DC Sues Over Trump Troop Deployment as National Guard Members Say They're Being Used as 'Toy Soldiers'

Washington, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration aiming to end what he described as the "illegal deployment" of National Guard troops in the nation's capital.

In a complaint filed with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Schwalb charged the Trump administration with violating the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, a 1973 law that delegated certain powers over the city once held by the federal government to local officials.

The complaint zeroed in on Trump's claim that Washington, DC is a "filthy and crime-ridden embarrassment" that should be "federalize[d]," so that the Trump administration can "run it the way it's supposed to be run." Schwalb then noted that Trump deployed National Guard forces in DC without receiving consent from local elected officials.

"None of this is lawful," he said. "For one thing, defendants' deployment of National Guard units to police district streets without the mayor's consent violates both the Home Rule Act and a congressionally approved compact governing the interstate mobilization of state National Guard troops."

Schwalb also charged the administration with violating the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law that bars the US military from being used for domestic law enforcement.

"Defendants have established a massive, seemingly indefinite law enforcement operation in the district subject to direct military command," he argued. "The danger that such an operation poses to individual liberty and democratic rule is self-evident."

The state of California also accused Trump of breaking the Posse Comitatus Act in its lawsuit against Trump's use of National Guard forces in Los Angeles; a federal court ruled that deployment was illegal this week.

Schwalb's lawsuit comes as new reports published by CNN and Mother Jones revealed that the deployment to Washington, DC is taking its toll on National Guard members, who have been sent far away from their families for a mission that is bogged down by legal and political controversy.

CNN''s report featured interviews with several National Guard soldiers who expressed bewilderment at what their mission in the city was supposed to be, as one explained that his only duty seems to be walking around Chinatown for 12 hours a day, while another said she regularly gets cursed at by locals.

"We haven't gotten critically low on morale, but we're falling fast," one soldier told CNN.

A National Guard soldier who spoke with Mother Jones told a similar story, and said he felt that he and his fellow soldiers were being used as political props.

"I think people have hit their limit," he said. "This is an encroachment on everything we signed up for, and it feels like a violation. They just see us as little toy soldiers to put on the street to show some muscle. There's no clear mission or understanding of that mission."

Trump in recent weeks has said that he will soon be sending the National Guard into Chicago, despite warnings from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and other local officials that such a military presence is not wanted in the city. The president has made baseless claims about high crime rates in large cities across the country; as Common Dreams reported last month, crime is falling in all of the cities Trump has threatened to send troops into.