Two West Virginia National Guard members shot near the White House

A peculiar, predictable, and painful drama unfolded this afternoon, one that would be as comical as a political cartoon if the consequences were not written in human blood.

Two West Virginia National Guard members shot Wednesday near the White House have died in the city built on the compromise of swampland, according to Governor Patrick Morrisey, who moments later amended his comment.

Just blocks from the White House, two National Guard members were shot while stationed at a post whose very legality has been evaporating faster than a puddle in a DC summer.

And from his resort in Palm Beach, the President took to his digital pulpit to bless the troops and promise a steep price for the shooter, a sentiment as hollow as a campaign promise when one considers he is the architect of the very predicament that placed those soldiers in harm’s way.

Let us be precise. The ink is not yet dry on a federal ruling that declares this entire military tableau on our streets to be an illegal fiction.

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, in a meticulously reasoned 61-page opinion, did not merely suggest the President overstepped; she declared that the deployment of over 2,000 Guard troops to the District is a legal trespass, an incursion on the sovereignty of this federal city that must end by December 11.

Cobb ruled that Trump’s deployment of some 2,300 guardsmen from almost a dozen Republican states to fight crime in the city was unlawful.

The judge found that it illegally infringes upon the city’s ability to direct law enforcement and undermines Congress’s authority over the nation’s capital, though her order is on pause for three weeks to allow time for appeal.

The President, she wrote, cannot simply wave his hand and turn the National Guard into his personal precinct patrol, using a flimsy interpretation of a law meant for “drills and field exercises” to justify a months-long occupation for the “deterrence of crime.”

To call this a creative reading of the law would be an insult to poets and liars everywhere.

And where does the Garden State fit into this grim picture? Look no further than the West Virginia National Guard, whose Governor so proudly volunteered his citizen-soldiers for this “DC Safe and Beautiful” mission.

“It is with great sorrow that we can confirm both members of the West Virginia National Guard who were shot earlier today in Washington, DC, have passed away from their injuries,” said Morrisey.

“These brave West Virginians lost their lives in the service of their country. We are in ongoing contact with federal officials as the investigation continues,” said Morrisey. “Our entire state grieves with their families, their loved ones, and the Guard community. West Virginia will never forget their service or their sacrifice, and we will demand full accountability for this horrific act.”

Morrisey has authorized hundreds of West Virginians to remain in this legal quagmire through the end of the fiscal year, patrolling streets that are not theirs under an authority a federal judge has now labeled illegitimate.

These are not federal troops; they are state militia members sent on a questionable errand, and now the nation sees the risk. It is a sobering lesson for every state whose governors are so eager to please the Oval Office that they would send their citizens into a constitutional gray zone, armed and vulnerable.

The scene today was a stark illustration of the judge’s warning. The shooting at 17th and H Streets, the lockdown, the yellow tape, and the wounded guardsmen—this is the price of a political stunt dressed up as public safety.

The President speaks of chaos to justify his deployment, yet his own actions create the very conditions of tension and conflict he claims to abate.

He has placed young soldiers from states like West Virginia in the crosshairs of a political and legal battle, using them as pawns in a game of constitutional chicken.

So here we are, folks. The courts are sounding the alarm, the city is objecting, and the bullets are real. The President, from a safe distance, offers thoughts and prayers while the legal foundation for his “beautiful” mission crumbles beneath the boots of the soldiers he claims to champion.

It is a spectacle of the highest order, a tragedy in the making, and a story not of safety and beauty, but of stalemate and staleness, where the only fresh things are the wounds suffered today by those caught in the middle. The law has spoken. It is past time for the Commander-in-Chief to listen.