The camouflaged citizen soldiers were conspicuously absent along large swaths of barbed wire-topped fences surrounding the Capitol on Friday. Absent an imminent threat, and with diminished congressional and public support, the National Guard’s numbers there have been cut in half.
The National Guard presence at the Capitol began Jan. 6, following the Capitol riot, and peaked at 26,000 during the presidential inauguration. A $483 million mission that involved all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and three U.S. territories was supposed to end March 12 until Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved a request by the U.S. Capitol Police to extend the mission of 2,300 troops until May 23. Since then, there have been bipartisan calls to send the Guard home, and the National Guard Bureau has had difficulty sourcing the mission.
