Trump’s National Guard deployments could cost $1.1 billion this year, CBO estimates
Members of the National Guard stands at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on MLK Day on January 19, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s use of federalized National Guard troops in U.S. cities is projected to have cost roughly $496 million last year, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
If current troop levels are maintained, the deployments could cost as much as $1.1 billion this year, according to CBO estimates.
Monthly costs vary widely by location and troop levels, according to the estimate for 2026, ranging from about $6 million for roughly 350 Guard members in New Orleans, to $28 million for 1,500 troops in Memphis, and $55 million for nearly 2,950 personnel in Washington, D.C., though the precise number of troops fluctuates. Some 200 Guardsmen mobilized in Texas are estimated to cost about $4 million a month.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, requested the analysis in October.
“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.
Last year, the largest share stemmed from operations in Washington, D.C., at about $223 million, followed by deployments to Los Angeles at $193 million, which included active-duty Marines, and smaller missions in Memphis ($33 million), Portland, Oregon ($26 million), and Chicago ($21 million), according to the CBO.
The estimates include troop pay, hotel lodging and meals. They do not account for longer-term costs, such as education benefits, disability compensation that service members may accrue during the missions, and the use of equipment and military vehicles.
The estimates are further complicated by uncertainty over both the duration and scale of the deployments, according to the CBO report.
“The costs of those or other deployments in the future are highly uncertain, mainly because the scale, length, and location of such deployments are difficult to predict accurately,” the report said. “That uncertainty is compounded by legal challenges, which have stopped deployments to some cities, and by changes in the Administration’s policies.”
Last summer, Trump deployed federalized troops into several Democratic cities. They were later pulled from cities including Los Angeles and Chicago after the Supreme Court ruled the president lacked sufficient legal justification for the deployments.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office after signing an Executive Order April 18, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday is considering whether the Trump administration unlawfully ordered hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the U.S. from Haiti and Syria to return home, abruptly cancelling their legal status out of alleged racial animus and without proper consideration of risks to their safety and the nation’s economy.
The outcome in the pair of cases being argued before the court will directly affect the futures of roughly 350,000 Haitian nationals and about 6,000 Syrians.
The Trump administration contends in court documents that the immigrants were never intended to be permanent residents and that cancellation of their temporary status is “critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States.”
Those immigrants were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) under separate government declarations first issued more than a decade ago and later renewed multiple times, most recently by the Biden administration.
TPS status, established by the Immigration and Nationality Act, provides work authorization and protection from deportation – as long as the Homeland Security Secretary certifies that a foreign country is unsafe because of armed conflict, natural disaster, or “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”
Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake in 2010 and has since been hit by subsequent natural disasters, political unrest following a presidential assassination, and waves of rampant gang violence.
Syria devolved into civil war around 2011 and has been considered by the U.S. government a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades. A major earthquake in 2023 plunged the country into a deeper economic and humanitarian crisis.
“There is no functioning healthcare system for the disabled and elderly to return to, no reliable housing infrastructure, no legal framework that can guarantee anyone’s safety,” said Syrian TPS-holder and health care worker Adam, a pseudonym used to protect his identity.
Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, in separate acts last year, moved to terminate TPS status for Haiti and Syria by certifying that, in her estimation, conditions on the ground in those countries were sufficiently safe for immigrants to return.
Those decisions were blocked by lower courts, which concluded that Noem did not follow proper procedures for cancelling TPS and may have also unlawfully discriminated against the immigrants on the basis of race.
The Supreme Court is now reviewing those findings.
“If the government is correct, then they can terminate TPS without conducting any country conditions review at all,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA law professor and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “The statute requires, in our view, that there be consultation with the State Department.”
Immigrant advocates and some American business groups, particularly in the healthcare and senior caregiving sectors, say TPS holders play an indispensable role in the nation’s labor force and contribute billions of dollars in tax revenue to state and federal governments.
Immigrants make up 28% of the U.S. long-term care workforce – nearly double their share of the entire labor force, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
More than 113,000 Haitian TPS holders work in Florida alone, which is home to a high proportion of America’s seniors, according to the Florida Immigrant Coalition.
“The effects of [DHS’s] hasty TPS terminations are too serious to ignore,” a senior living community and ageing services provider jointly wrote the Court in an amicus brief. “The government has largely failed to address the impact that stripping thousands of caregivers of work authorization will have on elderly and medically vulnerable adults in U.S. communities.”
The Trump administration contends that courts have no authority to second-guess the DHS determinations on whether countries should qualify for TPS or not. They note that Congress, in creating the special status, put a time limit on it of 18-months, subject to extension.
“Congress, in short, prescribed substantive and procedural guardrails to keep TPS designations temporary,” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote the Court in a brief, “but left further accountability to the political process, not federal courts.”
Sauer also disputed claims that the TPS cancellations rested on racial animus, calling it a “legal and factual nonstarter.”
The cases are the latest high court test of President Trump’s bold assertion of executive authority in his second term. The justices are already preparing to rule on his authority to redefine birthright citizenship, fire members of independent agencies, and remove a member of the Federal Reserve.
The Supreme Court last year handed the Trump administration a temporary win when it allowed them to terminate TPS for 350,000 Venezuelan nationals as litigation continues.
TPS status for Haitians and Syrians remains in place for now, but many immigrant advocates worry that if the Court allows the Trump administration to cancel the status, protections for immigrants of other countries may also end. The Department of Homeland Security has attempted to end protections for at least 11 countries since President Trump took office.
The Court is expected to hand down a decision by the end of June.
U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One on April 24, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. (Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump announced Friday that he will increase tariffs on European Union cars and trucks to 25% next week, claiming in a social media post that the EU is “not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal.”
“Based on the fact the European Union is not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal, next week I will be increasing Tariffs charged to the European Union for Cars and Trucks coming into the United States. The Tariff will be increased to 25%,” Trump wrote in a post to his social media platform.
While the president did not specify what tariff authority he was invoking, it appears that the administration will use Section 232, which authorizes him to “adjust the imports” of goods that the secretary of commerce finds to have been imported in a manner that threatens U.S. national security.
Trump, departing the White House Friday afternoon, reiterated that the tariff was coming because “as usual, they were not adhering to the agreement that we have.”
ABC News has reached out to the White House for additional comment on tariff authority.
Trump, in his social media post, touted American automobile production capabilities, claiming that U.S. manufacturing plants “will be opening soon” and that “over 100 Billion dollars” is being invested, though he did not say where the alleged money was coming from.
“It is fully understood and agreed that, if they produce Cars and Trucks in U.S.A. Plants, there will be NO TARIFF. Many Automobile and Truck Plants are currently under construction, with over 100 Billion Dollars being invested, A RECORD in the History of Car and Truck Manufacturing,” Trump added in his post.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Hillary Clinton speaks onstage at 92NY on May 01, 2025 in New York City. (Dominik Bindl/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday made it clear that even though she and former President Bill Clinton agreed to a closed-door deposition, they are continuing to push for a public hearing as part of the House Oversight Committee’s probe into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“For six months, we engaged Republicans on the Oversight Committee in good faith. We told them what we know, under oath,” she wrote on X. “They ignored all of it. They moved the goalposts and turned accountability into an exercise in distraction.”
“So let’s stop the games. If you want this fight, [Rep. James Comer], let’s have it — in public. You love to talk about transparency. There’s nothing more transparent than a public hearing, cameras on. We will be there,” she posted.
Comer, the committee’s chairman, announced on Tuesday that Hillary Clinton is scheduled to testify on Feb. 26. Bill Clinton will sit for deposition the following day, Feb. 27.
For months, the Clintons had insisted that the subpoenas were without legal merit. Comer had pushed back, saying the Clintons are not above the law and must comply with a subpoena.
A letter from the Clintons’ attorney Jon Skladany to Comer also said an open hearing “will best suit our concerns about fairness,” citing the requirement that the interviews be videotaped — but ultimately left the decision about whether to hold a hearing or a deposition up to Comer.
The subpoenas the committee sent to the Clintons were specifically for a closed-door deposition. That is what will occur, and Comer said a public hearing is welcome after that if the Clintons want to come in.
“The deposition will be made public, it’s going to be audio, video and the transcripts will be released,” Comer said in an interview on Newsmax on Wednesday.
“Depositions are always the preferred means of getting information from a witness. If you look at history, congressional hearings, they may be entertaining, but they’re not very substantive … So, we’re going to do the depositions. That’s what the subpoena is for,” Comer said. “And after the depositions, if the Clintons want more, they’re more than welcome to come to the House Oversight Committee after they’re deposed. If they want to testify in a public hearing in front of the Oversight Committee, they are more than welcome to do that.”
Neither Bill Clinton nor Hillary Clinton has been accused of wrongdoing and both deny having any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. No Epstein survivor or associate has ever made a public allegation of wrongdoing or inappropriate behavior by the former president or his wife in connection with his prior relationship with Epstein.
President Donald Trump, in an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, repeated that he thinks it’s a “shame” that the Clintons will sit for depositions.
“It bothers me that somebody is going after Bill Clinton. See, I like Bill Clinton. I still like Bill Clinton,” Trump said.
