Here’s How Much Trump’s Troop Deployments Have Cost Taxpayers
The president’s decision to wield U.S. troops against American cities has cost taxpayers a pretty penny.
A report published Wednesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the numerous deployments cost Americans nearly $500 million over the last year.
Since June, the Trump administration has dispatched National Guard personnel or active-duty Marine Corps personnel to six cities across the country: Los Angeles, Washington, Memphis, Portland, Chicago, and New Orleans. All but New Orleans, which saw troops deployed at the tail end of the year, were included in the CBO estimation.
“The factors CBO used to estimate the costs of deployments in 2025 suggest that continuing the ongoing deployments at their size as of the end of 2025 would cost $93 million per month,” the office said in a statement. “More generally, deploying 1,000 National Guard personnel to a U.S. city in 2026 would cost $18 million to $21 million per month, depending mainly on the city’s cost of living.”
Donald Trump deployed thousands of National Guard members over 2025 to “protect federal government personnel and property.” Ultimately, he exclusively targeted Democratic cities for what he described as fostering a crime-riddled hellscape, though the data he used to justify such claims were often outdated or just plain incorrect.
Red states—Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, West Virginia, South Carolina, and Ohio—lent significant assistance, sending hundreds of their respective National Guard members to assist in his occupations.
To tally up the total cost, the CBO examined military pay, benefits, and health care, as well as the costs for lodging the active-duty personnel while they were away from their home stations.
Food costs were also calculated, as were transportation costs “to move personnel from their home stations to their deployments and back again, as well as costs to transport personnel between their lodging and their assigned location each day.”