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President Trump unveiled his 2026 budget outline Friday, proposing cuts totaling $163 billion to education, housing, medical research, foreign aid funding, energy and environmental protection — while seeking to boost defense spending to more than $1 trillion. The $163 billion cut in non-defense discretionary spending is a 22.6% reduction from current levels, ... The proposed cuts to government funding are in line with Trump’s greater mission to cut bureaucracy via the Department of Government Efficiency — and DOGE ... The defense budget calls for the elimination of “woke” and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs; a down-payment on a “Golden...

President Trump is considering a significant change to U.S. participation in NATO, according to three current and former senior U.S. officials and one congressional official. Trump has discussed with aides the possibility of adjusting America’s NATO engagement to favor members that allocate a set percentage of their GDP to defense, the officials said. As part of this potential shift, the U.S. might not come to the defense of a NATO ally under attack if the country fails to meet the defense spending threshold, the officials said. Such a move would mark a major departure from NATO’s Article 5, which states...

ABOARD THE PRIME MINISTER’S PLANE (AP) — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer flew to Washington on Wednesday after announcing a big increase in the British defense budget, an investment that he hopes will help persuade U.S. President Donald Trump to maintain support for Ukraine as Washington pushes to end the war. Though Starmer is touting the trans-Atlantic “special relationship” that has endured since World War II, he faces an uncertain reception. Trump has upended decades of U.S. foreign policy during his first weeks in office. Ukraine and its European allies are scrambling to respond after the Trump administration engaged directly...

UPDATED Feb 20, 2025, 07:00 AM Washington - The Trump administration has ordered senior US military leaders to plan for expansive cuts that could slash the defence budget by 8 per cent annually, or some US$290 billion (S$390 billion) within the next five years, US media reported on Feb 19. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Pentagon to develop the deep reductions, The Washington Post reported, citing a memo. The Pentagon’s budget for 2025 is some US$850 billion. Lawmakers across the political spectrum agree that the massive spending is needed to deter threats, especially from China and Russia. The cuts,...

U.S. Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio on Wednesday accused “rough states” and “dictators” in North Korea, Russia and Iran of sowing “chaos” and “instability,” and China of having “lied, cheated and stolen” its way into a global superpower status at the expense of the United States. -snip- “In Moscow, in Tehran, in Pyongyang, dictators and rogue states now sow chaos and instability, and align with and they fund radical terror groups, and they hide behind their veto power at the U.N. Security Council or the threats of nuclear war,” he said in his opening statement. -snip- “We welcomed the...

President-elect Trump made quite the buzz over the weekend when he expressed a strong interest in acquiring the Danish-controlled autonomous territory of Greenland, a land that is both immensely resource-rich and strategically a high priority to the interests of all major powers. In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump announced the nomination of PayPal co-founder Ken Howery to serve as the next U.S. Ambassador to Denmark, writing: “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.” Greenland is incredibly resource-rich,...

'I took the time in about three hours to fill out every single portion of that questionnaire in great detail,' VP hopeful said in 2006 congressional debate.. Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz said in a 2006 survey that he would eliminate federal funding for national missile defense, a technology experts say is crucial to fending off a Chinese or Russian attack on the United States. Walz said he put a great deal of time and effort into filling out the survey, in which he laid out his views on a series of national security and other policy issues. "I...

House of Representatives passed a measure on Friday automatically registering men aged 18 to 26 for selective service. It was part of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which sets out the U.S. government’s military and national security priorities over the next fiscal year. This year's NDAA authorizes $895.2 billion in military spending, a $9 billion increase from fiscal 2024. While it hasn’t been invoked in over half a century, it’s mandatory for all male U.S. citizens to register for the selective service, also known as the military draft, when they turn 18. Failure to register is classified as...

Question: Do you think we spend too much on national defense?

While left wing staffers in the Biden Administration’s State Department are “concerned” that the death cult Taliban has an all-male government, moderate Democrats are (finally) beginning to push back on the insanity of the so-called progressive left. Indeed, when these same woke Administration staff requested, as part of the defense budget a weak, flaccid military spending line item, moderate Congressional Democrats pushed to expand that budget by $24 billion more. But budget realities still need to be observed, and while we need to keep the military strong, we need to find efficiencies while doing so. The Air Force has the...

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2021. Both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate passed the NDAA by wide margins, more than enough to override the president’s veto. This bill may become the first Trump veto Congress will override. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) supported the bill despite the president’s veto threats, claiming that the NDAA will deter Chinese aggression. Yet Trump claimed that the bill will help China. “No one has worked harder, or approved more money for the military, than I have — over $2 trillion,”...

The portion of Americans who believe the nation’s defense spending as “about right” has reached a record high, at 50 percent, compared to 31 percent who say it is too much and 17 percent who say it is too little, a survey from Gallup found. Those saying spending is about right has nearly doubled from 27 percent in 2016, most of it migration from those who said spending was too little, which fell from 37 percent to 17 percent. The shift in opinion is largely driven by Republicans, who were far less likely to believe the U.S. was not spending...

House Democrats are unhappy with border security funding included in a massive government spending package poised to become law in a matter of days. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus confronted Democratic leaders Tuesday in a closed-door meeting about a provision in the fiscal 2020 spending measure that would provide $1.375 billion for the construction of a southern border wall. Democrats are also angry about language maintaining funding levels for detention facilities for illegal immigrants, as well as a provision allowing President Trump to maintain his authority to transfer existing federal funding to border security projects. “I’m not voting for it,” Rep....

The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a $738 billion defense bill that funds the US-Mexico border wall, the Space Force, and continued US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, handing President Donald Trump a big win... The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed in a 377 to 48 vote... The NDAA now moves to the Republican-controlled Senate, where it's expected to pass next week... The bill provides for a massive boost in military spending compared to 2019 — an increase of $22 billion — and authorizes the creation of a Space Force, a sixth branch of the military that...

Donald Trump's dream of building a "big, beautiful wall" along the southern border took a hit yesterday when a federal judge ruled that Pentagon funds totaling $3.6 billion diverted for 11 construction projects along the southern border could not be used for wall construction. Significantly, the judge, David Briones of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, ruled that other funds, already approved by the Supreme Court, could be spent. Those funds, which come from a Pentagon counter-narcotics fund, could still be used for wall construction. The argument being used by the city of El Paso was...

The Air Force this week awarded Boeing a contract worth up to almost $1 billion to expand its effort to add new wings to A-10s, shortly after wrapping up a previous initiative that replaced wings on most of the fleet. “The Air Force currently has a fleet of 281 A-10s and recently announced the completion of wing replacements for 173 A-10 aircraft, by Boeing, from an earlier contract award,” the service said in an Aug. 21 release. The Aug. 21 contract allows the Air Force to re-wing up to 109 aircraft, plus three spares, “depending on how many aircraft are...

The iconic A-10 Thunderbolt II will be flying into the late 2030s thanks to a re-winging project completed by the U.S. Air Force. Air Force Materiel Command said in a press release on Monday that 162 A-10s received new wings thanks to a $1.1 billion project that began in 2011. The contract, awarded to Boeing in 2007, required the creation of new parts for the plane’s fuselage. “At the end of the program, making sure we had all the pieces and parts that we needed to make that happen required a really significant team effort,” said Stephen Zaiser, director of...

As the U.S. Navy gets closer to issuing the final request for proposals for its future frigate competition, or FFG(X), one particularly notable design, BAE System's Type 26, has largely been absent from the discussion. It seems particularly curious given that the British-designed ship is well on its way to becoming one of the most popular warships in its class among some of America's closest allies, with 32 examples in various configurations on order for the U.K. Royal Navy, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Royal Canadian Navy. BAE did propose a variant of the Type 26 to the Navy...

We have a good news-bad news situation on our hands when it comes to defense spending. The good news is, it’s heading in the right direction: up. The bad news is, it remains too low to fix the spending holiday that afflicted our military for years — a failure to fund that has seriously compromised our readiness levels. Budget numbers released by Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, look impressive at first glance: $622 billion for the base defense discretionary budget. That’s an increase of 2.3 percent over the last budget the House passed. Unfortunately, it’s not enough. Once...

ST. LOUIS — Boeing is preparing to build F-15 fighter planes for the U.S. Air Force at its St. Louis County plant even though the military branch hasn’t bought the jet in over a decade. The Chicago-based company began ramping up its F-15 production line near St. Louis after the Air Force submitted a nearly $8 billion budget request last month that included eight F-15s next year and 72 in the following four years. The request came as a surprise to many since the U.S. military has moved toward stealth fighters, such as Lockheed Martin's F-35, in recent years. Prat...