President Donald Trump’s sweeping deployment of National Guard troops to several major cities across the United States cost taxpayers approximately $496 million from June through December last year, according to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
The CBO, which aims to provide objective, nonpartisan information to Congress, estimates that if last year’s deployments were to continue through this year, it could cost taxpayers $93 million per month — which would amount to more than $1.1 billion in 2026.
In a letter to Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon on Wednesday, the CBO said it arrived at those figures based on direct and indirect costs “to activate, deploy and compensate National Guard personnel” including “the operational, logistical, and sustainment costs of maintaining those deployments.”
Merkley, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, asked the CBO in October to analyze the cost of the Trump administration’s troop deployments to several 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 said 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 does not include the deployment to New Orleans.
Using data from the Defense Department’s 2025 budget, the CBO estimates that National Guard members are compensated approximately $95,000 per person per year because they receive the same rate as those in the military’s active component.
CNN reached out to the Pentagon for comment.
Asked about the CBO estimates, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said, “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 last year escalated its efforts to deploy guard members and federal law enforcement officers in several Democratic-led cities, as part of what it has called a crackdown to address crime and restore order. Trump has described the deployments as a potential “training ground” for the military.
The situation was complicated at the end of the year after the US Supreme Court rejected a request from Trump to allow him to deploy the guard to Chicago to protect ICE agents as part of the administration’s ongoing immigration enforcement efforts. The president later announced he was withdrawing the guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland but left the door open to sending federal forces “in a much different and stronger form.”