Leaders around Maryland are pushing back after President Donald Trump (R) announced upcoming plans to deploy troops to other cities beyond Washington, D.C. — where the National Guard has been patrolling since Aug. 11 — including Baltimore.
“We’d go into Baltimore, straighten it out very quickly, too. You know why they respect our soldiers? You see our soldiers. They respect our soldiers. We’d go there, too. But we’re going to have people asking us to go,” Trump said. “They’re going to want to.”
Baltimore has seen historic reductions in homicide and violent crime in recent years, with many observers crediting community partnerships and violence interruption programs for improving public safety.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who was awarded a Bronze Star last year, strongly opposes sending troops to Baltimore and has said that restoring violence prevention funding would be a better form of assistance for the state.
“The National Guard is not trained for this. The National Guard is trained for things like natural disasters and emergencies and deploying overseas. I have too much respect for the members of our National Guard to put them on missions that they are not trained for and missions that I took an oath to make sure that we were going to always be cognizant and protective of our usage of the members of our National Guard,” said Moore during Sept. 3 press conference. “I’m not going to do things because it makes people feel good or because we think that people walking around in military fatigues and a long gun somehow makes communities safer.”
Senior U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer issued a ruling that previous troop deployments in Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which limits the federal government’s ability to operate as law enforcement. This ruling will be enacted on Sept. 12.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Trump’s threats to invade these cities are “not the answer.”
“Trump should stop playing political games with federal law enforcement. We’ve already worked successfully to increase the presence of FBI, DEA, and ATF agents in Baltimore and, by working in coordination with the Mayor and local law enforcement, we have made important progress in strengthening public safety,” said Van Hollen.
In addition, Maryland Democratic Reps. Kweisi Mfume and Johnny Olszewski have both spoken against deploying troops to Baltimore.
State Sen. Mary Washington (D-Baltimore) described the efforts to deploy troops to cities across the nation as “an affront to our way of life and the dignity of the people.”
“Overriding the governor is not just a violation of law; it is an affront to the people of Baltimore, stripping them of the leaders they elected to protect and serve their community,” Washington said in a statement. “These protections are not symbolic; they exist to safeguard the rights of the people of Maryland and Baltimore that they have vested in their chosen leaders. To override them is to disregard the will of the voters, subvert the lawful chain of command, and erode the constitutional guardrails that keep federal power in check.”
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