Last year was an unprecedented year for domestic deployments of the National Guard.

While Guardsmen were tasked all year with responding to state and federal emergencies, providing COVID-19 testing and vaccine support and augmenting law enforcement for civil unrest, perhaps their most visible mission has been providing security for the presidential inauguration.

Scenes of some of the 26,000 uniformed troops sleeping in the U.S. Capitol complex, guarding national monuments and blocking off usually busy downtown streets dominated news sites around the country and the world.

As the Biden administration enters its third week, the threat has passed and, along with it, the need for Guardsmen outside of the District of Columbia National Guard to monitor the situation. The time has come for Guardsmen to return home and take up their state mission and civilian employment.

[The article goes on to mention the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878]

While the National Guard is extremely effective in its missions, it is ultimately not a law enforcement body under the restrictions and conditions of the Posse Comitatus Act. The responsibility for law enforcement in the District of Columbia falls under the jurisdiction of the D.C. Metropolitan Police, the Capitol Police when appropriate, and the District of Columbia National Guard when necessary.

National Guardsmen from around the country dealt with a long series of crises throughout 2020 -- from supporting health professionals with the COVID-19 pandemic since March; to popular protests and civil unrest across major cities, including D.C., in June and July; to fighting wildfires in Colorado and California in August; to election security in November; and now to defending American democracy itself in January 2021.

The U.S. Constitution places primary responsibility for the holding of elections in the hands of the individual states. The maintenance of peace, conduct of orderly elections, and prosecution of unlawful actions are all state responsibilities, pursuant of any state's role of exercising police power and maintaining law and order, whether part of a wider federation or a unitary state. However, in the former Confederate States, a number of paramilitary groups sought to suppress, often through intimidation and violence, African American political power and return the South to rule by the predominantly white Democratic Party. Although African Americans were supported at first by the federal government, as Reconstruction went on, that support waned. Following the bitterly disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election and Compromise of 1877, Congressmen and Senators from the former Confederate States returned to Washington and prioritized prohibiting the federal government from reimposing control over their states. After President Hayes used federal troops to end the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, there was sufficient bipartisan support to pass what became the Posse Comitatus Act.

Sec. 15. From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section and any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment.