A coalition of retired U.S. military personnel and active duty families are protesting the deployment of National Guard members from Ohio and five other Republican-run states to Washington D.C.
President Trump has said the troops are needed because violent crime is out of control in the nation's capital, but stats show it's actually at a 30-year low.
Former Navy pilot Ken Harbaugh said there’s no good reason for Ohio National Guard members to be in D.C. helping to “fight crime” there at Trump’s request.
“The impact on the morale of these soldiers on the ground is palpable," Harbaugh said.
Harbaugh, who's also a former Democratic candidate for Congress in Northeast Ohio, said it's tough on guard members to be pulled away from their families to serve in this way.
“When they are pulled away from their families, when they have to miss birthdays and graduations and beginnings of school and things like that to go guard a Shake Shack—I mean, put yourself in the shoes of that 20-something-year-old soldier who is being told t'his is what you signed up for,'" Harbaugh said. "It is gutting to the morale of the individual and the unit.”
Jermaine Collins served in the Ohio National Guard for ten years. He works with the Common Defense Educational Fund, a left-leaning nonprofit of politically active veterans. Collins said Ohio National Guard members are basically civilians and they don't mind helping out with emergency situations in the state, citing the 2014 water crisis in Northwest Ohio.
"This mission, however, is far outside the scope of aiding Ohioans," Collins said. "These deployments in D.C. are not an emergency and are overstepping the use of our military. It is downright disrespectful to our citizen soldiers to pull them away from their families and communities to police the unhoused population in D.C. and assist ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in mass deportations."
Collins said they did not sign up for the Ohio National Guard "to become political pawns."
Polls have shown mixed reactions to the deployment of the troops from six states. Around 80% of Washington residents oppose Trump's orders to deploy the National Guard and take control of the city's police force, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll. But 54% of respondents in a Harvard Caps/Harris poll said they think Trump's actions are justified, with 46% holding the opposite view.
DeWine said he responded to a request to send troops to D.C.
Gov. Mike DeWine said last week the Secretary of the Army asked for the 150 guard members and "I'm not going to turn down that request to do that." He added that it's consistent with his decisions to fulfill requests from Republican governors wanting help following storms in southern states, as well as Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and mayors of Cleveland and Columbus - all Democrats - during the George Floyd protests.
DeWine said the troops are not authorized to spend more than 30 days on this mission. Many members of the Ohio National Guard work in local law enforcement agencies. When honoring the request for guard members to help with this mission, DeWine said he insisted that none were local law enforcement officers.
