National Guard troops remain in DC

Most of the 26,000 National Guard members sent to the nation's capital for the presidential inauguration have left, but 7,000 could be asked to voluntarily stay through March 12, officials said.

The National Guard Bureau said on Jan 21 the day after the inauguration of President Joe Biden that only 10,600 remain on duty of the nearly 26,000 deployed to Washington.

Guard officials said that any guard members who stay past the original 31-day mobilization order will be on a volunteer basis, Nahaku McFadden, a spokesman for the Guard Bureau, told military.com.

"We are not going to make anybody stay," he said.

The troops will provide security, communications, medical evacuation, logistics and safety support to local and federal agencies, officials said.

Guard officials said that troops in the District of Columbia and across the country didn't face a single security threat on Inauguration Day.

Nearly 200 members of the National Guard deployed to Washington in the days leading up to the inauguration have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, Defense Department officials said.

Every guard member sent to Washington was screened for COVID-19 before arriving, but not all were tested, unless required under the screening.

Cramped rest and working quarters contributed to the spread, defense officials said.

On Jan 21, hundreds of guard members were told to leave the Dirksen Senate Office building and moved into a parking garage, a guardsman told politico.com. The garage had no internet and one bathroom, the guardsman said.

After news and social media reports about troops in the garage, a number of lawmakers from both parties called for allowing guard members to take rest breaks inside the Capitol complex. Guard members were allowed to return to indoor spaces to rest, guard officials said.

National Guard and Capitol Police officials offered conflicting explanations about why troops were moved from indoor rest areas to the garage.

Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he wanted answers.

"This isn't a blame game," he said Friday on the Senate floor, adding, "but I do want to know what happened to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Republican governors Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, Ron DeSantis of Florida, Greg Abbott of Texas and Greg Gianforte of Montana said they ordered their National Guard troops to return home following reports of troops in the garage.

DeSantis called the deployment a "half-cocked mission at this point" and said it was time to bring the guard members home.

"These folks are soldiers," DeSantis said on Fox News on Friday. "They're not (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi's servants. This comes on the back end of them trying to investigative the backgrounds of our guardsmen. In Florida, we did not let them go into their political beliefs. That was totally inappropriate."

Biden expressed his "dismay" Friday morning to General Daniel R. Hokanson, chief of the National Guard, about how the troops had been treated, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

Psaki said the president thanked Hokanson and the guard and offered his assistance.

First lady Jill Biden visited guard troops outside the Capitol on Friday, bringing them cookies and thanking them for protecting her family. She noted that the Bidens' late son, Beau, served in the Delaware Army National Guard.