What Trump’s Deployment of Federal Troops to U.S. Cities Has Cost Taxpayers

President Donald Trump’s controversial decision to send National Guard troops to multiple U.S. cities this past year has cost taxpayers nearly $500 million, a new report estimates. Since June, the Trump Administration has deployed federal troops to six U.S. cities: Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Memphis, Portland, Chicago, and New Orleans. The deployments, which the President has argued were needed to crack down on crime, have faced legal backlash, and sparked outrage from local and state leaders, as well as residents. A report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), released on Wednesday, adds a hefty price tag to the controversy: The office estimates that the Trump Administration’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Memphis, Portland, and Chicago through December cost roughly $496 million. The New Orleans deployment, which took place toward the end of December, isn’t included in that estimate. And, should the federal government continue these deployments at the same scale as at the end of 2025, the CBO estimates that it would cost taxpayers about $93 million each month. Depending on the local cost of living, sending 1,000 federal troops to a city this year could cost around $18 million to $21 million a month. The CBO acknowledges some uncertainty in its estimate, though. “The costs of those or other deployments in the future are highly uncertain, mainly because the scale, length, and location of such deployments are difficult to predict accurately,” the CBO says in its report. “That uncertainty is compounded by legal challenges, which have stopped deployments to some cities, and by changes in the Administration’s policies.” On Dec. 23, the Supreme Court blocked Trump from sending National Guard troops to Chicago, after Illinois leaders objected to the deployment. A week later, the President said that his Administration would remove troops from L.A., Portland, and Chicago—but didn’t rule out the possibility of sending them back. “We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again—Only a question of time!” the President said in a post on Truth Social on Dec. 31. Most of the areas that the Trump Administration sent troops to last year are led by Democratic politicians who objected to the deployments and criticized the President’s portrayal of their communities as crime-ridden. Several leaders filed lawsuits against the Trump Administration over the issue. The CBO, which created the report at the request of Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, estimated the price tag based on the costs incurred for military pay and benefits when troops are mobilized, as well as those incurred for providing troops with housing, food, and transportation if they’re deployed away from their home base. Merkley’s office responded to the report’s findings on Wednesday, calling the Trump Administration’s deployment of federal troops to U.S. cities a “startling waste of taxpayer dollars.” “The American people deserve to know how many hundreds of millions of their hard-earned dollars have been and are being wasted on Trump’s reckless and haphazard deployment of National Guard troops to Portland and cities across the country,” Merkley, who is the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, said in a press release. “Trump is weaponizing taxpayer funds to illegally tighten his authoritarian grip on our communities. It must end.” Of the five cities that the CBO analyzed, the Washington, D.C., deployment was the most expensive, with a price tag of $223 million through the end of December. At the peak of the deployment, there were about 2,950 federal troops in the nation’s capital. Continuing the deployment there could cost taxpayers an additional $55 million each month, the report predicts. The L.A. deployment was the second-most expensive, costing taxpayers $193 million, the CBO estimates. The California city saw the highest number of troops: At the peak of the deployment, there were about 4,900 troops there. The report comes just a couple weeks after the CBO estimated that rebranding the Department of Defense to the “Department of War,” as the President has ordered, could cost taxpayers roughly $125 million.