Trump Is Planning a Nationwide Crackdown Targeting Blue Cities
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.