Who can call the antional guard in washington dc
Executive summary
The District of Columbia’s National Guard is an outlier: command rests with the President of the United States rather than a state governor, so the President (through delegated Defense Department authorities and the D.C. Guard’s presidentially appointed commanding general) is the primary actor who can call the D.C. National Guard into service; longstanding statutory oddities, Pentagon delegations, and litigation have complicated who may actually order forces into the streets [1] [2] [3].
1. The basic rule — the President, not a mayor or governor
Unlike state National Guards that report to governors, the D.C. National Guard historically reports to the President, meaning the President has the statutory chain-of-command authority to mobilize the D.C. Guard that governors possess elsewhere [2] [4] [5].
2. How that presidential authority is exercised — delegations inside the Pentagon
In practice the President’s authority has long been delegated within the Defense Department: a 1969 memorandum and later administrative changes placed operational oversight with the Secretary of Defense and then further delegated it (often to the Army secretary), and post‑Jan. 6 reforms streamlined approvals so the Defense Secretary can approve urgent D.C. Guard civil‑law‑enforcement support or 48‑hour deployments [2] [3].
3. The commanding general’s role — a presidentially appointed trigger point
Statutes and commentary note that the commanding general of the D.C. National Guard — an officer appointed by the President — may “order out” units for drills, inspections, parades, escort, or “other duties,” and that delegation has been interpreted by the executive branch to encompass support to civil authorities, creating an operational mechanism for deployment [2].
4. Title 32, federalization, and the limits that shape who can call whom
Outside D.C., governors control Title 32 activations and must consent to federal support under that statute; courts and analysts emphasize that governors are the empowered parties under 32 U.S.C. §502(f), which is why governors can refuse to send their state guards into federal or interstate missions — a contrast that underscores D.C.’s special status where the President does not need gubernatorial consent [6] [7].
5. Political and legal disputes — why “who can call” is contested
Scholars, advocacy groups, and lawsuits have challenged how broadly the President and Pentagon have used that authority: critics call the situation a “loophole” allowing the President to use the D.C. Guard for domestic policing without invoking statutes like the Insurrection Act, while the executive branch cites longstanding legal interpretations to justify deployments; litigation and court rulings since 2025 have tested those claims, producing rulings that question whether some deployments were lawful and highlighting limits on bringing in out‑of‑state Guard units at a President’s behest [1] [8] [9].
6. Reform efforts and the mayoral-control argument
Legislators and advocacy groups have repeatedly proposed transferring command to the D.C. Mayor to align the capital with state practice and reduce presidential discretion; House NDAA provisions and public campaigns argue mayoral control would speed local responses and constrain federal use of the Guard for policing, but those reforms have not uniformly become law and the President retains the fallback power to federalize or deploy the D.C. Guard in exigent circumstances [10] [11] [12].
7. Practical takeaway — who to name in a request or order
In practical and legal terms, the decision-makers are the President and, through delegated channels, the Secretary of Defense and the Army/Defense officials who exercise operational authority; the commanding general is the on‑the‑ground official who can “order out” units under current statutory and administrative arrangements, while the D.C. Mayor lacks the default command authority that state governors possess unless Congress changes the law [3] [2] [5].