Gavin Newsom has said that Donald Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles has cost the taxpayer 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,” Newsom 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.
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.
It comes after Washington D.C.’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Thursday over the president’s deployment of the National Guard in the city.
That lawsuit accuses the president and senior defense officials of violating the Posse Comitatus Act, a law meant to prevent the president from using the military to enforce domestic law, among other laws, when he sent the National Guard to help curb crime in the nation’s capital.
“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.
