Juliana Kim

Last year, it cost more than half a billion dollars to pay for President Trump's domestic troop deployments.

It could be double that this year if current operations remain in place.

The use of troops in Washington, D.C.

alone could cost $660 million.

That's according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

It's a tiny fraction in the country's trillion-dollar defense budget, but state leaders and government watchdog groups argue that these deployments aren't a good use of taxpayer dollars.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

but Trump has repeatedly defended the use of troops and suggested sending them to more cities.

Juliana Kim, NPR News.

The West Virginia National Guard says Sarah Beckstrom is an Army specialist who joined the service in 2023.

Andrew Wolfe is an Air Force staff sergeant who entered the service in 2019.

Beckstrom is from Summersville in central West Virginia, while Wolfe is from Martinsburg, which is in the state's eastern panhandle and less than a two-hour drive to Washington, D.C.

and Baltimore.

Both Beckstrom and Wolfe had been deployed to D.C.

since August when the troop deployment in the city began.

Authorities have described the shooting as a targeted attack and it's being investigated as an act of terrorism.

Juliana Kim, NPR News.

U.S.

District Judge Gia Cobb ruled that by sending thousands of National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., President Trump undermined the city's autonomy and presented harms to the nation's capital.

She issued a temporary block on the deployment, but it won't take effect until next month in order to give the Trump administration time to appeal.