforce, federal workers and federal property in the District of Columbia.” 

Pamela Smith, the chief of police in D.C., said she met with federal partners for an hour on Sunday to discuss where to aim their deployment, and will engage in a more detailed discussion later on Monday. Terry Cole, head of DEA, will coordinate the federal takeover of Washington’s police. 

Brian Schwalb, attorney general in D.C., said Trump's actions were unnecessary and his office was “considering all of our options and will do what is necessary to protect the rights and safety of District residents.” Bowser, however, noted the Home Rule Act compels her to comply with the president after he declares an emergency, as Trump has done.

National Guard soldiers deployed in the capital after the Sept. 11 attacks, to support COVID-19 relief efforts and during widespread protests in 2020.