Stevenson’s army, June 6

–  SecDef Esper, without consulting the president, has ordered National Guardsmen deployed to DC not to carry weapons. He has also sent additional Guard units back to their home states.
– WSJ reports, confirmed by WaPo and NYT, that President Trump has ordered the withdrawal of 9500 US troops from Germany,cutting the current 35,000 to a new ceiling of 25,000.
– In what looks like a damage-control effort, “friends” of Gen. Milley tell the NYT that he argued forcefully against invoking the Insurrection Act and otherwise distanced himselkf from Trump’s photo op.
– Similarly, “people who know him” tell WaPo how Gen.Mattis came to write his scathing critique of the president.
– The WH is now an armed camp, with a much greater security perimeter than I remember from the antiwar demonstrations in 1969. High fencing now surrounds 15th-17th streets, and Constitution Ave to H St. And look at the huge no vehicle cordon in much of downtown DC for today’s expected protests.
-FP quotes several of my civ-mil friends on the current situation.

– BTW, I wondered why there was so much fuss about Sen. Cotton’s “send in the troops” op-ed when it never appeared in the print edition of NYT. I learned today that it had been scheduled for Sunday, was released early, and now has been cancelled.
– On this 76th anniversary of D-Day, WaPo has some photographs from then.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).