Several senior Trump administration officials are living in or will soon be living in military base housing in the Washington area, The Atlantic reported on Friday.
According to the report, several US administration officials, including Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, and Kristi Noem, have moved into houses that hosted senior military officials on bases in the Washington area to shield themselves from protests outside of their homes and political violence.
However, the number of Trump officials who have moved onto bases is now impacting housing for the nation's top uniformed officers, as well as other administration officials.
US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard requested earlier this year to move onto Fort McNair, but was denied based on the lack of availability.
The threat level against administration officials has changed recently, including Iranian-backed attempted assassinations, as well as the multiple assassination attempts against Trump. However, there has not been a record of this many political appointees living on military bases, the report stated.
Trump administration officials move into US military bases
“In a robust democracy, what you want is the military to be for the defense of the country as a whole and not just one party,” Adria Lawrence, associate professor of international studies and political science at John Hopkins University, told The Atlantic.
Stephen Miller will reportedly soon join the growing list. Katie Miller, his wife and mother of his three children, told Fox News she was confronted outside her front door by an unfamiliar woman, who she believed engaged in a form of protest that crossed a line.
“I’m watching you,” the woman said to Miller, as reported by The Atlantic. This occurred on the day after political activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
The Miller family had faced protests for weeks beforehand, including someone putting up posters in their neighborhood calling them Nazis.
Both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live at Fort McNair, known as “General’s Row.” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll shares a home on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall with another senior political employee of the army, per the report.
Another senior White House official, who was not named for security purposes, had to swap living in a private home for a military base, following Kirk’s assassination, according to the report.
While the political officials duke it out for the largest houses on the basis, three and four-star-level generals and their young families are now crunched for housing in the notoriously difficult Washington-area housing market.
The Atlantic, citing an official familiar with the matter, reported that in some aspects, this would be cheaper for the federal government than providing personal security to officials, which requires agents to rent a secondary location nearby.
In previous administrations, there have been instances in which cabinet members resided on military bases.
Robert Gates, defense secretary under presidents George W. Bush and Obama, and Jim Mattis, Trump's first Pentagon chief, lived in Naval housing at Potomac Hill annex near the State Department, the report added. Trump's former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, lived at the Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall during his time in office.