February 23, 2026
$500 million dollars or about $93 million dollars every month.
How much is it costing you?
This week – I’m doing a series of stories on how much President Trump’s actions and policies are actually costing you. I’m doing this not to pick on anyone. I’m doing it because – as I always have done – I am reporting on several new reports that have just been released on the costs for American taxpayers.
Today – is part two. In part one we talked about how much tariffs are costing you. So now — let’s talk about the National Guard mobilization. So remember last year when president trump mobilized thousands of national guard troops and some marines to cities like Los Angeles, and Washington DC and Memphis, and Portland and Chicago and New Orleans to tackle what he called “out of control crime”? – well according to a new analysis from the congressional budget office the cost to activate, deploy and compensate all of those military members for just 5 months between June 2025 and December 2025 was $496 million.
The CBO says if those troop mobilization efforts continue in 2026 at the same size and scope, it would cost American taxpayers $93 million dollars a month. The CBO also say just mobilizing 1,000 National Guard troops to a US city in 2026 would cost between $18-million and $21 million per month…for just 1,000 troops! President trump has deployed up to 4,200 troops to just one city and they’re usually only there for a few weeks. So you can do the math.
To get to these numbers the CBO took into consideration the cost to pay and give benefits to those national guard members when they’re on duty, plus the cost to house those military members in a city that’s not their own, plus the cost to feed them and the cost to transport them from their home stations to the place where they’re being mobilized and then transporting them back home.
Now it’s unclear how much this is going to cost American taxpayers in 2026 – because we don’t know how much longer Trump plans to keep these troops in certain cities and we don’t know what the courts are going to do and whether federal judges will prohibit Trump from utilizing the National Guard in this way.
Read the CBO report here.
