(Tribune News Service) — The National Guard recruits new troops with the motto: “Serve Your State. Defend Your Nation.”

In Georgia, guard members routinely help civilians during natural disasters. They tested patients for COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic and assisted overwhelmed hospitals. They have deployed overseas to war, including in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nicknamed “citizen soldiers” for their part-time roles, Georgia’s guard members are seeing their responsibilities expand substantially under President Donald Trump’s administration.

On Monday, Trump signed an executive order for designating “an appropriate number” of guard members from all 50 states to rapidly mobilize for the purpose of “quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety and order” nationwide. The same day, the Georgia National Guard confirmed it would deploy 75 of its soldiers and airmen across the state this fall to help with Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

The moves come as Trump threatens to expand his anti-crime initiatives by sending National Guard troops to other Democratic-led cities, including Baltimore and Chicago.

Critics say the president’s actions blur the nation’s long-standing line against militarizing domestic law enforcement. They warn that using guard members in this way could endanger them and civilians alike — and risk infringing on constitutional rights.

Gov. Brian Kemp and his allies see the deployments in a different light: as part of the state’s ongoing commitment to assist federal missions.

“We are definitely not overstretching the National Guard. If that’s ever the case, General Wilson will tell me that,” the governor said of the unit’s commander, Dwayne Wilson.

“When we’re asked to help with things like that, we’re glad to try to do that to help the president,” he added in an interview. “And we’ve done that for many, many years. We’ve done it really every year since I’ve been governor, and our Guard has done a great job serving our country when asked.”

They could soon get another mission. After Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles in June and Washington earlier this month, the president could next target Chicago and Baltimore. Kemp hasn’t ruled out deploying Georgia troops to Washington or beyond if asked.

“We haven’t currently been asked to go to D.C. Certainly, if we’re asked to do that — we stay in communication with the White House on issues like that — we’ll be glad to talk to him about that mission,” he said of the president. “We haven’t been asked yet, but we’re always ready to serve if needed.”

Blurring the lines

Chris Purdy of Atlanta said he received a “minimal” amount of training for responding to civil disturbances during the eight years he served in the Army National Guard in New York and Virginia. He added that many local and federal law enforcement officers dress and carry themselves like soldiers.

“There are a lot of opportunities for mistakes to happen, especially when civilians don’t understand the difference between the National Guard, ICE and local law enforcement,” said Purdy, an Iraq War veteran who leads the Chamberlain Network, a nonprofit veterans group focused on protecting democracy. “You could easily have an incident where there is a conflict and problems arise.”

Purdy, meanwhile, worries how the Trump administration’s plans could affect the Guard’s recruitment efforts. People join the Guard, he said, because they believe they can help their communities and the nation in uniform.

“If they believed they could do that by joining law enforcement, they would have done that,” Purdy said. “To use them in a role that they never intended in the first place really betrays the reasons they signed up.”

Insurance Commissioner John King, a retired Georgia National Guard major general, pointed to how guard members have previously been deployed in Atlanta. In 2020, for example, they protected state government buildings following a burst of violence across the city that left four dead and that included the ransacking of the Georgia State Patrol headquarters. The following year, they secured the state Capitol in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington.

“Every state has got a requirement of what we call a National Guard reaction force,” said King, a Republican who once led Doraville’s Police Department. “There is nothing unusual and nothing new in this order. This has been a long-standing requirement by the Department of Defense for many years.”

Ongoing questions

It’s unknown how many of the Georgia National Guard’s 11,000 soldiers and 3,000 airmen will be involved in the Trump administration’s quick reaction force, what their duties will be and whether they will be armed. The Georgia National Guard referred questions to the National Guard Bureau, which referred questions to the Pentagon. A Pentagon aide said the Defense Department was still reviewing Trump’s executive order.

Joseph Nunn, counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, called Trump’s order “inconsistent with American civic traditions and political thought.” Nunn cited the Boston Massacre of 1770, when British soldiers fired into a crowd of civilians, killing five and injuring six.

“Going back to the founding, Americans are traditionally very skeptical of military interference in civilian affairs and particularly of military involvement in law enforcement,” Nunn said, adding America’s founding generation “understood that an army turned inward can be a very dangerous thing to both democracy and individual liberty.”

At the White House this week, Trump said he had unlimited power as president to deploy the National Guard in any state.

“Most people are saying, ‘If you call him a dictator, if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants’ — I am not a dictator, by the way,” he said, according to The New York Times. “Not that I don’t have — I would — the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country is in danger — and it is in danger in these cities — I can do it.”

He also said he “may or may not” wait until governors request National Guard troops before ordering deployments to address crime.

Democrats have responded with fury. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker called Trump’s move a “dangerous power grab.” And Democratic U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath of Marietta said she was “absolutely livid” about the planned Georgia deployments.

“At a time when Georgians are struggling to afford groceries, gas, rent and child care, the governor shouldn’t be wasting his time playing partisan politics with the president,” she said.

Staff writer Zachary Hansen contributed to this report.

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