Trump’s Defense Secretary Gives Pentagon Days to Plan for Massive Cuts

Donald Trump’s gutting of the federal government is coming to the Department of Defense.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has told DOD and military leaders to make plans for cutting 8 percent of the defense budget for each of the next five years, The Washington Post reports, citing a department memo and unnamed officials.

Proposals for cuts are due back by February 24, the memo states, with the Trump administration including a list 17 exceptions from the chopping block. These include nuclear weapons and missile defenses, drones and other weapons, and military operations at the southern U.S. border.

“President Trump’s charge to DoD is clear: achieve Peace through Strength,” Hegseth wrote in the memo on Tuesday. “The time for preparation is over — we must act urgently to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and reestablish deterrence. Our budget will resource the fighting force we need, cease unnecessary defense spending, reject excessive bureaucracy, and drive actionable reform including progress on the audit.”

So far, the massive DOD budget of $850 billion has been spared from the heavy-handed cuts elsewhere in the federal government led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, including the elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development. This is despite the fact that the DOD has a long history of failing audits and funding bloated projects without facing any consequences.

It’s probably not a coincidence that Musk’s companies have hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in defense contracts. Until now, DOD employees were also spared from Trump and Musk’s mass purge of government employees, although that will soon change. The department has sent a list of all its probationary employees to the Trump administration, and many, if not most, of those employees will likely be sacked like those at other government agencies.

It remains to be seen how the coming budget cuts will affect national defense and national security. The Trump administration has already been forced to try and undo cuts at the Department of Energy after mistakenly firing critical employees who deal with nuclear weapons. The Department of Agriculture has also scrambled to rehire bird flu experts it says were “accidentally” fired. Will the Trump administration jump the gun again in the defense department?

Missouri Republicans are advancing an effort that would require pregnant people to register in a statewide database.

House Bill 807, called the “Save MO Babies Act,” is intended to target people “at risk for seeking abortion services” and to “reduce the number of preventable abortions.” If passed, the registry would start on July 1, 2026, and would be managed by the Maternal and Child Services division of the state’s Department of Social Services, according to the bill text. But the bill does not specify the scope and scale of such a registry, or exactly how “at risk” individuals would be identified.

Even the bill’s author, adoption attorney Gerard Harms, admitted that the bill was “very inartfully drafted” while making his case before the state House Children and Families Committee on Tuesday, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The effort was roundly condemned by both government-wary Republicans and pro-abortion Democrats.

“ARE YOU SERIOUS!?” House Democrats wrote in a post on Facebook, according to the paper.  

“We have to imagine even conservative Missourians would be horrified by this idea,” the Democrats said.

In November, Missouri voters narrowly approved a ballot measure that enshrined abortion access in their state constitution. 

The measure, called the Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative, solidified that the government has no role in a person’s “fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions. It also undid the Show-Me State’s total abortion ban, which took effect one hour after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Still, that hasn’t stopped state lawmakers from fighting for stronger abortion restrictions. Last month, Missouri Representative Eric Burlison introduced the “Life at Conception Act” at the federal level, aiming to classify a fetus as a person under the 14th Amendment. Meanwhile, state Representative Brian Seitz introduced a bill—Joint Resolution 39—that would prevent abortion access after a fetal heartbeat is detected, allowing only narrow exceptions for medical emergencies. 

Vice President JD Vance issued a stark warning to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday, cautioning the war-battered leader against “badmouthing” Donald Trump even as the U.S. pushes forward with handing over Ukrainian land to Russia in lopsided peace talks.

“The idea that Zelenskiy is going to change the president’s mind by badmouthing him in public media,” Vance told the Daily Mail, “Everyone who knows the president will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration.”

Russian forces crossed the Ukrainian border on February 24, 2022, which Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to justify by falsely claiming that he needed to protect civilians in eastern Ukraine.

The U.S. and Russia opened discussions Tuesday aimed at ending the three-year war in a meeting that excluded Ukrainian leadership. Hours after the meeting ended, Trump suggested that Kyiv had started the conflict—a Russian talking point that drew Zelenskiy’s ire.

“I would like to see more truth from the Trump team,” Zelenskiy told reporters in a sandbagged presidential palace Wednesday, adding that the MAGA leader lives in a “disinformation space.”

But Trump did not respond well to Zelenskiy’s words. In a lengthy and venomous post on Truth Social Wednesday, the U.S. president wrongly accused the democratically-elected Ukrainian leader of being a “dictator.”

“Zelenskiy admits that half of the money we sent him is ‘MISSING,’” Trump wrote, incorrectly asserting that the U.S. had provided $350 billion to Ukraine. In actuality, the U.S. has allocated $119 billion in Ukraine aid, according to the Kiel Institute, which has been tracking international financial assistance for Ukraine.

“He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle,’” Trump continued.

“A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskiy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do,” he added.

Not even other members of Republican leadership could give a full-throttled defense of Trump deriding Zelenskiy as a dictator.

“The president speaks for himself,” Senate Majority leader John Thune said Wednesday afternoon.

Vance met with Zelenskiy on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference last week as Russia navigated through Trump to organize a deal that defense experts have warned will overwhelmingly benefit Russian interests.

Earlier that week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the NATO conference in Munich that the administration’s peace talks with Russia had taken several chips “off the table,” including Ukraine’s possible NATO membership (something the military alliance had promised in 2008), the possibility of a U.S. presence in Ukraine to enforce postwar security guarantees, and the end of NATO missions to Ukraine. He also added that it would be “unrealistic” for Ukraine to return to its pre-war borders, effectively ceding land to Moscow.

Donald Trump called himself “THE KING” on Wednesday, and the rest of the White House was overjoyed to see the president was dropping the pretense of democracy. 

Trump announced in a post on Truth Social that his administration would challenge New York City’s recent policy installing congestion pricing, with an added rhetorical twist. 

“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” Trump wrote.

While not exactly surprising given Trump’s previous references to himself as the savior of the country, and his penchant for trolling, the president dubbing himself a “king” should theoretically rub everyone the wrong way—but not the fascists who work for him.  

Alas, the right-wing shills that run Trump’s communications basked in the wash of his declaration of unchecked power. 

Taylor Budowich, the White House deputy chief of staff posted an AI-generated picture of Trump wearing a jeweled crown and fur-trimmed cape on X. 

Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt also boosted the president’s disturbing missive on social media. 

It’s worth noting that Republicans weren’t always like this. Flashback to 2014, and Senator Rand Paul was tossing barbs at former President Barack Obama for being a “president who thinks he’s a king.”

Republicans’ sycophantic support demonstrates that Trump’s autocratic (or monarchic) ranting isn’t merely him going rogue; it’s a distinct rhetorical feature of his entire administration, which has already set to work uprooting the checks and balances that underpin American democracy, and replacing it with something wholly different. 

On Tuesday night, Elon Musk claimed that “if the will of the president is not implemented, and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented. And that means we don’t live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy.” 

It’s not a bureaucracy Americans need fear, but a monarchy. 

Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that he has ended New York’s congestion pricing , boasting in all caps that he “SAVED” the city in a Truth Social post that ended with the declaration “LONG LIVE THE KING!”

Six weeks ago, the city of New York launched a program to enact tolls on cars in the central business district of Manhattan south of 60th Street. On Wednesday, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy sent a letter to New York Governor Kathy Hochul overturning the Federal Highway Administration’s approval of the program.

During his presidential campaign, former New York resident Trump promised to end the program, and at one point, even Hochul wasn’t in favor of it. But in November, the governor revived the plan, and after it went into effect this year, the program got positive reviews. Traffic was reduced, public transportation received a boost, and greenhouse gas emissions and pollution went down. 

But that didn’t have any effect on the Trump administration. Duffy wrote in his letter that he  shares “the President’s concerns about the impacts to working class Americans who now have an additional financial burden,” and said the highway administration would work with the program’s sponsors “to discuss the orderly cessation of toll operations under this terminated pilot program.”

Hochul replied swiftly with a statement of her own posted to her X account, saying, “We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king.”

“We’ll see you in court,” Hochul added, announcing that the Metropolitan Transit Authority had initiated legal action to save the program.

Trump’s action seems to be an attempt to stir up the right-wing’s blind support of car culture, as well as a vindictive effort aimed at his hometown and former place of residence, which has spurned him ever since he entered politics. It remains to be seen how the fight over congestion pricing will play out in court, but only a president as petty as Trump would try to dictate a city’s traffic laws. 

Washington D.C.’s interim MAGA U.S. attorney is coming after Chuck Schumer for supposedly leading an “attack” on Supreme Court justices.

In a weirdly aggressive officewide email Wednesday, U.S. attorney Ed Martin cast Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and the greater Trump administration as potential victims of violence specifically due to the rhetoric of Schumer (which has been mild at best compared to anything the president has ever said).

“One of the most abhorrent examples was when Senator Charles Schumer led a rally to attack US Supreme Court Justices,” Martin wrote in the email, referencing a tiff that Schumer and the conservative justices had over Roe v. Wade. “Schumer said, reading from notes in his hand: ‘I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released a whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.’” 

Martin then posited that these remarks, which Schumer walked back shortly after he made them five years ago, led directly to the alleged attacks at Justice Kavanaugh’s home, in which a man was arrested near Kavanaugh’s house with a knife, firearm, and zip ties.

Meanwhile, it’s obvious that revenge has been on the minds of the Trump administration from the moment he was defeated in 2020.

“We are the DC U.S. Attorney’s office; we are the guardians of federal workers,” Martin continued in the email, striking a clear “us versus them” chord, with “them” being anyone who doesn’t align perfectly with MAGA. “You and I must do whatever possible to assure government work is safe for all involved. We must protect our cops, our prosecutors, our DOGE employees, the President, and all other government employees.”

Schumer has yet to comment.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency may be trying to inflate the numbers of its spending cuts.

DOGE published an itemized list of canceled government contracts Monday accounting for an alleged $16 billion in spending. Almost half of those savings were attributed to a hefty $8 billion contract for D&G Support Services to provide “program and technical support services” to the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights at the the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

There was just one problem: The DOGE website included a screenshot of the award, which showed that it was only worth $8 million, not $8 billion, as was the amount listed directly below the image.

The New York Times reported on the discrepancy Tuesday, and determined that the original contract—which started September 30, 2022—had initially been listed at a value of $8 billion in the Federal Procurement Data System. On January 22, 2025, the number was updated to $8 million. The contract said it had been signed January 30, 2025, and terminated the same day.

Now, it looks like DOGE is trying desperately to cover the mistake.

A visit to DOGE’s wall of receipts reflected the award’s actual $8 million value, but when clicking through to the D&G contract, a familiar inflated number appeared: $8 billion, plus a different signing date and a termination date pushed up to 2027. DOGE had linked to the original inaccurate contract, which supports its claim of massive savings. Meanwhile, its list reflects the accurate price.

In a statement to MeidasTouch, D&G Support Services “acknowledges that the previously reported contract value of $8 billion was incorrect.”

“The discrepancy appears to have resulted from a clerical error in the original government filing upon contract reward. The contract value had a ceiling of $8 million,” the statement said.

To add insult to injury, USASpending.com revealed that of that ceiling, only $2.5 had actually been spent, meaning that DOGE’s savings weren’t even $8 million, but more like $5.5 million.

The DOGE website boasted a total of $55 billion in cuts, which remained unchanged between Tuesday and Wednesday, despite the correction to DOGE’s accounting. It’s unclear how many more errors reside in DOGE’s buggy list of savings.

Lawmakers were taken aback Wednesday by the president’s clear stance on budget negotiations, seemingly shocked that Donald Trump had endorsed a House GOP bill that prioritizes his agenda over the Senate’s alternative resolution.

In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump directly called out Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham for daring to tackle the president’s ambitious 2017 tax plan extension in a separate bill.

“The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM, however, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it!” Trump posted. “We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to ‘kickstart’ the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, ‘ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.’”

“It will, without question, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he added.

With the House in recess, Senate Republican leadership took the lead on drafting a potential salve—though it was apparently slimmer than Trump had hoped.

Conservatives are looking to cut approximately $2 trillion from entitlement programs, with Medicaid expected to take the biggest hit.

Graham’s measure consists of approximately $325 billion to fund the border and advance Trump’s deportation plans, as well as money to bolster defense and energy spending. Senate Republicans had opted to use a second reconciliation bill to extend Trump’s tax plan, which overwhelmingly benefits corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

Trump has leaned into tariffs as a key component of affording an extension to the tax plan.

The Senate had teed up a vote on their resolution for later this week. Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to have lunch with Senate Republicans later Wednesday to “ease the tension,” reported NOTUS.

Still, Republicans—including some of Trump’s MAGA allies—were not expecting the president to bluster against their efforts.

“As they say, did not see that one coming,” Senator John Thune told Notus.

Donald Trump unloaded on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a Truth Social post Wednesday morning, accusing Zelenskiy of enjoying a “gravy train” from the United States and calling him a “Dictator without Elections.”

The post rambles, accusing the Ukrainian leader of being responsible for Russia’s invasion, claiming that the U.S. spent $200 billion more than Europe on Ukraine, and threatening Zelenskiy to “move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”

Unsurprisingly, several of Trump’s claims aren’t true. The U.S. has actually allocated a total of $183 billion to Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion, with about $86.7 billion of it spent already. European commitments amount to $174 billion in addition to $50 billion in loans backed by revenue from frozen Russian assets. Hours before Trump’s post Wednesday, Zelenskiy warned that Trump needed to “be more truthful” and said that the president “lives in a disinformation space” fed by Russia.

Trump’s language and attitude towards Ukraine and Zelenskiy plays right into the hands of Russia and its autocratic leader Vladimir Putin. Putin has long been criticized for his anti-democratic path holding sham elections, so to pin the dictator label on Zelenskiy surely has him rejoicing. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already praised Trump for putting the onus of the war on the U.S., NATO, and Ukraine.

“He is the first, and so far, in my opinion, the only Western leader who has publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the impudent line of the previous administration to draw Ukraine into NATO,” Lavrov said Wednesday. “No Western leaders had ever said that, but he had said it several times. This is already a signal that he understands our position.”

As Russian and U.S. representatives negotiated about the war in Saudi Arabia without their European or Ukrainian counterparts this week, these comments from Trump and Russian leaders suggest that any proposed deal from their talks will almost certainly be bad for Ukraine and leave Russia in a position of strength, with Trump claiming victory regardless.

Trump finally decided to end the GOP’s internal quarreling on how to pass his budget—and broke a huge promise on Medicaid in the process.

For months, Republicans have been split on whether to split Trump’s massive budget agenda on the military, border security, and tax cuts for corporations into multiple, incremental bills (Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham’s preferred method) or combine them into one “big beautiful bill” (the House’s preferred method).

The president settled that debate with a Truth Social post on Wednesday morning.

“The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM … unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it!” the president wrote. “We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to ‘kickstart’ the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, ‘ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.’ It will, without question, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

But the House bill Trump endorsed breaks his promise to never touch Medicaid, levying a whopping $2 trillion cut to the budget, including an expected $880 billion cut to the critical health program, in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich.*

“Social Security won’t be touched, other than if there’s fraud or something. It’s going to be strengthened. Medicare, Medicaid—none of that stuff is going to be touched,” Trump claimed as recently as Tuesday, during his and Elon Musk’s sitdown with Fox News’s Sean Hannity.

Some moderate Republicans have already come out against a bill that would slash Medicaid, which could leave thousands of their constituents without reliable access to care.

“​​I ran for Congress under a promise of always doing what is best for the people of Northeastern Pennsylvania,” Representative Rob Bresnahan wrote on X last Friday. “If a bill is put in front of me that guts the benefits my neighbors rely on, I will not vote for it.”

* This piece has been updated to correct the expected cuts to Medicaid under the House budget bill.