On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina barreled into New Orleans with winds topping 100 miles per hour, leaving a trail of devastation that would become a defining moment in American disaster response. The storm submerged 80% of the city, caused $161 billion in damages—the costliest storm on record—and left 1,800 dead across the Gulf Coast. More than a million people were displaced, many seeking shelter in the Louisiana Superdome, where for days, tens of thousands endured sweltering heat, a lack of food and water, and unsanitary conditions. The misery was especially acute in the Lower Ninth Ward, a historically Black neighborhood that suffered catastrophic flooding.
Amid this chaos, the Missouri National Guard’s 1138th Military Police, along with units from across the country, rolled into New Orleans. As reported by Kansas Reflector, these soldiers entered the city uncertain of what they’d find, bracing for what they’d heard were out-of-control riots and rampant looting. But the reality was more nuanced. While some incidents occurred, the worst violence came not from desperate residents but from the city’s own police, who shot ten civilians, killing four. The Guardsmen, far from being eager enforcers, debated among themselves what they’d do if ordered to fire on Americans for so-called looting. Their consensus? They’d refuse. As one Guardsman mused, “What looked like looting to one individual might just be survival.”
Fast forward twenty years, and the National Guard is once again in the spotlight, but under very different circumstances. In late August 2025, President Donald Trump summoned 2,200 National Guard members to Washington, D.C., this time not for disaster relief but for a law enforcement mission. As cleveland.com detailed, Trump declared a crime emergency in the nation’s capital, federalized the city’s police force, and vowed to make D.C. “one of the safest cities in the world, not the most dangerous.”
The move drew immediate backlash. Critics argued the deployment was less about public safety and more about political theater. Trump’s assertion that D.C. was the most dangerous city in the world was widely debunked. Violent crime in the city, according to the Department of Justice, had reached a thirty-year low. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries quipped on X, “The crime scene in D.C. most damaging to everyday Americans is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” and pointed to the declining crime rates. Yet, as cleveland.com noted, the Metropolitan Police Department was under investigation for allegedly manipulating crime statistics, muddying the waters further.
Still, the deployment’s legality raised alarm bells. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was designed to prevent federal troops from engaging in domestic law enforcement. While the National Guard is typically exempt when under state control, federalizing it—as Trump did—places it squarely under the act’s restrictions. The District of Columbia, lacking a governor, is a special case, with the president acting as its de facto executive. Trump’s consideration of sending the Guard to other Democratic strongholds like Chicago and New York has sparked fears of legal battles and accusations of partisan overreach.
The echoes of history are hard to ignore. The National Guard has been called upon before—not just for natural disasters, but also to quell civil unrest. From the George Floyd protests in 2020, to the LA riots in 1992, to the infamous Kent State shootings in 1970, where Ohio Guardsmen killed four students during a Vietnam War protest, the presence of armed troops on American streets has always been fraught. The Kent State tragedy, immortalized by a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, remains a somber reminder of what can happen when military force is turned inward.
Some see Trump’s recent actions as a dangerous escalation. As Kansas Reflector reported, the president’s willingness to deploy the Guard for law enforcement, as well as for “alien processing” in 20 Republican-led states, is viewed by many as an attempt to punish Democratic cities and suppress dissent. Kansas City Democrat Barbara Washington told the Kansas City Star, “I do think Kansas City should be prepared, because this will probably happen to us. I think the actions of our president have shown that he is not open to equality for people of color.”
Others, however, see the situation differently. cleveland.com columnist Ted Diadiun argued that Trump’s move, while perhaps hyperbolic and legally questionable, at least acknowledged a real problem. “At least Trump, love him or hate him, is trying to do something about it,” Diadiun wrote. He pointed to a high-profile assault on a young former staffer near Dupont Circle as evidence that the city’s crime problem is not just statistical, but personal and urgent for many residents. A Washington Post-Schar School survey found that 65% of D.C. residents considered crime an “extremely serious” or “very serious” problem, while 42% said they or a close friend or family member had been victims of violent crime in the past five years.
Yet, the optics of the Guard patrolling city streets—sometimes mulching cherry trees or clearing homeless camps—has unsettled many. The deployment, critics say, is less about public safety and more about testing the boundaries of presidential power. Some fear it’s a prelude to something darker: the normalization of military presence in American cities, and, perhaps, the groundwork for martial law in the face of future “emergencies.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s approach to disaster management has also come under fire. Recently, as Kansas Reflector reported, 30 FEMA employees were placed on leave after signing a letter warning of potential disaster mismanagement—a move reminiscent of the failures exposed by the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006. The letter warned that inexperienced, partisan leadership could lead to a “Katrina-level disaster,” a warning the administration seemed eager to silence.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, didn’t mince words in an August 25 speech in Chicago: “I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in, and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in this city, and as a state, and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmed, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed.”
For many, the question now is not just about crime or disaster preparedness, but about the very soul of American democracy. As the federal government’s reach expands—into law enforcement, immigration, and even the management of dissent—the lines between emergency response and political maneuvering have blurred. The house Abraham Lincoln once warned could not stand divided now appears, in the words of Kansas Reflector, “not just divided, but on fire.”
In the end, the debates swirling around the National Guard’s role in D.C. and beyond are about more than just policy—they’re about the kind of nation Americans want to be. Whether the Guard’s oath to the Constitution will outweigh the orders of any one president remains to be seen. But as history shows, the choices made in moments of crisis can echo for generations.
