The two shot National Guard troops never should have been in DC. More troops is no answer.

The violence is horrible and unacceptable. Trump, Pete Hegseth, and West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey never should have put the troops in this position.

Following Wednesday’s shooting of two National Guard troops patrolling downtown Washington, D.C., and reports that the suspect is a person who came to the U.S. from Afghanistan in 2021, President Donald Trump announced — in a speech full of racist, anti-immigrant attacks — that he had ordered the mobilization of an additional 500 troops to D.C.

The shooting is horrible, and the West Virginia National Guard troops should not have faced violence on Wednesday or any day.

The two people from West Virginia who were shot on Wednesday were only in Washington, D.C., because West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey — more than 100 days ago — decided to participate in Trump’s authoritarian attack on the people of Washington, D.C.

“West Virginia is proud to stand with President Trump in his effort to restore pride and beauty to our nation’s capital,” Morrisey said in a news release at the time — ignoring D.C.’s own view that it already was proud and beautiful — by committing to sending “approximately 300-400 skilled personnel as directed” to D.C.

Troops were sent to D.C. over the summer as a stunt — at best — by Republican governors wanting to make Trump happy. They have been on litter patrols, Metro station patrols, standing around Dupont Circle (I’ve personally seen this more than a dozen times), standing around the National Mall, walking up and down 14th Street, and so on. There is nothing that they have done that local law enforcement or, more simply, people in the neighborhoods couldn’t have done just as well, yet these National Guard troops have been put in the position of quite literally being the faces of Trump’s authoritarianism. (This is all the more so given the masks so often worn by this administration’s immigration enforcers.)

More than 100 days later, they are still here. For no real reason besides Trump’s desperate desire to have them here as a sign of his control. Between members of the D.C. National Guard and those from others states, more than 2,000 troops remain in D.C. this week.

The shooting came nearly a week after U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb ruled that the deployments — both as to the D.C. National Guard and those from states — were likely unlawful.

Yet now — as unsurprising as it is a bad decision — Trump is calling for more troops to be deployed in D.C.

So, what is happening?

This is most likely going to be Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asking the currently engaged states — those already sending National Guard troops to D.C. — to, cumulatively, send 500 more troops. Under the current agreements, that could be done.

Last week’s ruling from Cobb is stayed by her, so it’s not in effect currently. As such, more troops could come.

But, Cobb’s order is only stayed until Dec. 11, so, unless she or a higher court grants a stay — which the Justice Department sought from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Wednesday afternoon — the new troops would need to leave by Dec. 11, too.¹

The one caveat to that would be if the administration calls for the new troops under a new statutory authority than the Title 32 authority used to call the out-of-state troops — which is discussed in the Law Dork report on Cobb’s ruling — but nothing Trump or Hegseth said on Wednesday suggested that.

Any shooting is horrible, and violence — whether from the state or individuals — is unacceptable.

Individuals, though, when they commit acts of violence, face the criminal legal system in response. No matter how much Trump tries to make this about others — as he always will do — it is an individual who shot the gun on Wednesday.

In some important ways, then, the systemic questions — why West Virginia National Guard troops were patrolling outside of the Farragut West Metro stop in Washington, D.C. on a Wednesday afternoon in November — are ultimately more vexing, because the answers would require the bad actors to admit their bad intentions or other institutional actors with the power to push back to do so.

Governors like Morrisey who sent their state’s National Guard troops to D.C. never should have put these people in the position they were in. Trump and Hegseth never should have found any governors willing to send troops into D.C. for such a clearly inappropriate mission.

Those two troops shot on Wednesday should have been home, getting ready for Thanksgiving — not helping create an image for an autocrat.

I hope for swift and complete recoveries for them — and for a swift and complete end to Trump’s occupation of American cities with American troops.

1. Although Axios suggested some relation between the shooting and the filing, the timing and contents of the filing actually suggest the opposite. DOJ filed a notice on Tuesday that it was appealing Cobb’s ruling, and likely wanted to get its stay request in before the holiday. The filing was entered on the D.C. Circuit docket literally within minutes of the shooting and includes no mention of the shooting. In short, there is no reason to believe the shooting had anything to do with the filing.