#national-guard-deployments

#national-guard-deployments

WEBSTER SPRINGS, WV. In West Virginia, many of the thousands of bridges spanning mountain valleys and gorges are named for local veterans and on Main Streets in small towns, banners feature hometown soldiers, some of whom fought and died in past conflicts. It's a state with one of the country's highest per-capita populations of veterans. Service in the military including the various branches of the National Guard has long been seen not just as a patriotic duty, but as an economic lifeline.

The 90-second video was first posted early on Tuesday from senator Elissa Slotkin's X account. In it, the six lawmakers - Ms Slotkin, Arizona senator Mark Kelly, and representatives Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan - speak directly to US service members, whom Ms Slotkin acknowledges are "under enormous stress and pressure right now". "The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our constitution," Ms Slotkin wrote in the X post.

National guard troops sent to the nation's capital will reportedly remain there through at least February. The order was set to lapse at the end of November but was extended by Pete Hegseth, who leads the US Department of Defense. As of Wednesday, there are nearly 2,400 national guard troops in Washington DC, according to CNN. The network also notes that their presence costs about $1m daily.

Donald Trump is smart. He picks the fights that he knows he can win. You fight with me, you fight with New York, that's going to be ugly. He'll probably win because he's the president, but he's going to know that he was in a fight.

April M. Perry, a federal judge, barred the Trump Administration from deploying the National Guard in Illinois, for at least the next fourteen days. "I have seen no credible evidence that there is danger of rebellion in the state," Perry noted from the bench. J. B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, who had been resisting the deployments to Chicago, celebrated the ruling on social media, writing, "Donald Trump is not a king-and his administration is not above the law."

President Donald Trump has mentioned both Oakland and San Francisco among potential target cities with crime problems where he would send troops, having already ordered the National Guard in recent months to Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Memphis, Tenn., while making formal threats to Chicago and Portland, Oregon. The president has not yet announced any official plans to send the guard to the Bay Area.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday expanded his controversial deployment of National Guard troops to cities where he claims "domestic terrorists" are operating and where crime is rampant. The latest city will be Portland, Oregon, known across the US for its progressive politics. All of the other cities to which Trump has deployed National Guard troops to Washington DC, Memphis and Los Angeles have Democratic mayors.