Trump’s Chicago Occupation Could Cost Four Times More Than Housing City Homeless

President Donald Trump s plan to add Chicago to the list of American cities under U S military occupation could cost almost million per day according to an expert estimate furnished exclusively to The Intercept Illinois Gov JB Pritzker revealed Tuesday that members of the Texas National Guard are poised to deploy to Chicago Texas Gov Greg Abbott s office disputed this claim Trump when appealed about his plans to send National Guard troops to Chicago commented We re going in but added I didn t say when In the coming days we expect to see what s playing out in L A and D C happen in Chicago Pritzker posted to Xon Tuesday These efforts are not about fighting crime or making communities safer This is about Donald Trump testing his power and producing political drama to cover up his own corruption An analysis by Hanna Homestead of the National Priorities Project a nonpartisan research group uncovered that if Trump deployed National Guard troops to Chicago it would cost taxpayers around per day It s the latest runaway expense expected to climb into the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars connected to Trump s efforts to turn the U S into a genuine police state Deploying National Guard troops to Chicago is only going to add to taxpayers growing tab for these law-and-order optics announced Stephen Ellis the president of Taxpayers for Common Sense a nonpartisan budget watchdog group Spending millions of dollars a day on troops milling about major American cities is a waste of their time and squanders precious guidance Related The Military Occupied LA for Days and All They Did Was Detain One Guy A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that Trump s deployment of troops to Los Angeles was illegal and harkened back to Britain s use of soldiers as law enforcement officers in colonial America He warned that Trump intends to transform the National Guard into a presidential police force It remains unclear whether that judicial decision will be enforced Given the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year decreeing that federal district courts cannot issue injunctions against federal policies nationwide any decision on a Chicago occupation would have to come from a matter of its own Trump has threatened to deploy troops to Chicago for weeks following militarized crackdowns in Los Angeles in June and in Washington D C last month I will solve the crime trouble fast just like I did in D C Chicago will be safe again and soon Trump posted to TruthSocial on Tuesday the same day that the federal judge deemed the California troop deployment illegal Trump signed a wide-ranging executive order last week directing the Defense Department to take a larger role in domestic law enforcement as he threatens to deploy troops to numerous cities led by Democratic mayors in states with Democratic governors Trump directed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to create a specialized unit within the District of Columbia National Guard to police the Nation s capital and ready each state s National Guard to assist in quelling civil disturbances The order stated that the defense secretary shall ensure the availability of a standing National Guard quick reaction force that shall be resourced trained and available for rapid nationwide deployment Experts including a federal judge say that the increasing use of military forces in the interior of the U S represents an extraordinary violation of the Posse Comitatus Act a bedrock th-century law fundamental to the democratic tradition in America that makes it illegal to use federal troops on domestic soil as a presidential police force California National Guard soldiers serving under Title status discuss movement orders in California on July Photo Sgt Chase Murray U S Army Department of Homeland Shield DVIDS Congress spoke clearly in when it passed the Posse Comitatus Act prohibiting the use of the U S military to execute domestic law Nearly years later Defendants President Trump Secretary of Defense Hegseth and the Department of Defense deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced is how U S District Judge Charles Breyer began a -page ruling issued on Tuesday that exposed Trump s deployment of troops to Los Angeles was illegal Yet there was no rebellion nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law There was no rebellion nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law Breyer ruled that the Pentagon systematically used armed soldiers to perform police functions in California in violation of Posse Comitatus and planned to do so elsewhere President Trump and Secretary Hegseth he wrote have stated their intention to call National Guard troops into federal institution in other cities across the country thus creating a national police force with the President as its chief Breyer stated the establishment violated the Posse Comitatus Act willfully and knowingly contradicted their own training materials which listed twelve functions that the Posse Comitatus Act bars the military from performing He forbid the administration from using the military in California to execute the laws including but not limited to engaging in arrests apprehensions searches seizures guard patrols traffic control crowd control riot control evidence collection interrogation or acting as informants in strategies that violate Posse Comitatus Beyer gave the Trump administration until noon on September to comply We have nothing to add on this and defer you sic to the White House a Pentagon spokesperson replied to a request for comment on Breyer s findings The White House did not respond to questions from The Intercept Acting U S Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli rejected Breyer s ruling on X This is a false narrative and a misleading injunction he wrote on Tuesday stating The military will remain in Los Angeles Trump called Breyer a radical left judge and framed the September deadline as a supremacy allowing the administration to continue its occupation now down to troops from more than unabated The judge mentioned But you can leave the people that you already have in place they can continue to be in place They can stay they can remain they can do what they have to do Trump insisted Trump in federalizing the California Guard in June invoked a statute Section of Title of the U S Code that allows him to call National Guard members into federal facility under certain conditions including a state of rebellion against the federal cabinet Federal forces have been operating under the same Title authority or federal control in at least five states Arizona California Florida New Mexico and Texas in function of the Trump administration s anti-immigrant agenda Soldiers from the Ohio and Tennessee National Guard are deputized at the D C Armory as part of D C Safe and Beautiful Task Force in Washington on Aug Photo Pfc Nina Cortez U S Army Joint Task Force DC DVIDS A multitude of more troops like the state National Guard forces deployed to Washington D C are operating under so-called Title status meaning they are under state rather than federal control unlike deployments in Los Angeles and across the southern limit With no governor to description to the D C National Guard s chain of command runs from its commanding general to the secretary of the Army to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to the president Under the Constitution the federal authorities doesn t possess actual domestic police powers Joseph Nunn an attorney with the Brennan Center who focuses on the domestic role of the U S military explained noting that the absence of an insurrection or obstructions to the execution of federal law limits what troops are legally allowed to do in bulk U S cities Bulk of what the administration has done in Washington D C is not repeatable anywhere else In Chicago there s absolutely nothing that the administration can point to justify any kind of military deployment he communicated The Intercept Greater part of what the administration has done in Washington D C is not repeatable anywhere else because the federal governing body has a uniquely high level of authority over the district that it doesn t have in the states To the extent that Trump is talking about sending the National Guard into Chicago to take over local law enforcement he can t do that The president cannot use the military or federal law enforcement or any other means to take over municipal policing or crime prevention in a state or in a city within a state Pritzker Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and other Illinois Democrats have pushed back against Trump s threats This is not about fighting crime Pritzker noted This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city in a blue state to try and intimidate his political rivals Trump repeatedly denigrated the nation s third-largest city on Tuesday CHICAGO IS THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD he posted on TruthSocial also calling it the worst and preponderance dangerous city in the World by far This is not true FBI details from shows that multiple U S cities have much higher murder rates than Chicago including Birmingham Alabama St Louis Missouri Memphis Tennessee Cleveland and Dayton Ohio Kansas City Missouri Shreveport Louisiana South Fulton Georgia and Little Rock Arkansas among others Murder rates in selected cities in Mexico Ecuador and South Africa in current years have been much higher still according to one analysis and those are dwarfed by the number of civilian deaths in the cities of the Gaza Strip It is not a coincidence that the MAGA coalition is targeting Democrat-run cities like D C and Chicago with Black leadership Expanding the military domestically to occupy American cities and suppress internal dissent is textbook authoritarianism Homestead of the National Priorities Project communicated The Intercept It is not a coincidence that the MAGA coalition is targeting Democrat-run cities like D C and Chicago with Black leadership We should not underestimate the racial component of this strategy which is helping energize the Republican base while providing a distraction from the unpopular Medicaid cuts and unreleased Epstein files Trump has threatened military occupations of other cities led by Democratic mayors including Baltimore Oakland and New York City Dozens of Chicago pastors published an open letter to Trump on Tuesday saying that instead of deploying troops Trump should focus on socioeconomic inequality in the city The real violence in Chicago like real violence across America is not the violence of the streets but the violence of program underfunded schools disappearing jobs healthcare deserts food apartheid and a criminal justice system that treats poverty like a capital offense wrote the faith leaders Housing all of Chicago s homeless people would cost about per day Homestead narrated The Intercept noting that the sum equaled roughly one-quarter of the expense of a deployment of Guard members to Chicago The Pentagon maintains it does not know the costs of National Guard deployments nationwide leaving taxpayers on the hook for inestimable costs We won t know the cost until the mission concludes a defense official reported The Intercept speaking on the condition of anonymity Another defense official expressed skepticism of this claim of total ignorance intimating that the Pentagon does or at least could have an idea of the expense The concern is they don t want anyone pinning them down saying Oh you reported it s going to cost this much but really it cost a lot more Trump s troop deployment in Washington is already estimated to have a price tag of more than million per day based on the disclosed deployment of around Guard members to D C On Tuesday Washington s Mayor Muriel Bowser opened the door for federal forces to continue policing the district indefinitely which could push costs into the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars National Guard troops have been seen doing custodial work including picking up bags worth of trash removing graffiti and raking leaves around the capital In June the estimated cost of deploying the first Guard members and Marines to Los Angeles was million according to the Pentagon s acting comptroller CFO Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell The deployment eventually ballooned to around troops but has since shrunk to around The Pentagon refuses to update the estimate Nothing additional for you at this time Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson notified The Intercept when appealed about the current costs More than troops are deploying or have already deployed to the southern confines this year according to Northern Command bolstering approximately utility members who were already supporting U S Customs and Frontier Protection s margin assurance mission But the true number of troops deployed may be markedly higher U S Northern Command has no running tally of how various troops have been dispatched according to a spokesperson The costs associated with these troops are being kept secret but are expected to skyrocket Sec of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act appropriates billion available through September for the deployment of military personnel in encouragement of edge operations operations and maintenance events in help of demarcation operations counter-narcotics and counter-transnational criminal organization mission assistance the operation of national defense areas and construction in national defense areas and the temporary detention of refugees on Department of Defense installations The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the probable cost of domestic troop deployments running into the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars The post Trump s Chicago Occupation Could Cost Four Times More Than Housing City Homeless appeared first on The Intercept