Maddow Blog | Why National Guard troops are now picking up trash in D.C.

When Donald Trump militarized the nation’s capital, the president didn’t just tout discredited and pretextual concerns about crime. The Republican also committed to what he described as a new “beautification” initiative in Washington, D.C.

To that end, locals are suddenly seeing something unexpected and unusual: National Guard troops on trash duty. The local NBC affiliate reported:

Members of the National Guard deployed to D.C. will pick up trash and work on dozens of ‘beautification and restoration’ projects, the military task force overseeing all troops in the District said Monday. … Officials said the effort is part of a broader ‘beautification’ operation aimed at community restoration and improvement and that members will complete more than 40 tasks at sites around the District.

The report added that task force officials “wouldn’t offer details about how often troops have been asked to clean up areas in D.C.”

For now, let’s not dwell on what the reaction would be from Republicans and conservative media outlets if, hypothetically, Barack Obama’s administration unnecessarily deployed National Guard troops to a city and then directed them to pick up garbage around monuments.

We can also, for now, put aside questions about whether this is consistent with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s incessant rhetoric about “lethality” and restoring a “warriors’ ethos.”

Instead, let’s consider a different line of questioning: Isn’t the Park Service usually responsible for this? The Washington Post reported on the answer:

Typically, custodial work like this falls to the National Park Service, which was already facing staffing shortfalls when the Trump administration this spring directed additional cuts as it gutted the federal workforce. The service used to have 200 people assigned to maintain thousands of acres of trees and gardens in D.C., and now there are 20, a Park Service official told The Post.

Ah. So, the National Park Service used to have all kinds of employees, including groundskeepers, but the Trump administration laid them off.

And that same Republican administration, committed to Trump’s “beautification” vision, now has National Guard troops filling in the gaps.

The Post’s report added, “Representatives for Hegseth did not address questions about the new beautification assignment, or whether it was in line with the secretary’s lethality push.”

Imagine that.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com