Vermont’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott has declined to send the state’s National Guard to Washington, D.C., noting that he didn’t believe it to be a proper use of these troops.
“In the absence of an immediate emergency or disaster that local and regional first responders are unable to handle, the governor just does not support utilizing the guard for this purpose, and does not view the enforcement of domestic law as a proper use of the National Guard,” Scott’s chief of staff Jason Gibbs told Vermont Public on Friday.
Scott is the rare Republican leader who’s refused to bow to the Trump administration’s requests as the president has deployed National Guard and federal law enforcement to address what he’s described as a spiraling crime crisis in the capital. In reality, data shows that violent crime rates in the district have declined in 2024 and 2025, and Trump’s efforts have been criticized by Democrats as a “stunt” designed to distract from other controversies his administration is grappling with, like the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Scott’s decision followed a Pentagon request for a “few dozen” of the state’s troops, according to Gibbs, and comes as six Republican-led states, including West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana, have authorized the deployment of their National Guard to D.C. in the last week.
