DC official urges incoming Democratic governors to withdraw National Guard

Washington, D.C., officials are calling on incoming Democratic governors in five states that flipped blue to recall their National Guard troops from the nation’s capital, a move that could see some 628 guard members pulled from city streets come January.

During a D.C. Council hearing on Thursday, council member Brooke Pinto (D) — the chair of the public safety committee — said she would soon send a letter on behalf of the council to ask the governors-elect in Iowa , Georgia, Nevada, Ohio and Texas to “immediately” withdraw their soldiers back to their states.

“It’s something they can do their first day in office,” she said.

“While we have asked all of the governors across the country in the past to pull back their troops, we’ve been met with a lot of resistance and a lot of governors who are following the lead from President Trump,” Pinto noted. “But we now have the opportunity, with Tuesday’s election results, to turn the tide of what we’re seeing in Washington, D.C., and to have some real accountability to the federal government.”

Some 3,100 National Guard troops are deployed in Washington as part of President Trump’s “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful” mission, which was announced last summer.

Of that number, just fewer than 760 troops are part of the D.C. National Guard — which is controlled by the sitting president — and 2,341 have been sent to the city by states and territories, nearly all of which are currently controlled by Republican governors, according to the mission’s joint task force .

While Texas, Ohio and Nevada currently only have one or two guard troops sent from each of their states, Georgia and Iowa can make a far bigger dent if they pull their 514 and 110 troops, respectively.

Should Alaska also flip to a Democratic governor — the race has yet to be called but has former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (D) currently leading — it would mean an additional 34 guard members could be recalled.

Guard troops have been a common sight patrolling the streets of D.C. as part of their deployment, which began in August 2025, when the federal government ⁠temporarily took ​over the city’s law ​enforcement through ‌presidential executive order. The number of guard members has fluctuated over the course of a year, swelling to roughly 5,000 ahead of the Fourth of July.

That presence has worried local officials and residents, with Pinto saying Thursday that congressional leaders have been “unsympathetic to what we’ve been dealing with and, in some cases, directly hostile.”

“But after Tuesday night, the tide is turning,” she said.

Pinto also condemned a directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth late last month, which authorized the National Guard to begin using boats , up to 60 marked police cars and military tactical vehicles in D.C.

The action, which is sure to escalate the troops’ presence in the city and make it harder to discern between military members and law enforcement, is going in the “opposite direction” from what the city needs, she said.

Pinto also pressed the incoming congressional Democratic majority to more rigorously conduct oversight of federal policing activity in Washington, suggesting federal agents wear identifying badges and body cameras and that face coverings should be banned.