The Maryland Air National Guard won’t get the fighter jets it wanted.

That may be the final knot in a twisted tale of football stadiums and fighter jets, an oddball plan that would have swapped a D.C. Air National Guard squadron in exchange for stepping out of the Washington Commanders’ path back to its city of origin.

“The F-16s will stay with the DC ANG,” a White House official said in a statement to The Washington Post over the weekend. “The Trump Administration will continue to prioritize readiness and Warfighting to achieve Peace through Strength for the United States.”

The news came just days after the Maryland 175th Wing flew the first of 21 A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, better known as Warthogs, to their final destination — a boneyard in Arizona.

Wrapped up in all this, though, is something more sinister than football for fighter jets, or even the end of 104 years of Maryland aviation history — Donald Trump’s 2020 use of the National Guard as a presidential force to quell public dissent.

If these are strange days for America, they are for the Maryland Guard, too.

You probably think about the Guard as civilian soldiers, responding to natural disasters or marching in parades. You’re right.

In September, Gov. Wes Moore sent a helicopter from the 3-126th General Support Aviation Battalion in Aberdeen to North Carolina to help after Hurricane Helene.

Or maybe you think about the Guard at war. Right again.

The 104th Fighter Squadron, part of the 175th, spent 100 days last fall on patrol over Syria and Iraq, its ninth mission to the Middle East since 2001.

There’s one more National Guard role. It is the only military branch exempt from the Posse Comitatus Act, a post-Civil War ban on using federal troops for civilian law enforcement.

Gov. Larry Hogan used that power at least four times. If that seems like a lot, it was. But Hogan faced unique situations.

Newly elected, he called out the Guard in 2015, sending 2,000 troops into Baltimore when protests over the death of Freddie Gray in police custody turned violent. In the chaos of that day, he considered acting without consent from then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

Eventually, they agreed.

The governor did it again three years later, sending a tiny contingent to help with Trump’s first-term immigration policy at the southern border. Hogan called them back when the administration started separating families.

In June 2020, Hogan sent about 120 Guardsmen to D.C. after Trump called for them to help quell protests against police violence.

Then on Jan. 6, 2021, Hogan sent 500 Guardsmen back into Washington to stop the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters trying to block the certification of Joe Biden as president-elect. He waited three hours before getting the acting secretary of defense to agree.

Hogan was cautious in each instance. Using troops against civilians violates the American ideal of keeping the military out of civilian affairs. It is a threat to democracy and personal liberty.

That’s why Trump’s use of the D.C. National Guard remains such an outrageous act.

He did it over the objections of Mayor Muriel Bowser, who was worried it would inflame protests. In addition to Maryland, 10 states also sent troops.

The D.C. Guard is unique. With no governor in Washington, it is the only Guard unit under direct command of the secretary of defense and, through him, the president.

That set a terrifying precedent — one that could turn cities into war zones. The possibility of a recurrence prompted proposals for change, but they fell flat in a divided Congress.

The Maryland Air Guard didn’t fly A-10s to violence in Baltimore or Washington. That would have signaled something far worse.

Today, it is losing its flying mission. The Air Force is grounding the 60 or so remaining Thunderbolts. They were designed to stop Soviet tanks pouring through the Fulda Gap in a 20th-century invasion of Western Europe.

Never happened, but the resilient jets proved useful in other conflicts. Last year, the Air Force finally overcame A-10 defenders in Congress, mostly from states with Guard units that fly them, and moved to retire the jets.

Last Wednesday, Lt. Col. Steven Montalvo flew the first of the 104th Fighter Squadron’s 21 Warthogs from Martin State Airport in Middle River to a boneyard in Arizona. The rest will leave by September, as the unit switches to cyberdefense and ends 124 years of aviation history.

The 10 members of Congress from Maryland asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on March 10 to stop the move and find a new flight mission for the 175th.

“It would be both fiscally irresponsible and inefficient to continue the divestment of A-10s without having a clear plan to transition the talented and experienced workforce of the 175th Fighter Wing to a future flying mission,” they wrote.

That’s how football got involved. The Commanders want to move from Prince George’s County back to Washington and, possibly, a new RFK Stadium.

Before he retired last year, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin negotiated a deal that would have dropped Maryland’s objections in exchange for sending one of two D.C. Air National Guard squadrons of F-16s to Maryland.

The team also had to help redevelop its current stadium, and the president had to sign off on the plan.

Then Trump won a second term, and Maryland is getting screwed.

From federal layoffs and grant cuts to halting the FBI move to Greenbelt, Trump is doing no favors for what he derides as a “liberal” state.

Or, as the White House claims, it could be a military decision.

Yet, there was never a plan to move the jets from Joint Base Andrews in Prince George’s County.

Maybe the reason was the change of uniform shoulder patches, from the D.C.’s Capital Guardians to Maryland’s Fighting Os.

One is part of a command structure that has demonstrated restraint in using the Guard against its people.

The other leads directly to the president.