National Guard members are speaking out about their feelings of humiliation and frustration being involved in Donald Trump’s yearlong federal takeover of Washington D.C.National Public Radio spoke with three National Guard members who were deployed for many months as part of the so-called “D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force”—and surprise, surprise, they hated it. “I will say very frankly that the bad taste that this mission left in my mouth, it actually embarrasses me to be involved in any way,” one guard member told NPR. “I don’t want to think about the National Guard. I don’t want to necessarily discuss my affiliation with the National Guard. I don’t want to fulfill my normal National Guard duties just because of the abuses of the National Guard in this D.C. mission,” the guard member added.After being summoned to address a so-called “crime emergency” in the nation’s capital, the National Guard was quickly looped in on trash pickup and other landscaping duties on the National Mall. So it shouldn’t come as a shock that all three National Guard members expressed skepticism about the reason they were deployed.“Now, with it being a year, it’s hard to feel like that justification holds any water,” said another guard member. “It feels like the guard is being exploited in a sense.”One of the guard members criticized Trump’s federal takeover as feeling like a “very authoritarian move.”Another one of the guardsmen said that their deployment felt like a political stunt, and pointed to the organization’s insertion in Trump’s false narratives about the city. Last month, the National Guard was ordered to patrol the perimeter of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after the president falsely claimed that it had been targeted by vandals. “I hope that there will be some accounting someday—probably after President Trump is gone—about why we were there, and was it worth it? But none of that is gonna happen right now,” that member said. The Trump administration has continued to lie about lowering the crime rates in the District of Columbia. Last month, the White House claimed that Washington D.C. had seen one of the steepest homicide drops of any city nationwide in the first six months of the year—but multiple reports have found that’s not true at all. Last month, the Center for American Progress found that Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard to American cities has cost taxpayers more than $1.7 billion and failed to reduce the rate of violent crime. The Trump administration has responded by suing the organization for defamation.Editor’s PickA federal judge filed a temporary restraining order requiring an informant’s immediate return to the United States after he was deported three times—even after he willingly advised the Justice Department on Mexican cartel activity.The informant, referred to as John Doe, provided “substantial assistance to the Department of Justice … against defendants affiliated with Mexican drug cartels” in 2024, placing his own life on the line for the U.S. government, U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher wrote. And yet last month, with no prior notice, the Department of Homeland Security deported him to Guatemala before turning him over to Mexican officials—even though a judge ruled over two years ago that he was “more likely than not to be tortured by the government or by individuals acting with the acquiescence of the government if he were returned to Mexico.”Guatemala refused to accept him as he wasn’t a Guatemalan official, and Mexican officials at the embassy there refused to accept him after learning he had received protection under the Convention Against Torture. Doe was sent back to Texas and shuffled between different holding facilities until DHS tried to send him directly to Mexico around July 15. Mexico again refused. Finally, on August 1, DHS successfully deported Doe back to Mexico, where he has been since—hiding for his life out of fear that “the cartels that he provided information against will find him and torture or kill him before he can return to the United States,” Gallagher noted.To deport a man risking deadly retribution after helping the U.S. government fight cartels—something the Trump administration claims is a massive priority—is absolutely cruel and unusual.“A man put himself at enormous risk to turn on the cartels and testify against them, making him a target for a hideous death if they ever got their hands on him. As a result, he got protection under the Convention Against Torture,” American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on X. “The Trump admin deported him to Mexico anyway.”Gallagher, a Trump appointee, expressed a similar sentiment in her TRO. “The record clearly demonstrates that there is an imminent danger of irreparable harm, in the form of potential torture or even death, if Doe is not immediately returned to the United States.... Doe was sent [to] a region of Mexico where there is active cartel activity, without any of his money or personal belongings, reliant on the help of strangers while attempting to remain in hiding,” she wrote. “The Court thus finds that the irreparable harm factor overwhelmingly supports the immediate necessity of ordering Doe’s return to the United States.”Editor’s Pick:Actor Mark Ruffalo fired back Sunday against accusations of antisemitism over his criticisms of Paramount Skydance’s planned merger with Warner Bros., calling the attacks “appalling and fundamentally dishonest.”In a statement posted to social media, Ruffalo referenced Paramount CEO David Ellison and his father, Larry, the co-founder of the tech company Oracle.“This merger has real consequences for real people, and for the entire country. Scrutinizing the Ellisons, including Oracle’s business built on data, surveillance technology and government contracts, and the serious threat to editorial freedom and the loss of a livelihood for thousands of families, is fair and necessary,” Ruffalo warned.Ruffalo made the statement after he shared an Instagram post on Friday from the BDS Movement, which advocates boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel and any companies that profit from its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The post showed former Oracle CEO Safra Catz explaining that the Israeli military runs its occupation with the help of “really profoundly scary technology at Oracle.”