Newsom says the ‘political theater’ of Trump’s deployment of National Guard to LA cost taxpayers $120M

Gavin Newsom has said that Donald Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles has cost the taxpayers almost $120 million.

“Let us not forget what this political theater is costing us all — millions of taxpayer dollars down the drain and an atrophy to the readiness of guardsmembers across the nation and unnecessary hardships to the families supporting those troops,” the California Governor said in a statement Thursday.

“Talk about waste, fraud, and abuse. We ask other states to do the math themselves.”

Newsom’s office evaluated the costs incurred since June, when Trump sent more than 4,200 National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines to LA, posting its estimates on X.

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According to the office that included $71 million for food and other basic necessities, $37 million in payroll, $4 million in logistic supplies, $3.5 million in travel. “The list goes on,” Newsom’s said.

Most of the soldiers were sent home last month, though 300 remain in Los Angeles, per The Los Angeles Times.

The deployment of the troops came following protests against federal immigration arrests, which descended into violent clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement.

The subsequent cost to the LA taxpayer was $32 million, 92 percent of which was related to the Los Angeles Police Department's response to the protests against the ICE raids, including citywide tactical alert costs, according to the City Controller Kenneth Mejia back in June.

A further $1.4 million was needed for clean-up and public property damage.

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Earlier this week, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that soldiers should be barred from helping with immigration arrests, in a win for states including California that have been critical of Trump’s perceived overreach.

The president’s troop deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits “the use of the U.S. military to execute domestic law,” according to Tuesday’s decision from District Judge Charles Breyer.

Nearly 140 years later, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deployed the soldiers to the city, “ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced,” Breyer wrote.

“There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence. Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law,” he added.

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Following the ruling, Newsom filed a preliminary injunction asking that the court block a new order from the U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to keep the remaining soldiers in LA until after the state elections in November.

On Thursday, Washington D.C.’s attorney general also filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the president’s deployment of the National Guard in the Capitol.

That lawsuit also accuses the president and senior defense officials of violating the Posse Comitatus Act. “No American jurisdiction should be involuntarily subjected to military occupation,” D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb wrote in the lawsuit.

As well as LA and D.C., Trump has suggested that he would deploy National Guard troops to other major U.S. cities, including Chicago.