Newsom's office says National Guard deployment cost $118M

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Editor's note: This story has been updated since initial publication to include a comment that came Thursday night from the Department of Defense.

(The Center Square) - Taxpayers are paying almost $120 million to cover President Donald Trump’s deployment of the California National Guard in Los Angeles, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said Thursday.

The Title 10 deployment of over 4,200 National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines cost $71 million for food and other necessities, according to the office’s news release. The office cited other costs as $37 million for payroll, $3.5 million for travel and $1.5 million for demobilization. The Governor’s Office said the total cost, including more than $4 million in logistics supplies, is an estimated $118 million.

The Center Square reached out to the Pentagon to comment on the numbers cited by Newsom's office. The Secretary of Defense's Office responded Thursday night with the statement, "We will not have cost figures until after the mission is completed."

Newsom’s office said the numbers were provided, at the governor’s request, from the California National Guard. In August, Newsom’s office filed a federal Freedom of Information Act requesting all documents and records to identify the total expenses for activating Marines and federalizing the National Guard since June 7. The office said it’s waiting to receive the material.

“Let us not forget what this political theater is costing us all – millions of taxpayer dollars down the drain, an atrophy to the readiness of guard members across the nation and unnecessary hardships to the families supporting those troops,” Newsom said. “Talk about waste, fraud, and abuse. We ask other states to do the math themselves.”

Newsom’s office accused the Trump administration of forcing National Guard soldiers to sleep on the floors and in the open air and use facilities with no functional plumbing. The office said soldiers were pulled away from essential civil jobs as doctors, first responders, police officers, firefighters, nurses and teachers.

In addition, National Guard members were taken away from California assignments such as Taskforce Rattlesnake firefighting teams and the Counterdrug Task Force at ports of entry along the border, according to Newsom's staff.

The Governor's Office added that less than 20% of the troops deployed to Los Angeles were used.

Three hundred National Guard members remain deployed in Los Angeles through the Nov. 4 general election. Newsom on Tuesday filed a request for a preliminary injunction in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to stop their deployment and put them back under his control.

Earlier on Tuesday, the same court's Judge Charles Breyer ruled the Trump administration, which deployed the National Guard and Marines following protests and riots after immigration arrests, violated the Posse Comitatus Act. 

Breyer was appointed by former President Bill Clinton and is the younger brother of retired liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

The 1878 law says the military can't be used by the federal government for civilian law enforcement unless authorized by law or the Constitution, according to Breyer and organizations such as the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Posse Comitatus Act allows Congress to pass laws to use military in case of domestic unrest, protection of federal property and enforcement of some federal laws and court orders, according to an abstract on a 1987 Journal of Criminal Justice article. The U.S. Department of Justice published the abstract on its website, ojp.gov.