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.
This extension comes just a month after Washington DC officials sued the Trump administration over the deployments, which Brian Schwalb, the District of Columbia attorney general, described as “involuntary military occupation” and an illegal use of the military for domestic law enforcement.
A federal judge in California ruled in September that Trump’s deployment of national guard troops to Los Angeles after days of protests over immigration raids in June had been illegal. That ruling, however, does not directly apply to Washington, where the president has more control over the guard than in states.
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