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national priorities project
Trump's DC Occupation Costs 4 Times More Than It Would Take to House City's Entire Homeless Population
"This militarized spending comes at the expense of federal programs—like public housing—that actually do prevent crime and improve health and education outcomes," said researcher Hanna Homestead.
Aug 22, 2025
Last week, when Trump federalized Washington, DC's police force and deployed the National Guard to occupy its streets, one of his main orders was to "end vagrancy" by destroying homeless encampments and arresting and forcibly relocating the people taking shelter there.
But according to an investigation published on Wednesday by Hanna Homestead of the National Priorities Project, in collaboration with The Intercept, deploying the National Guard and "getting rid of the slums" is costing far more than it would cost to simply provide housing to every homeless person in the city.
Governors from six US states have sent troops to Washington to help Trump's effort, swelling the ranks to nearly 2,100 who will soon be on patrol.
According to previous reporting, National Guard deployments cost the US government $530 per guard member each day. Using that figure, Homestead estimated that it would cost just over $1.1 million.
She added that "the number of troops will likely continue to grow. And with no deadline for the DC deployment, those costs could add up for months or even years."
According to the most recent data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), there are about 5,600 people experiencing either sheltered and unsheltered homelessness in DC on a given night. Operating an affordable housing unit for each one of them, the data shows, costs about $45.44 per person, per day, on average in DC.
Providing affordable housing to every homeless person in DC would cost an estimated $255,166, which is 4.3 times less than the cost of Trump's military deployment.
"Taxpayers like you and me bear the cost of this cruel power grab," Homestead said. "This militarized spending comes at the expense of federal programs—like public housing—that actually do prevent crime and improve health and education outcomes."
Last week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that over 70 encampments had been cleared since Trump's order to federalize the police. She also said that over 600 people had been arrested, though it was not specified how many of them were homeless.
Trump has sought to conflate homelessness with criminality, suggesting that the nation's capital had been "overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people."
While his solution has been a show of military force against people with nowhere to go, a large body of research suggests that the approach of providing "Housing First"—meaning a stable place to stay with no preconditions for sobriety or treatment—reduces crime.
A 2021 study from UCLA found that providing homeless people with targeted housing assistance reduced the probability of committing a crime by 80%.
"Arresting or ticketing people for sleeping outside makes homelessness worse, wastes taxpayer money, and simply does not work," said Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center. "The solution to homelessness is housing and supports, not handcuffs and jails."
But in addition to a crackdown on the homeless, the Trump administration is also pushing to eliminate funds for public housing. The White House's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 slashes funding for HUD's Continuum of Care program, which provided cities with funding for initiatives to house the homeless.
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the proposal would effectively end funding of permanent supportive housing for 170,000 residents and potentially increase the number of homeless people in the US by 36%.
"Arresting people for no reason other than the fact that they have no home is inhumane and unjust," said Amber W. Harding, executive director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. "It is particularly cruel to do so knowing that federal and local housing programs have been slashed and that DC does not have enough shelter beds."
"Fines, arrests, and encampment evictions make homelessness worse, further traumatize our homeless neighbors while disconnecting them from community and support," said Dana White, Director of Advocacy at Miriam's Kitchen, a DC-based homeless services organization. "If policing resolved homelessness, we wouldn't have homelessness here in DC or anywhere else in this country."
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To Defeat Trump's Fascism, We Must Confront Militarism
While most Americans instinctively understand the threat U.S. militarism poses to democracy, the times call for more explicit links between militarism and rising fascism and a blueprint for reversing this threat.
Jun 12, 2025
President Trump’s deployment of 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to quash peaceful demonstrations against brutal ICE raids is a wake up call. Now is the time to push back against this administration’s use of military violence against its own citizens to consolidate authoritarian power. As Trump threatens to arrest California Governor Newsom and unleash “troops everywhere,” the people of this country must reject militarization as a tool of authoritarianism and stand firm to defend and expand democracy.
As tanks and troops descend upon Los Angeles to silence dissent, on Saturday, they will roll through Washington in a display of power, revealing the undercurrents of an administration that wields militarization not for defense, but for domination.
On his 79th birthday, President Trump will finally get his “big, beautiful” military parade, brandishing unrivaled U.S. military might on the streets of the nation’s capital. Marking the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, the $45 million parade will feature nearly 7,000 soldiers marching down Constitution Avenue, flanked by hundreds of B-17 bombers, Strykers and Apache helicopters. Washington will look like Nazi Germany, and unless we tackle militarism in our fight to defend democracy, we, too, may soon live under authoritarian rule.
As longtime peace activists, we have opposed U.S. wars against Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and raised the alarm over militarized U.S. foreign policies like war drills against China and North Korea which provoke a dangerous counter-reaction and fuels an arms race that could trigger nuclear war.
The Trump administration isn't trimming fat from the federal budget, they're cutting the heart out of communities to further enrich billionaires, war profiteers, and techno-fascists.
Deluged daily with domestic crises, it is challenging to draw attention to the dangers of U.S. militarism, especially when most view it as a problem “over there.”
But now we are in an era where masked ICE agents are raiding schools, workplaces, churches and homes, tearing apart families by abducting and deporting legal residents and rounding up students for protesting U.S. support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
The U.S. public can no longer afford to ignore the lethal consequences of militarism on our democracy at a time when our Commander-in-Chief has pardoned January 6th vigilantes, defied the Constitution and judicial rulings, threatened to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, and has already deployed the National Guard and active-duty Marines in an attempt to quash dissent at home.
While most Americans instinctively understand the threat U.S. militarism poses to democracy, the times call for more explicit links between militarism and rising fascism and a blueprint for reversing this threat.
Contrary to Trump’s campaign promises to end U.S. involvement in Ukraine and Gaza, he is calling for an unprecedented $1.1 trillion Pentagon budget for more war and militarism, including modernizing nuclear weapons, further entrenching the U.S.’ permanent war footing across the Pacific and Asia in preparation for war with China, and massively increasing policing, detention and deportation.
In 2026 alone, Trump and Republicans want to spend an additional $43.8 billion on mass detentions and deportations, funding more ICE raids like those in LA. This militarized budget accounts for 75 percent of the entire discretionary budget, which explains why on top of massive tax cuts for billionaires, there is no money for social programs and federal agencies that actually help our communities feel safe – clean air and water, healthcare, child nutrition, education, and housing assistance.
U.S. taxpayers are told this historic increase in more militarism is a “generational investment” in defending our country, or that it’s to honor the sacrifices of U.S. service women and men.
But the truth is that half of the Pentagon budget goes to defense contractors that sell weapons of mass destruction to authoritarian states and human rights abusers, like Saudi Arabia and Israel. Instead of financing Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza with $17.9 billion in 2024, U.S. taxpayer dollars could have provided more than one million U.S. veterans with VA healthcare.
Our taxpayer dollars also enrich tech billionaires like Elon Musk, whose $277 million dollar donation to Trump’s campaign landed him a $5.2 billion dollar Pentagon deal in April, and a free pass to wage an administrative coup. Billions of our taxpayer dollars also go to venture capitalist Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal and Palantir, which Bloomberg describes as an “intelligence platform designed for the global War on Terror [that] was weaponized against ordinary Americans at home.” Thiel, who doesn’t “believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” just received another contract to carry out ICE deportations, and is, along with Musk, Meta’s Zuckerberg and other techno-fascists, seeking to build a dystopian future of unregulated “network states” and surveil us all.
At a time when most Americans want an end to war, Trump is using our tax dollars to celebrate militarism as a cornerstone of consolidating authoritarian power...
The Trump administration isn't trimming fat from the federal budget, they're cutting the heart out of communities to further enrich billionaires, war profiteers, and techno-fascists. In the report Trading Life for Death, the National Priorities Project and Public Citizen found that militarized spending increases in the reconciliation proposals total $163 billion for FY 2026. That's more than enough to fund Medicaid for the 13.7 million people at risk of losing health care, and the 11 million people at risk of losing food stamps.
As Trump uses the parade as a spectacle to exalt his unchecked power, people around the country will join over 1,800 organized protests under the banners of “No Kings Day” and “Kick Out the Clowns.” This day of action offers an opportunity to shine a light on the threat of a highly militarized society to our democracy, from the bloated Pentagon budget that leaches funding from investments that make us secure, to state capture by techno-fascists on our taxpayer dime. We need to do the hard work to redefine our paradigm of national security. The Feminist Peace Playbook: A Guide for Transforming U.S. Foreign Policy provides one such guide for moving our country from one defined by war and violence to one built on care, compassion and cooperation.
Let’s heed the prescient words of President Eisenhower, a five-star general who led the Allied Forces in WWII to defeat fascism, when he warned Americans to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."
At a time when most Americans want an end to war, Trump is using our tax dollars to celebrate militarism as a cornerstone of consolidating authoritarian power at home.
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Pentagon and Immigration Spending in GOP Bill Could Instead Protect Medicaid Coverage
"Stealing money away from life-sustaining programs to fund war, weapons, and death should be an immediate nonstarter for every member of Congress," said one advocate and author of a new report.
May 23, 2025
With the House GOP's Medicaid-slashing reconciliation bill now headed to the Republican-controlled Senate, a trio of groups on Thursday highlighted that the tens of billions the reconciliation legislation allocates for the Pentagon and the Trump administration's immigration crackdown efforts could instead be used to protect and expand health insurance access for millions.
House Republicans' reconciliation bill includes $163 billion for the Pentagon and for mass deportation and border-related expenses that U.S. President Donald Trump has requested be allocated in fiscal year 2026. Those dollars could instead go toward providing 31 million adults with Medicaid, or providing 71 million people with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, according to a report titled Trading Life for Death: What the Reconciliation Bill Puts at Stake in Your State.
The report is a joint publication from the progressive watchdog Public Citizen, the progressive policy research organization the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), and the National Priorities Project (NPP), which is a federal budget research organization and a project of IPS.
In a statement on Thursday, Lindsay Koshgarian, program director at NPP and one of the authors of the report, framed the reconciliation package as a "direct redistribution of resources from struggling Americans to the Pentagon and militarization."
The reconciliation bill, which passed 215-214 in the House of Representatives on Thursday, includes tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy that would add $3.8 trillion to the national debt, a roll back in clean energy tax credits, sweeping cuts to Medicaid and SNAP to the tune of nearly $1 trillion, and an increase in the maximum payment available through the child tax credit until 2028—though the bill is designed so that it would block an estimated 4.5 million children from accessing the credit, according to the Center for Migration Studies.
Under the legislation, an estimated 8.6 million people would lose Medicaid coverage over the next 10 years, according to a May 11 analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 11 million people would be at risk of losing at least some of their food assistance under the changes to SNAP.
Millions more could lose their healthcare due to Obamacare decisions/provisions.
Per the report, the militarized spending increases for 2026 would more than enough to fund Medicaid for the millions who are at risk of losing their health insurance under the bill, and the millions at risk of losing their SNAP benefits.
In addition to highlighting that the bill includes a huge cash injection for the U.S. Department of Defense, the report argues the Pentagon does not need more money. "The United States is already the world's largest military spender, allocating more taxpayer dollars to the Pentagon than the next nine countries combined," according to the report, which also notes that the department has never passed an audit.
The three groups also quantify the tradeoffs between defense spending and healthcare at a more granular level.
For example, the bill includes a $25 billion initial investment in Trump's "Golden Dome" project, a multilayered defense system that Trump has said will be capable of "intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space," according to CBS News.
In just one congressional district, Tennessee's 2nd District, taxpayer funds going toward the investment in the Golden Dome could instead be used to put 12,310 people on Medicaid, according to the report. In Texas' 21st District, taxpayers' funds redirected to support the Golden Dome could provide Medicaid to 13,589 people.
"If implemented, this budget would rip the rug out from under everyday Americans relying on Medicaid and SNAP to survive, just to further enrich Pentagon contractors," said Savannah Wooten, People Over Pentagon advocate at Public Citizen and report co-author, in a statement on Thursday. "Stealing money away from life-sustaining programs to fund war, weapons, and death should be an immediate nonstarter for every member of Congress."
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