Security officials in Washington steeled the region for an influx of protestors as truckers from as far away as California began making their way to the nation’s capital to protest Covid-related restrictions such as vaccine mandates.  

Streets around the U.S. Capitol building were blockaded by heavy vehicles and the Pentagon authorized the deployment of 700 National Guard troops and 50 vehicles to support the Washington, D.C., Metro Police and the U.S. Capitol Police with traffic control.

In announcing the deployment, the Defense Department stressed that the troops would not be armed and would not be involved in making any arrests.

“Supporting members of the National Guard will not be issued firearms and they will not engage in the surveillance of U.S. or foreign persons, although they are authorized to report any observed criminal activity to the appropriate law enforcement personnel,” the announcement stated.

The U.S. truckers are aiming to emulate their counterparts in Canada, who converged on the Canadian capital of Ottawa three weeks ago and virtually paralyzed the central part of the city to protest government vaccine mandates. Canadian police in riot gear broke up those protests last weekend and removed most of the remaining vehicles.

One of the American trucker contingents, a West Coast-based group calling itself the People’s Convoy, departed California Wednesday morning. Organizers said they hoped to reach the capital region on the evening of March 5, but they said the truckers would stop short of entering the District of Columbia itself and instead assemble elsewhere in the area.

Traveling along with the California contingent, according to the group, is an array of members of right-leaning media outlets and anti-vaccine activists. The caravan departing Wednesday consisted of dozens of big rigs, some with trailers, and hundreds of passenger vehicles, many festooned with flags and blaring music.

At a kick-off rally in Adelanto, California, attended by several hundred supporters — many of them waving blue flags emblazoned with President Trump’s name — the cheering crowds were warned that the Covid vaccines were part of a conspiracy to boost the profits of pharmaceutical companies and dangerous to those who take them.

“The last two years have been really, really rough. A lot of people have died from Covid, and many more have died from the policies put in place to handle Covid,” one of the event’s emcees, Leigh Dundas, a lawyer for a California anti-vaccine group, said. “The result has been an economic crippling not just of our great economy and our great country.”

On the other side of America, another convoy that had attracted attention earlier in the week, sputtered in its early efforts.

The leader of that convoy, a trucker from Pennsylvania named Bob Bolus, told local media outlets that he was hoping to “choke” Washington, D.C., “like a boa constrictor” by clogging up the Interstate 495 beltway loop that encircles the city. Mr. Bolus left his home in Scranton Wednesday morning, part of an entourage with only one 18-wheeler and several passenger vehicles. A handful of additional vehicles joined him along the way.

Another group called the American Truckers Freedom Fund has been raising funds online for smaller convoys from different regions of the country, but has said it will not be kicking off those caravans until early next month.

The truckers have said the protests are aimed at convincing public health officials to end Covid-related restrictions such as mask mandates and vaccine requirements, as well as to lift the pandemic-related state of emergency that President Biden said would be renewed when it expires March 1.

“It is now time to re-open the country,” organizers of the People’s Convoy said in a press release.  “Americans need to get back to work in a free and unrestricted manner.”