WASHINGTON (AP) — National Guard troops will be on the streets of Washington, D.C., until the end of the year, according to a memo reviewed by The Associated Press.

The memo, signed by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and dated Wednesday, said “the conditions of the mission” warranted an extension past the end of next month to continue supporting President Donald Trump’s “ongoing efforts to restore law and order.”

Meanwhile, Trump said this month that for now he was dropping his push to deploy National Guard troops in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, which had provoked legal challenges. He also backed off a bit Friday from his threat a day earlier to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops to quell protests in Minnesota.

In Washington, troops have been charged with patrolling the streets and picking up trash. Trump has asserted repeatedly that crime has vanished in the city.

Two National Guard troops from West Virginia that were part of the mission in D.C. were shot the day before Thanksgiving. Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died from her injuries.

The National Guard has about 2,400 troops in Washington, with about 700 from D.C. and the rest from 11 states with Republican governors, including Indiana, South Carolina, Alabama and Oklahoma.

Skeletal remains that washed up on a Washington beach have been identified as those of a former Oregon mayor who vanished in 2006, ending a 20-year mystery with the help of genetic genealogy.

Edwin Asher, who previously was mayor of Fossil, Oregon, disappeared while he was crabbing in Tillamook Bay, on the northwest coast of Oregon, on Sept. 5, 2006, the Grays Harbor County coroner and Othram, a forensic genetic genealogy lab, said in news releases this week.

He was presumed to have drowned and was legally declared dead that same year, officials said.

In November 2006, skeletal remains washed ashore in Taholah, an unincorporated village on the Quinault Indian Reservation in Grays Harbor County, Washington, the coroner’s office said.

Taholah is about 124 miles north of Tillamook Bay.

The local sheriff’s and coroner’s offices responded and collected evidence.

It was determined the remains were those of a man estimated to 20 to 60 years old or older, 5 feet, 9 inches tall and an estimated 170 to 180 pounds.

However, the man was never identified, and he became known as the “Grays Harbor County John Doe (2006).”

Last year, the Grays Harbor Coroner’s Office and the King County medical examiner submitted forensic evidence to Othram to try to identify John Doe.

Scientists used genome sequencing to build a DNA profile for the man and genetic genealogy search to develop “new investigative leads.”

Investigators were led to potential relatives of the man, and reference DNA samples were collected from a relative and compared with those of John Doe.

Finally, it led to a positive identification: Grays Harbor John Doe was Clarence Edwin “Ed” Asher, born April 2, 1934.

He was 72 when he died.

Asher was born in Salem and raised in Astoria, and in 1952 he moved to Fossil, where he was a lineman technician for the Fossil Telephone Co. until he retired in 1995, according to his obituary. He also opened his own shop, Asher’s Variety Store, in 1965.

He loved antique cars, fishing and boating, the obituary said.

He had served as mayor and also volunteered as a local fireman and ambulance driver.

He was survived by his wife of over 20 years, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. NBC News has reached out to the city of Fossil for comment.

Forensic genetic genealogy has grown in popularity in recent years and has helped solve decades-old cold cases.

SEATTLE — Michigan basketball went to the Emerald City and struck gold … or maize.

On a night when Washington honored its national-champion men’s soccer team, brought back former star (and former Detroit Piston) Isaiah Thomas and introduced their incoming class of football recruits to the first sellout crowd in two seasons, the Huskies simply couldn’t hang with the Wolverines on Wednesday, Jan. 14.

No. 3 Michigan battled on the boards, locked down on defense and got enough done on offense despite another lackluster shooting night to get back to its winning ways, beating Washington 82-72 in the first of two games on a Pacific Northwest swing.

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Morez Johnson Jr., nicknamed “Junkyard Dog” by his teammates, showed his bite against the team with “Dawgs” across its chest, scoring 16 points and adding a career-high 16 rebounds for his third double-double of the season.

“As a coaching staff, we communicate throughout the game and there were anywhere between three and 300 instances where we said to each other ‘Rez is an absolute dog, Rez is an absolute beast’,” coach Dusty May said postgame. “We were very repetitive because he made so many plays that made us appreciate him.”