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Trump’s budget puts war first, and Americans last

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by Svante Myrick, opinion contributor - 04/13/26 10:30 AM ET

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by Svante Myrick, opinion contributor - 04/13/26 10:30 AM ET

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US President Donald Trump looks on during a press conference about the conflict in Iran in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on April 6, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images)

President Trump’s new budget proposal exposes the emptiness of his claims to put Americans first.

Trump revealed the worldview underlying his budget in remarks at a luncheon that was supposed to be private but was accidentally released by the White House. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” Trump said. “They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”

Here’s the bottom line: To pay for an outrageous 44 percent increase in military spending, Trump is proposing big cuts in everything from K-12 and higher education to medical and scientific research, the National Parks, renewable energy and infrastructure projects and more. Just listing all the cuts would take up this whole column.

The New Republic highlighted ways Trump’s budget would take “a sledgehammer” to the working class — including new moms trying to buy food, families with moderate incomes trying to buy homes and small businesses owners serving rural communities. Trump wants to completely do away with a long-standing program that helps elderly and disabled people on fixed incomes pay their heating and energy bills.

If Trump gets his way, the government will pull way back on helping people afford housing, while spending billions to create concentration camps for 100,000 adults and 30,000 families.

Many of Trump’s proposed cuts would create hardship that hits families immediately. Others would undermine Americans’ health and quality of life over the long term.

The Environmental Protection Agency would be slashed by more than half. Michelle Roos, a former manager at EPA and current director of the Environmental Protection Network, called the budget “part of the Trump administration’s dangerous and far-reaching plan to let polluters decide which toxic chemicals to dump in our drinking water, which harmful pollution to pump into the air we breathe, and which pesticides are put on the food we eat.”

The budget calls for massive cuts in support for all kinds of scientific research, “reducing the chances that American science cures cancer, Alzheimer’s, or other terminal and debilitating conditions,” according to the Association of American Universities. The research arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which helps us predict tornadoes and hurricanes, understand oceans and fisheries, and deal with climate change, would be obliterated.

These cuts, coming on top of damage created by the first-year DOGE wrecking ball, would threaten our country’s scientific leadership and all the benefits Americans enjoy from “the greatest research-and-innovation engine the world has ever known.”

I was a mayor for 10 years. I experienced what people mean when they say a budget is a moral document. Budgets reflect the government’s priorities and the values of the people who are making those decisions.

As mayor, I made it a priority to invest in our city’s social safety net, strengthening our community by bringing a bit more stability into people’s lives. Trump wants to do the opposite for America and Americans.

If Congress goes along with Trump’s budget request, non-military discretionary spending will fall to its lowest level as a percentage of the economy since the Eisenhower administration.

It was President Eisenhower, a war-hero general and commander of allied forces in Europe in World War II, who said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Eisenhower famously left office with a warning to Americans about the dangers of the military industrial complex.

We’re in very different territory today, with Project 2025 ideologues eagerly dismantling investments in education, housing, and our safety net while Trump’s sons and well-connected insiders look to get rich off Trump’s war and war-first budget.

Fortunately, Trump doesn’t get the last word. The American people can voice their opposition to their congressional representatives who will be voting on the Trump budget. And in November, voters will have a chan