Last August, President Trump ordered hundreds of soldiers and airmen from the National Guard to duty in the capital. He claimed he would “rescue” the city from “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor,” even though violent crime had fallen to a 30-year low.

They soon began appearing at landmarks on the National Mall, in other tourist areas and around some subway stations, mostly replanting grass, washing off graffiti and picking up bags of trash.

Now, nearly 5,000 Guard troops are in Washington — roughly equivalent to about eight Army battalions. They are still mostly in tourist areas and are expected to be on hand for the Fourth of July celebrations, with temperatures forecast to reach around 100 degrees.

The Guard troops deployment now is about 30 percent more troops than Gen. Douglas MacArthur commanded in the city when he crushed the Bonus Army veterans protests on the National Mall in 1932, and more than triple the number of Guard troops who confronted the largest anti-Vietnam War protests in Washington during the May Day protests of 1971.

And according to the National Guard, about 4,500 Guard troops were in the city during the 2020 protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The largest deployment of Guard forces in Washington came in response to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, when 20,000 troops were called to the city to provide security through the inauguration of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Given that Washington lacks statehood and is federal land, Mr. Trump has the power to deploy troops in the capital. The D.C. attorney general’s office tried to stop him last year, but a federal appeals court ruled in Mr. Trump’s favor.

The first wave of about 800 National Guard troops came from the D.C. National Guard, which mostly draws from men and women who live in the city or nearby suburbs in Maryland and Virginia.

On Aug. 22, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered troops to bring their weapons with them and patrol the streets while armed.

According to data from the National Guard task force in Washington, by October, with roughly 2,500 troops in Washington, the portion that came from the city’s own National Guard contingent was down to about 40 percent.

The contingent of Washingtonians patrolling their own streets in 2026 continues to dwindle as the Guard mission grows and drags on with no end in sight.

Last month, the official in charge of Mr. Trump’s Washington task force announced a surge of federal law enforcement agents to the city ahead of the July 4 festivities to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary.

At the time, nearly 2,500 Guard troops were in Washington. By June 8, there were nearly 3,500. And at the end of the month, there were more than 4,800 — only 12 percent of whom are members of the D.C. Guard. The remainder are from 24 states and the territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

More recently, Guard personnel have been seen at the Great American State Fair on the National Mall, a 16-day event organized by Freedom 250, a Trump-backed group.

Guard soldiers have been sent to keep the public away from the Reflecting Pool nearby, though they have been unable to beat back the assault of algae that followed Mr. Trump’s attempts to beautify the landmark.