What The Hell America!

Figure 2 below compares Trump’s 2026 funding request to enacted 2025 levels for the 15 executive cabinet departments, sorted by the difference between those amounts. At one end, you’ll find the largest proposed increase (+$113 billion for the Pentagon); at the other, the largest proposed cut (–$49 billion for the State Department and international programs).

However, departmental-level breakdowns understate how much military spending there actually is — and how much nonmilitary spending there actually isn’t. For example, Figure 2 lists $962 billion for the Pentagon, but that figure excludes military spending housed in other departments. Factor those amounts in, and you get the $1.01 trillion military budget shown on page 43 of the White House proposal and in Figure 1 above.

For example, the Department of Energy (DOE) gets a $1 billion increase under Trump’s budget. Not bad, right? But $30 billion of its $51 billion budget is earmarked for nuclear weapons and other military programs within the National Nuclear Security Administration. Without that funding, Energy’s budget actually drops by $5 billion — from $26 billion in 2025 to $21 billion for 2026.

This aligns with the administration’s intent. The White House’s official summary touts the proposal’s “unprecedented increases for defense and border security,” alongside a drastic cut to nonmilitary spending, which is “reduced by $163 billion or 22.6 percent.” The Trump administration is adamant about keeping those cuts in place, pledging that it will “not be held hostage by Democrats for wasteful nondefense spending increases.” Programs that don’t fund military activities, cover the costs of past wars, or expand federal policing are liable to be on the chopping block.

Figure 2

Trump’s budget summary states that “savings are achieved by reducing or eliminating programs found to be woke and weaponized against ordinary working Americans, wasteful, or best left to the States and localities to provide.” Accordingly the White House released a fact sheet titled “Cuts to Woke Programs.” The word “woke” appears 12 times in the budget request itself; “DEI” (for diversity, equity, and inclusion) is mentioned 31 times.

The intent is presumably to market the broader government spending cuts as part of the culture war. Absent that framing, the cuts might look to voters much more like class warfare.

For example, as part of the proposed $33 billion reduction to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the administration requests an $18 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and lists specific programmatic reductions targeting allegedly wasteful “research on climate change, radical gender ideology, and divisive racialism” — a buffet of triggering buzzwords for many GOP voters. But the itemized reductions amount to less than 6% of the $18 billion cut. No details are provided about where the other $17 billion in cuts are supposed to come from or how they would affect public health infrastructure or medical research conducted in the public’s interest.

Joining the HHS in the budget’s basement are the departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), at –$34 billion, and State at –$49 billion. As part of the reduction to HUD’s budget, $27 billion would be cut from rental assistance and housing support for older adults and people with disabilities. Based on the proposal, the State Department’s military aid programs — which provide $3.3 billion annually to Israel and several billion more to other countries — will be spared. Nonmilitary aid won’t be. That includes development assistance, humanitarian relief, and contributions to international organizations like the World Health Organization. These proposed cuts to health and development will help fund more militarized policing at home and military escalation abroad.

The stated purpose of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) increase is to “conduct mass detention and removal” of immigrants who Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says are criminals. The extra Pentagon funding allegedly “revitalizes our military,” but based on what that money actually buys — like a fantasy missile shield, redundant and dangerous nuclear weapons, and no-strings-attached subsidies for the arms industry — it’s basically a 12-digit lump sum being flushed down the proverbial toilet (which I imagine has a $10,000 seat lid, like the ones the Pentagon buys).

The fantasy missile shield I’m referring to is Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome for America,” which is essentially a redux of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative/“Star Wars” boondoggle. Rounded to the nearest whole number, I’d say there’s a 100% chance the Golden Dome ends up as one too. That’s the best-case scenario: in the very unlikely event the missile defense system does work and is capable of downing any foreign-launched missile, US rivals would immediately dump untold billions into developing new nuclear weapons that can defeat it. The Golden Dome will result either in corporate welfare for military contractors, or in corporate welfare plus a nuclear arms race.

News outlets are reporting that the Golden Dome costs $25 billion, which is bad enough. But that number bothers me for a different reason — it’s not the final cost. This is confirmed in Trump’s budget request, which describes it as “a down-payment on the development and deployment of a Golden Dome for America.” This $25 billion is merely the first of presumably many payments from the public to the Pentagon, much of which is expected to go to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the front-runner to build Trump’s fantasy missile shield.

The proposal reflects what the Trump administration and Republican leaders consider legitimate government spending. Their apparent vision for the discretionary budget — the budget Congress approves each year to fund federal agencies — is for it to function more or less as the budget for the country’s military and increasingly militarized federal police forces. This transformation  moves the federal government even further away from serving the interests of ordinary people and makes it more of an instrument to channel public funds to oligarchs.