Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered that National Guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington for President Trump's law enforcement crackdown will be armed, the Pentagon said Friday.

The Defense Department didn't immediately offer any other details about the new development or why it was needed.

The step is a escalation in Mr. Trump's intervention into policing in the nation's capital and comes as nearly 2,000 National Guard members are stationed in the city, with the arrival this week of hundreds of troops from several Republican-led states.

The Pentagon and Army said last week that troops would not carry weapons. The new guidance is that they will carry their service-issued weapons.

National Guard personnel have been deployed in D.C. since last week , when Mr. Trump

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