President Trump’s military takeover of America’s capital city means troops are tasked with “area beautification” and “monument security,” Pentagon spokeswoman Kingsley Wilson told reporters Thursday.
The deployment of some 800 Air and Army National Guardsmen is intended to help the city’s temporarily federalized police with “monument security, community safety patrols, protecting federal facilities and officers, traffic control posts and area beautification,” Wilson said. That includes presence on the National Mall, though Wilson did not answer questions about the specific crimes the Trump administration believes need to be stamped out near the monuments and museums, Defense One ’s Meghann Myers reports .
“They will remain until law and order has been restored in the district, as