President Donald Trump’s sweeping deployment of National Guard troops to several major cities throughout the United States cost taxpayers roughly $496 million from June by way of December final 12 months, based on an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
The CBO, which aims to provide objective, nonpartisan information to Congress, estimates that if final 12 months’s deployments had been to proceed by way of this 12 months, it may cost taxpayers $93 million per 30 days — which might quantity to greater than $1.1 billion in 2026.
In a letter to Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon on Wednesday, the CBO mentioned it arrived at these figures primarily based on direct and oblique prices “to activate, deploy and compensate National Guard personnel” together with “the operational, logistical, and sustainment costs of maintaining those deployments.”
Merkley, rating member of the Senate Budget Committee, requested the CBO in October to investigate the cost of the Trump administration’s troop deployments to a number of cities.
“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 mentioned in a statement Wednesday. “Trump is weaponizing taxpayer funds to illegally tighten his authoritarian grip on our communities. It must end.”
The CBO estimate covers National Guard and active-duty Marine Corps deployments to Los Angeles; Washington, DC; Memphis; Portland; and Chicago. It doesn’t embrace the deployment to New Orleans.
Using information from the Defense Department’s 2025 finances, the CBO estimates that National Guard members are compensated roughly $95,000 per individual per 12 months as a result of they obtain the identical fee as these within the navy’s lively element.
NCS reached out to the Pentagon for remark.
Asked concerning the CBO estimates, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson mentioned, “Thanks to the Trump Administration’s highly successful efforts to drive down violent crime, cities like Memphis and D.C. are much safer for residents and visitors – with crime dropping across all major categories. The media should talk to individuals who are able to go about their daily lives without fear of being assaulted, carjacked, or robbed thanks to the Trump Administration.”
The Trump administration final 12 months escalated its efforts to deploy guard members and federal legislation enforcement officers in a number of Democratic-led cities, as a part of what it has referred to as a crackdown to handle crime and restore order. Trump has described the deployments as a possible “training ground” for the navy.
The scenario was sophisticated on the finish of the 12 months after the US Supreme Court rejected a request from Trump to permit him to deploy the guard to Chicago to guard ICE brokers as a part of the administration’s ongoing immigration enforcement efforts. The president later introduced he was withdrawing the guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland however left the door open to sending federal forces “in a much different and stronger form.”