National Guard troops deployed to Washington, D.C., are now set to stay there through the end of President Trump’s term, and the extension of their deployment from October 2026 through January 2029 will cost an additional $1.4 billion, according to reports citing information provided to Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren by the Defense Department.
The administration has yet to disclose the total cost of the National Guard mission in Washington, but the latest estimate reportedly adds to the hundreds of millions of dollars spent to date for President Trump’s unprecedented and widely criticized decision to have the U.S. military patrol the nation’s capital. Experts have argued that Trump’s use of troops in U.S. cities violates laws prohibiting the military from being used for domestic law enforcement.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in January that the National Guard deployment in Washington costs $607 a day per service member and that having those troops in the capital had cost $223 million through the end of 2025. The administration’s other troop deployments in Los Angeles, Memphis, Portland and Chicago, plus a mobilization in Texas brought the total cost through the end of last year to about $496 million. CBO said at the time that every additional month of National Guard deployment in Washington would cost about $55 million, based on a peak of roughly 3,000 troops.
The newest cost figure for the nation’s capital assumes that about 2,500 National Guard troops will be deployed, according to The Washington Post, which first reported the Pentagon’s estimate. Brig. Gen. Leland Blanchard II, the interim commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, reportedly said at a Monday news briefing that about 4,600 service members are in the city now as part of a temporary summer increase to help handle July 4 celebrations.
“While American families are getting flattened by skyrocketing costs, Donald Trump is spending $1.4 billion to keep troops on the streets in Washington for years on end,” Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a post on X. “The National Guard are not pawns, and taxpayer dollars are not a piggy bank for Trump’s political stunts.”
The surge of National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. began in August 2025 after Trump declared a “crime emergency” causing “disgraceful conditions” in the District of Columbia. The deployment was scheduled to run through the end of this year after previous extensions. The Pentagon last month confirmed that the deployment was being extended again, this time by more than two years or until terminated by the president.
Trump has defended the troop deployment and his broader efforts to build and beautify around D.C. “The renaissance of Washington, D.C. in 15, 16 months is incredible. And it is. It's clean. It's safe. And you haven't seen anything yet,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.
He went on to praise the troops specifically.
“Our military has been unbelievable, and they work very well with the D.C. police,” he said, later adding: “We took something that was in deep trouble. It was a graffiti-filled, crime-filled mess. We turned it into Shangri-La. We turned it into a great place.”
Local officials have taken issue with such characterizations and with the duties given the troops, including snow removal and cleaning up garbage. Brig. Gen. Leland Blanchard II reportedly said at a Monday news briefing that troops had responded to about 800 medical emergencies and administered some 325 doses of Narcan, used to treat drug overdoses.
D.C. Metropolitan Police crime data shows a 3% increase in violent crime from 2025 to 2026, but a 23% drop in property crime and a 20% decrease in crime overall. Local officials also argue that crime rates were already dropping before the troop deployment.
“Taxpayers are paying more than a million dollars a day to have them walk around,” Phil Mendelson, chairman of the District of Columbia Council, reportedly said in April, adding that “the presence of armed soldiers on American streets is not a good look.”