Say what you will about Defense Secretary/former Fox News guy Pete Hegseth, but dude's interested in cutting the Pentagon's budget. Libertarians, this is what we asked for!
Hegseth has ordered top officials to draw up a plan to cut $50 billion, or roughly 8 percent, from his department's budget—8 percent each year for the next five years. Since it's the Trump administration and we can't just fully have nice things, border enforcement is one area that Hegseth has already designated as exempt from possible trims. (That said, getting the border under control and making immigration more orderly is possibly a defensible, and certainly a predictable, priority for President Donald Trump.)
It's not clear whether Hegseth is aiming for full cuts, or whether he wants certain line items cut in order to allocate the funds elsewhere within his department. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that Hegseth has instructed his people "to find offsets—programs that can be cut to achieve spending elsewhere—for fiscal year 2026, which starts Oct. 1." This may well be in addition to the spending cuts; we just don't know yet.
