The military forces deploying in Washington, D.C. — whose mission includes not only “community safety patrols” but assisting in “traffic control” and “area beautification” — could cost upward of $1 million per day, with the possible price tag climbing into the hundreds of millions for the open-ended occupation, according to expert analysis.

Washington is now ground zero in President Donald Trump’s push to turn America into a full-fledged police state.

The power grab in the District of Columbia — which thus far has involved seizing control of D.C.’s police force, deploying National Guard troops, and flooding the streets with federal officers — follows deployments of federal troops from coast to coast, surges of masked federal agents around the United States, and consistent tyrannical use of executive authority in ways with little precedent in modern U.S. history.

Trump has brushed off being called a “dictator” since his capital city putsch, which he touted as a law enforcement operation and urban beautification campaign.

The Republican governors of West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee announced, in the last several days, that they will send National Guard troops to assist Trump’s efforts to “federalize” D.C. Those forces will join the nearly 900 D.C. National Guard troops already activated by Trump and deployed in the capital.

Approximately 500 National Guard members from West Virginia had arrived in the capital by Monday afternoon, according to a defense official who spoke to The Intercept on background. Around 300 troops from South Carolina were en route, the official said. (South Carolina’s Gov. Henry McMaster only publicly authorized the deployment of 200 Guard members.) All told, around 2,100 troops will soon be deployed.

The Intercept asked Hanna Homestead of the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan research group, to estimate the possible expense of this operation. Her analysis finds that the cost of Trump’s troop deployment in Washington could exceed more than $1 million per day, based on the deployment of around 2,100 Guard members to D.C.

“It’s unconscionable that the Trump administration would hand the military a blank check of over a million dollars a day to occupy D.C. while stripping access to health care and food aid from millions of families across the country,” Homestead told The Intercept. “The daily cost of the D.C. troop deployment is more than six times what it would cost to operate affordable housing for D.C.’s entire unhoused population. The government’s priorities could not be more........

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