Trump’s Decision to Send Troops to L.A. Will Cost Jaw-Dropping Sum

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed that the president’s plan to use the military against U.S. citizens will cost taxpayers a jaw-dropping sum.

Testifying before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense Tuesday, Hegseth initially refused to address how exactly his department’s overstretched budget would afford the sudden deployment of 700 Marines to Los Angeles—until he was backed into a corner. In the end, persistent questioning from the committee forced Hegseth to turn to his acting comptroller, Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, to provide a figure for the unpopular deployment: $134 million.

MacDonnell said the sum would come from the department’s operations and maintenance accounts, though Hegseth seemed to have little idea how the money would actually be reshuffled.

“What is the current cost for what is taking place in California, and how is it going to affect this budget?” asked Representative Betty McCollum. “How much are these deployments going to cost, for both the Marines and the National Guard? And what training or duties are not taking place because of these deployments? Where in your limited budget, sir, are you going to find—in the remainder of this fiscal year—are you going to pull the money to cover these deployments? What holes are being created?”

After jotting a note to himself, Hegseth appealed to McCollum’s shared background in Minnesota, where he claimed that protests had been “improperly” handled in 2020.

“So in Los Angeles, we believe that ICE—which is a federal law enforcement agency—has the right to safely conduct operations in any state and any jurisdiction in the country, especially after 21 million illegals have crossed our border under the previous administration.” (Fact checks indicate that stat—which has been touted by Trump since he was on the campaign trail to stoke fear—is tangibly untrue. Approximately eight million undocumented immigrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden administration.)

“I asked a budget question. Could the secretary please address the budget? Thank you,” said McCollum.

“You asked about the situation in Los Angeles, and we believe that ICE agents should be allowed to be safe in doing their operations. We have deployed the National Guard and the Marines to protect them in the execution of their duties, because we ought to be able to enforce immigration law in this country, unlike what Governor [Tim] Walz did in 2020,” Hegseth continued, before going on about the “defund the police” movement that took root that year.

“Mister Chairman, if the secretary is not going to [answer] the budgetary questions, I will yield back my time if the secretary refuses to ask the budgetary questions put before him. They’re important,” McCollum said. “What training missions aren’t happening, where are you pulling the money from, and how are you planning this moving forward? These are budget questions that affect this committee and the decisions we’re going to be making in a couple of hours.”

Despite MacDonnell finally providing the estimated cost, questions remain about what will happen when the Marines finally step foot in Los Angeles. Despite the defense secretary’s pledge that the Marines are arriving in L.A. fully trained, Pentagon officials are reportedly still working to draft guidelines for soldiers who have never been tasked with engaging the public.

Trump’s order violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law dating back to 1878 that forbids the government from using the military for law enforcement purposes. The White House could have bypassed the military doctrine by invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to utilize the military during periods of rebellion or mass civil unrest, but had not done so by the time of the order. (Trump has openly discussed leveraging the nineteenth-century law to enact his agenda since his inauguration but has still not invoked the Insurrection Act as of the time of publishing.)

The Marines are joining 4,100 National Guard members that Trump similarly tasked with disassembling the protests, against the wishes of local government officials. On Monday, California sued the Trump administration to roll back the National Guard’s deployment, citing logistical challenges that L.A. and state officials said would make it more difficult to safely handle the protests.

Senator Bill Cassidy promised the American people that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would not make any changes to the vaccine advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when he cast his decisive confirmation vote for the health and human services secretary. But on Monday, RFK Jr. scrapped the board entirely, leaving Cassidy scrambling to explain himself and his vote. 

“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Cassidy posted on X after Kennedy explained his rationale in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

When asked what he said specifically to Kennedy to “ensure” that the immunization advisory committee wouldn’t be run by anti-vaxxers, Cassidy went mum. 

“I’d rather just characterize it as: we had a conversation,” he told Semafor’s Burgess Everett on Tuesday. When Burgess asked if Cassidy was “still comfortable” with voting to confirm RFK Jr. in February, Cassidy replied, “I’d rather not comment on that.” 

During the confirmation process Cassidy explicitly guaranteed that “if confirmed, [RFK Jr.] will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes.” Either Cassidy was lying, or RFK Jr. was lying to Cassidy.

Now all of the other promises that Cassidy made on RFK’s behalf—like not making false claims about vaccines causing autism, or even appearing before Congress on a quarterly basis—are moot. Cassidy claimed that he studied his decision to confirm Kennedy “exhaustively” and took it “very seriously.” It’s clear that Cassidy’s words meant nothing as Kennedy guts a key institution of our national health apparatus.  

Police in Philadelphia are searching for a man who robbed a business while masquerading as a Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, according to Fox 29.

A man wearing a tactical vest with the words “Security Enforcement Agent” entered a car repair business Monday afternoon and detained a 50-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic using zip-ties, before making away with roughly $1,000, according to police.

“He kept saying he is immigration officer,” the woman told Fox 29’s Steve Keeley.

Crimes like these are the inevitable result of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants, as part of the government’s massive deportation efforts.

During recent ICE raids across the country, agents have declined to show identification or a warrant, often detaining people while wearing face masks to hide their identity, meaning that it’s not difficult to pretend to be an ICE agent and enact racialized violence and mayhem. The Trump administration’s escalating rhetoric targeting immigrants has already emboldened several ICE imposters who have been hit with charges such as kidnapping, assault, and of course, impersonating a federal officer.

The Trump administration’s decision to empower an extrajudicial enforcement agency that is not accountable to the citizens it purports to protect will likely continue to sow chaos across the country—particularly as the Trump administration has moved to increase the number of daily ICE arrests.

The president’s “law and order” agenda isn’t popular with the people tasked with enforcing it.

The Los Angeles Police Department torched Donald Trump, revealing to the public that not only had the administration failed to notify them of its decision to send 700 Marines to quell the city’s anti-ICE protests, but also that they believe Washington’s  involvement will unnecessarily complicate the situation.

“The LAPD has not received any formal notification that the Marines will be arriving in Los Angeles,” wrote LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell in a news release Monday. “However, the possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles absent clear coordination presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city.

“The Los Angeles Police Department, alongside our mutual aid partners, have decades of experience managing large-scale public demonstrations, and we remain confident in our ability to do so professionally and effectively,” McDonnell continued. “That said, our top priority is the safety of both the public and the officers on the ground. We are urging open and continuous lines of communication between all agencies to prevent confusion, avoid escalation, and ensure a coordinated, lawful, and orderly response during this critical time.”

Police unions across the country comprised a massive coalition responsible for sending Trump back to the White House. Cops were some of his biggest cheerleaders during the past three election cycles, frothing at his promises to always “back the blue.”

Thousands of locals flooded the streets of Los Angeles over the weekend in a stunning visual protest of the president’s agenda. Protesters blocked off a major freeway, trashed Waymos (self-driving cars), and organized outside City Hall and the Metropolitan Detention Center. In reaction, law enforcement officials shot rubber bullets and fired tear gas and flash bangs into crowds of civilians. The FBI added protesters suspected of throwing rocks at police cars to its Most Wanted list and ominously threatened to intervene in the anti-Trump display without guidance from California or the White House.

California sued the federal government Monday to roll back Trump’s deployment of 4,100 National Guard members that state authorities said had not been authorized or requested to handle the protests. In a press conference announcing the lawsuit Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters that Trump had “trampled” California’s sovereignty.

Direct orders from Stephen Miller ignited the Los Angeles protests, leading to the precarious, highly militarized situation the city is currently facing. 

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Miller, frustrated with ICE’s failure to meet their lofty deportation quota, held an intense meeting at ICE headquarters  last month and bet his agents that they could go to places like Home Depot or 7-Eleven and start arresting people. 

“Who here thinks they can do it?” Miller said, asking the audience directly. Officers were repeatedly told to do “what they needed to do” to make arrests. 

ICE followed suit, flooding Los Angeles’s Westlake neighborhood with agents, accosting immigrants at their jobs and setting off resistance from community members, which then in turn led to federal agents deploying tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash-bang grenades on American citizens. Miller, who is from Santa Monica, has long been obsessed with Los Angeles as a symbol of everything he hates: multicultural, multilingual, vibrant.

Los Angeles is only the beginning of this immigration crackdown, and Miller’s aggressive, by any means necessary tactics will only continue to be met with community protest, which in turn will lead to more Marines and National Guardsmen in the street (and without rules of civilian engagement at the time of this writing). This cycle is exactly what Miller and the administration want, as they continue to use the response to their extrajudicial detainments to further justify their actions.