President Trump announces National Guard will be withdrawn from Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland
President Donald Trump said in a social media post that he would withdraw the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that President Donald Trump’s deployment of troops to American cities cost taxpayers nearly $500 million last year and will cost taxpayers more than $1.1 billion if it continues for another year.
According to this estimate, it cost President Trump about $496 million to send troops to five U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. This information was shared in response to requests from Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and other members of Congress.
“The American people have a right to know how much of their hard-earned dollars has been and is being wasted by President Trump’s reckless and haphazard deployment of National Guard troops to Portland and cities across the country,” Merkley said in a Jan. 28 statement.
President Trump’s domestic troop deployments have been dogged by legal challenges from local and state leaders, and some have been halted by judges who deemed them illegal.
President Trump first sent thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of active-duty Marines to Los Angeles in June as protests erupted over the Trump administration’s aggressive raids on immigrants in the region.
The administration then sent hundreds of Guard troops to Chicago and Portland, Oregon, last fall in response to protests, but a court ruling forced the withdrawal of troops from all three cities. In December, the Supreme Court barred the Trump administration from sending troops to Chicago.
In August, President Trump ordered the National Guard into Washington, D.C., citing “rampant crime” in the city.
Since then, troops deployed to the capital have been assigned to “beautification” and security units, with soldiers picking up trash and mulch in public parks and standing guard at downtown train stations. The National Guard’s mission in Washington has been extended until the end of 2026, CNN reported.
According to domestic military budget information obtained by USA TODAY in September, sending the National Guard to Washington costs more than $1.8 million per day. The CBO analysis found that the deployment to Washington would cost about $55 million per month for an additional year, or $660 million annually.
Local officials in Washington also filed a lawsuit in September seeking to halt the deployment of troops to the city.
With the consent of the Republican governors of Tennessee and Louisiana, troops were also sent to Memphis and New Orleans. In November, a judge sided with the state and local officials who filed the lawsuit, blocking the deployment to Memphis.
The troops arrived in New Orleans in late December, when Republican Gov. Jeff Landry asked for help fighting crime. Because the New Orleans deployment began near the end of the year, it was not factored into CBO’s cost estimates last year.
