The Trump administration’s National Guard deployments are highly inefficient.
The Atlantic
October 10, 2025
by Marc Novicoff
One could describe President Donald Trump’s existing and planned National Guard deployments in a few different ways. The administration sees them as a necessary protection for federal law enforcement in dangerous times. Many Americans see them as authoritarian overreach.
… Tens of millions of dollars—perhaps hundreds of millions in total—will be spent on deployments to Chicago, Portland, and Memphis, if Trump’s plans for those cities proceed. Based on the known spending so far, the deployments could wind up costing Americans roughly two-thirds of a billion dollars.
… Jeffrey Butts, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in New York City, told me, “If you wanted to go after cities that were in trouble and experiencing increases in homicide, for example, you would go to Little Rock,” where homicides are up a horrifying 39 percent in the first half of 2025, amid a downward national trend.
… In April, the administration unilaterally cut more than $800 million in grants given out by the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs to organizations involved in community violence intervention, juvenile-justice and -protective services, substance-abuse and mental-health programs, research, and even law enforcement. Many of these programs tried to interrupt cycles of violence, rather than just deter or lock up people. Butts, who directs a crime-research center, told me, “They are worth the money we spend on them.” They’re defunded now.
… The Trump administration says a primary goal of its National Guard deployments is to reduce crime. Taking that claim at face value—a dubious proposition—it is hard to think of a less efficient way of doing so than shifting funds away from violence prevention and local law enforcement and toward troops who stand in low-crime areas and don’t make arrests. So much for eliminating “waste.”
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