Minnesota Pulls National Guard Troops From D.C. Early as Michigan Faces Pressure to Do the Same

Minnesota's troops are heading home early

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is pulling his state's National Guard contingent out of Washington, D.C. today, Saturday, July 11, ahead of their originally planned return date of July 23, according to NPR and CBS News.

Minnesota sent just over 100 troops to D.C. for the America 250th anniversary celebrations, with orders confining them to event security near the national monuments, NPR reported. Instead, according to Free DC executive director Keya Chatterjee, Guard members were seen on presence patrols in residential and commercial neighborhoods far from the Mall.

Air Force Maj. Nathan Wallin, deputy state public affairs officer for the Minnesota National Guard, attributed the early withdrawal to "the successful conclusion of festivities," per a report cited by ground.news, without addressing the activist criticism.

The bigger deployment Minnesota got pulled into

Trump ordered National Guard troops into Washington in August 2025, citing what he called out-of-control crime, and created a federal Joint Task Force that has kept troops in the city nearly a year, according to NPR. Crime in the city was already trending down before the deployment began, NPR reported.

The deployment held steady between roughly 2,300 and 2,600 troops for months, then surged to more than 5,100 in recent weeks for what officials called a "summer surge" tied to the Great American State Fair, the July 4 fireworks, and other 250th anniversary events, CBS News reported. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the operation now costs more than $3 million a day, according to NPR.

Six Democratic-led states, Minnesota, Kentucky, North Carolina, Michigan, Maryland and Hawaii, sent troops into that surge specifically for the anniversary celebrations, the first time Democratic-led states had contributed troops since Trump's task force began, NPR reported. All were listed on the Joint Task Force's public website, tagged as being in town for America 250, and all were deputized as special police by the U.S. Marshals Service and issued firearms, per the Task Force's own listing.

Michigan is the next flashpoint

Michigan sent roughly 160 troops, the largest Democratic-state contingent, according to CBS News. Whitmer's deployment is scheduled to run through Aug. 31, far longer than Minnesota's window, and she has threatened to terminate it early if reports persist that troops are being used for ongoing law enforcement rather than event security, per ground.news.

A coalition of more than two dozen think tanks, civic groups, labor organizations and civil rights groups sent Whitmer a letter this week urging her to withdraw Michigan's Guard members now, CBS News reported. Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of Liberty and National Security at the Brennan Center, one of the letter's organizers, told NPR that Democratic governors "were fundamentally trusting the Trump administration to respect those lines, and I think that was a mistake."

The letter itself argued the situation is not comparable to past presidents borrowing out-of-state Guard help for major D.C. events. "There is nothing normal about the way President Trump has used National Guard forces in the nation's capital," the coalition wrote, according to CBS News.

The case for the deployment

Presidents have routinely called in out-of-state National Guard help for large-scale D.C. events, and using troops for crowd security, beautification and traffic support during a 250th anniversary celebration and July 4th fireworks is not, on its face, an unusual ask. Guard members have also handled medical emergencies, arrest assistance, curfew enforcement and snow removal during the broader deployment, according to CBS News. These tasks are not inherently controversial.

The dispute is about scope and duration, not the concept of Guard support for a major event. Democratic governors say they sent troops for a specific, time-limited mission and instead watched them get folded into an open-ended federal task force that deputizes soldiers as armed police in city neighborhoods, months after the crime spike that supposedly justified it had already faded, per NPR.

No court has ruled the deployment illegal, and the lawsuit backed by Democratic-led states challenging the broader Joint Task Force presence remains pending. Whether Whitmer follows Walz's lead before Aug. 31, or whether Michigan's Guard members stay under the same conditions Free DC says it has documented in the field, will reveal the governors' next move.