Duckworth, Durbin Slam Half Billion Dollar Cost of Trump’s Domestic Troop Deployments in Chicago and Throughout U.S.

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Combat Veteran and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) reacted to today’s Congressional Budget Office Report on cost estimates for troop deployments to U.S. cities. CBO estimated, that for the last six months of 2025, the domestic deployments cost nearly $496 million—including $21 million for the deployment in Illinois, where troops spent months confined to bases after federal courts found the deployment illegal. Duckworth and Durbin, along with nine of their Senate colleagues,called for the CBO probe last October.
“Today’s CBO report shows that Donald Trump’s domestic deployments were even more costly and wasteful to Americans than originally estimated at nearly half a billion dollars,”Duckworth said.“These open-ended, unjustified missions are not just an immense waste of taxpayer dollars, they are harmful to our military’s readiness, morale and resources and create an incredibly dangerous precedent. While thankfully we’ve seen these deployments stopped in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Trump remains obsessed with misusing the military to intimidate Americans in their own communities—with his deployments in D.C. and Memphis are continuing to cost millions of taxpayer dollars per month. He’s keeping National Guard members away from their families and forcing our military to do non-military missions they did not sign up for—and taxpayers are paying for it.”
“Not only was President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to American cities, including Chicago, an abhorrent violation of the Constitution, but it was a harmful diversion of federal resources,”Durbin said.“This was never about making our cities safer. The President’s crusade to unlawfully use our nation’s military in American cities endangers our communities and our democracy.”
CBO estimates that taxpayers have already had to pay $193 million for deployments to Los Angeles, $26 million for Oregon, $21 million for Illinois, $223 million for Washington, D.C. and $33 million in Memphis, Tennessee. CBO estimates that continuing current deployments in Washington, D.C. and Memphis into 2026 would cost $83 million per month. Further, they estimate that deploying 1,000 Guard personnel to a generic city will cost $18 million to $21 million a month, depending on cost of living. Full text of the CBO report can be found on theSenator’s website.
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