A top US military official has ordered the national guards of all 50 US states, the District of Columbia and US territories to form “quick reaction forces” trained in “riot control”, including use of batons, body shields, Tasers and pepper spray, according to an internal Pentagon directive reviewed by the Guardian.
The memo, signed on 8 October by Maj Gen Ronald Burkett, the director of the Pentagon’s national guard bureau, sets thresholds for the size of the quick reaction force to be trained in each state, with most states required to train 500 national guard members, for a total of 23,500 troops nationwide.
View image in fullscreen Photograph: Supplied to the Guardian
As authority, Burkett cited Donald Trump’s August executive order that deployed the guard to fight crime in Washington DC. The same order required the secretary of defense to create “a standing National Guard quick reaction force … available for rapid nationwide deployment” in “quelling civil disturbances”.
Janessa Goldbeck, a former US Marine Corps captain and chief executive of the Vet Voice Foundation, a non-profit advocacy group, said the order represented “an attempt by the president to normalize a national, militarized police force”.
She predicted that force would be used to send troops to states led by Democratic governors without their permission and could be used to suppress turnout and disrupt the fair operation of elections.
View image in fullscreen Photograph: Supplied to the Guardian
In a worst-case scenario, she said, “the president could declare a state of emergency and say that elections are rigged and use allegations of voter fraud to seize the ballots of secure voting centers”.
The White House and the Pentagon did not respond to repeated requests for comment. A spokesperson for the national guard bureau declined to comment on concerns that Trump is seeking to normalize a national militarized police force or could potentially use the force to seize ballot boxes.
The memo says the Pentagon will deploy military trainers to every state and US territories as far away as Guam with the goal of making the quick reaction forces “operational” by 1 January 2026. Each state will also be provided “100 sets of crowd control equipment to be used to support this requirement”.
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