Dear john,At the beginning of the month, President Trump deployed the D.C. National Guard to "protect law-abiding citizens from the destructive forces of criminal activity" despite violent crime in our nation's capital falling to a 30-year low.And a recently published study by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) concludes that President Trump's mobilization of the D.C. National Guard (2,091 troops) costs the federal government over a million dollars a day. All while National Guardsmen are pulled away from their families and jobs with no end in sight.Per the IPS, previous reporting found that National Guard deployments cost the U.S. government $530 per Guard member, per day. So, the price tag of deploying 2,091 troops to D.C. is over $1 million per day — and the number of troops will likely continue to grow. And with no deadline for the D.C. deployment, those costs could add up for months or even years.“This is a gross misuse of such a critical national resource,” retired Maj. Gen. of the National Guard Randy Manner said. “I think it’s insulting to every man and woman in uniform.”And I agree. These men and women made the selfless decision to serve our country, and despite training for combat, they've been mobilized to pick up trash and remove graffiti without any say.Instead, as the IPS notes, operating public housing for the 5,616 homeless population of D.C. on any given night is one-quarter the daily expense of deploying the National Guard.In El Paso, data from 2023 estimates about 1,112 homeless people in our community, including about 118 veterans, and the Housing and Urban Development Agency estimates that the daily cost of providing public housing per person in Texas is $21.24.Knowing that the daily cost to provide every homeless person in El Paso is about $23,618, the cost of a single day of deploying the National Guard in DC could provide public housing for every homeless person in El Paso for over seven weeks.Assuming the National Guard has spent a million dollars a day, they've been deployed for 17 days, estimating a cost of $17 million spent so far on the deployment.That same amount of money could have been used to house every homeless person in El Paso for almost 2 years.