Dummkopf Trumpf idiotically mobilized the DC National Guard under the guise of restoring security in the nation's capital, despite DC's crime rate being at a 30-year low. What began as a deployment of 800 DC National Guard troops has grown to encompass 2,091, as Republican governors send hundreds more. Trumpf hasn't just complained about alleged crime in the District; he's placed a target on homeless and poor people. Bleating that we're "getting rid of the slums," Trumpf has called on troops and police to forcibly remove unhoused people from the city. National Guard deployments cost the American taxpayer $530 per Guard member, per day. So the price tag of deploying 2,091 troops to DC is well over $1 million per day, and the number of troops will likely continue to grow.
Calculations show that the daily cost of operating public housing for all 5,616 people who are unhoused in DC on any given night is one-quarter the daily expense of deploying the National Guard. If the Guard remains deployed for three months, it would cost more than operating public housing for the entire unhoused population in DC for an entire year. In the states whose GOP governors are voluntarily sending National Guard troops to the capital, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Ohio, South Carolina, and West Virginia, some 30,000 people are unhoused. The daily cost of operating safe shelter for all 30,000 would be less than one day of the DC occupation. Soon Dummkopf Trumpf will be ordering soldiers into American streets again, this time Chicago, to viciously target some of the most vulnerable members of our society, despite abundant evidence that prosecuting homelessness only makes it worse. Of course the cost of Trumpf's cruel power grab is borne by the hardworking American taxpayer.
