Via The Washington Post: The Pentagon has ordered thousands of specialized National Guard personnel to complete civil unrest mission training over the next several months, an indication that the Trump administration’s effort to send uniformed military forces into urban centers - once reserved for extraordinary emergencies - could become the norm.

The Defense Department’s newly established “quick reaction force” within the National Guard must be trained, equipped with riot-control gear and ready for deployment by Jan. 1, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The 200 troops will be drawn from National Guard personnel whose primary focus is responding to disasters like nuclear accidents and terrorist attacks, the documents said.

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The National Guard is building a “quick reaction force” (QRF) of some 23,500 troops trained in crowd control and civil disturbance that can be ready to deploy to U.S. cities by early next year, according to a leaked memo reported by multiple outlets Wednesday.

The Oct. 8 memo, signed by National Guard Bureau Director of Operations Maj. Gen. Ronald Burkett, orders the Guard from nearly every U.S. state, Puerto Rico and Guam to train 500 service members. States with smaller populations such as Delaware will have 250 troops in its force, while Alaska will have 350 and Guam will have 100, Task & Purpose reported.

A previous Pentagon memo issued in September, and revealed by The Guardian, had mandated that the Washington, D.C., National Guard create a “specialized military police battalion” within it “dedicated to ensuring safety and public order in the Nation’s capital as the circumstances may necessitate.”