President Trump unveiled his 2026 budget outline Friday, proposing cuts totaling $163 billion to education, foreign aid funding, energy and environmental protection — while boosting defense spending to over $1 trillion.
The $163 billion cut in non-defense discretionary spending is 22.6% below current levels, according to an outline of the budget released by the White House.
Meanwhile, the president proposed an increase of more than $113 billion for the Pentagon from 2025 levels, bringing the total to $1.01 trillion. The administration is also calling for $175 billion “to, at long last, finally secure our border.”
The defense budget calls for the elimination of “woke” and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs; a down-payment on a “Golden Dome for America” missile defense system; and additional funds for shipbuilding, US space exploration, and next-generation F-47 fighter jets as well as a 3.8% pay bump for US troops.
As part of Trump’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission, at least $500 million will be handed to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “to tackle nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety across HHS.”
Congress will still have to come up with their own budget plan, which could take months to hammer out.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought in a Friday letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) touted the “unprecedented” increase in defense spending and border security.
The Department of Homeland Security will get $43.8 billion more for the president’s mass deportations and to help finish a border wall, among other priorities.
But almost $1.8 billion is being pulled from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and shelter and services for migrants.
Vought outlined $8.3 billion in cuts to economic and development aid at the State Department that “has been funneled to radical, leftist priorities, including climate change, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and LGBTQ activities around the world.”
More than $6.2 billion for “pro-abortion” non-governmental groups was also cut, while funding for infectious disease prevention and AIDS relief was preserved.
Nearly $5.7 billion would also be axed from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as well as international refugee and migrant assistance funding.
Additionally, $3.3 billion is on the chopping block for “wasteful” UN peacekeeping missions, foreign exchange programs and other voluntary contributions to the international organization.
The Department of Education will also cede around $13.7 billion to give US states more discretion over how they use federal funds — and let the Office of Civil Rights “refocus away from DEI and Title IX transgender cases.”
HHS cuts targeted nearly $3.6 billion in “duplicative, DEI, or simply unnecessary programs” as well as almost $2 billion that provided “cash handouts, medical services, and job training to illegal immigrants.”
The National Institutes of Health will also get a roughly $18 billion haircut for having funded “wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.”
Notably, the president’s budget cited how several US intelligence agencies’ assessments pointed to a possible lab leak as the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic — and the agency’s inability to “get data and hold recipients” accountable — as “evidence that NIH has grown too big and unfocused.”
“The NIH has also promoted radical gender ideology to the detriment of America’s youth,” according to the budget document.
The Environmental Protection Agency will receive $36 billion more for drinking water programs — including on Indian reservations — but billions more in climate-related spending will be cut.
The White House is urgently pushing Congress to pass a spending plan — with chief of staff Susie Wiles telling The Post this week that securing Trump’s agenda with legislation is top of mind for the next six months.
“We ought to have a budget by then which would contain virtually all of the president’s priorities,” Wiles said Tuesday, “which are the things that he campaigned on, and renewal of the Trump tax cuts.”
“And if, if that is all we do, which it won’t be, that is an enormous accomplishment, because it’s the framework for everything else we will work to do.”
