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In a perhaps unprecedented dark time for America and the world, let us take solace in our indomitable Dear Stable Genius, who remains unwaveringly focused on taking care of shiny business: Gold social security cards like Elvis, a $400 million, lopsided shed/ballroom with gaudy columns but no main entrance, and of course gold toilets - which all keeps him so busy he hardly has time to threaten Iran with war crimes. What a time to be alive, barely.
In actual good news, No Kings Day 3.0 drew between 8 and 12 million people, thus hovering tantalizingly close to the 3.5% of a nation's populace historically required to overthrow an authoritarian regime. So good work, patriots. The over 3,000 protests, aka per Mike Johnson "Hate America rallies," ranged from Alaska's Utqiaġvik, the country's northernmost city (7 people) to Ele'ele, Kaua'i, the westernmost, from over 100,000 in New York City to nine stalwarts on Maine's Monhegan Island. Thousands of Trump's neighbors in Palm Beach turned out, ending with a twilight march to Mar-A-Lago, or as close as they could get.
Their signs were brutal: "Elect A Rapist, Expect To Get Fucked. How Many Deaths For the Epstein War? Worst President Since Trump. Criminals Belong Behind Bars, Free Balls for Members of Congress Who Lost Them, Trump Rapes Kids, Impeach Pedolf Shitler, Putin's Bitch, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived. According to The Borowitz Report, Trump, furious about the large protests, argued they'd be much smaller if you subtract all Elon Musk's kids there because they hate him: "People are saying their number (was) much higher than 400, thousands, maybe millions. You take away Elon’s kids and almost no one was there."
There were also "half-dozens to dozens of Americans" at One King co unter-protests, reports The Fucking News, who put the number at "many-ish...Organizers say there were barely any organizers," with attendees ranging from "a tiny number of young people to a die-hard faction of dying people." In Palm Beach, one man carried a heavy sign that read, "Deport the white liberals"; masked to protect himself "against the vindictive left," he said he left soon after he was "attacked" by a woman who denied touching him; her comrades said the guy just dropped his sign "because he was too weak to carry it."
Their small numbers did face competition from "the incredible shrinking CPAC," also meeting that day in Grapevine, Texas with a turnout of "barely thousands." Once a MAGA "center of political gravity," this year's event drew neither Trumps nor presidential candidates. One possible ick factor: MC was (still) CPAC chair Matt Schlapp, who in 2024 settled a pricey sexual misconduct lawsuit from a guy working on Hershel Walker’s (LOL) Senate campaign, who charged Schlapp groped him. The event did boast Todd Chrisley, a reality TV star doing 12 years in prison for massive fraud till Trump pardoned him. Here’s his welcome.
There was also a big contingent of South Korean “stop the steal” activists and supporters of former president Yoon Suk Yeol, impeached last year and now serving life in prison for insurrection. Still, the whole thing was a bit of a slog. Organizers tried to jazz up session subjects - a panel titled "Fraud" became “Ilhan Omar ‘Family’ Values"; Mercedes Schlapp beseeched factions not to "divide from within," which is how you divide; and when Schlapp asked them, the clueless CPAC "crowdette" mistakenly, hilariously cheered the prospect of impeachment proceedings by what could be a newly-Democratic-controlled House. SAD!
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Poor deplorable MAGA. Maybe they're disheartened by Trump's well-deserved plunging approval rating, now at barely 33%. Maybe it's because their regime is such a half-assed shitshow and their people are such self-serving, hypocritical dickwads. As in: Amidst a government shutdown that's seen TSA agents (starting salary $34,454) compelled to work without pay as Congress takes a two-week recess (pay over $170,000) on the taxpayers' dime, TMZ urged readers to send in photos of vacationing pols, and here comes Lindsey Graham at Disney World, “The Most Magical Place On Earth," gaily twirling a Little Mermaid bubble wand yet. America and Megyn Kelly: WTF.
Or maybe it's because Commander-In-Chief Private Bonespurs started another forever quagmire without legal or political justification, and it turns out wars in the Middle East are hard and complex and above his pay grade - like health care! - to solve, and now with no good options he's spewing up only staggering incoherence for strategy, like hailing "great progress" in imaginary "serious discussions" while pivoting to rabidly threatening to "conclude our lovely 'stay’ in Iran" by "obliterating" their civilian infrastructure, electricity, energy and drinking water, which is a war crime. But talks are going “unbelievably well."

Anyway, his true passion is turning every crass, stupid thing he or Elvis can think of fake gold like the Oval bordello and even Social Security cards, and slathering his repulsive name on structures, coins, currency, and building trashy, illegal monuments to himself like an obscene, unapproved, un-permitted, $400 million ballroom twice the size of the White House, because, "They’ve always wanted a ballroom," except now it's suddenly, "essentially a shed for what goes under it," a massive military complex, presumably a bunker where, as merciful history would have it, he'll finally free us of him, "and we're doing it very well."
He's so ballroom-enraptured that on Air Force One he just pulled out a swath of drawings to show reporters, explaining, "I thought I’d do this now because it’s easier. I’m so busy...fighting wars and other things." Quick mindless pivot to "hand-carved, beautiful, Corinthian columns" - "Corinthian wut" - he's also reportedly re-imagining for the White House facade, a change deemed "at odds with universally held historic preservation standards." Same, experts say of "barely scrutinized" ballroom plans, "riddled with design flaws" - disproportionate, pillars block windows, grand staircase to nowhere. WH lackey on "the best builder in the world": "The American people can rest well knowing this project is in his hands.” We feel better already.

And then there's his new gold toilet, mounted on a 10-foot throne near the Lincoln Memorial. The new masterwork of Secret Handshake (Best Friends Forever), it celebrates the renovation of the White House Lincoln Bedroom bathroom, all in gold, and "what this President has actually accomplished." The toilet's plaque reads, “In a time of unprecedented division, escalating conflict, and economic turmoil, President Trump focused on what truly mattered: remodeling the Lincoln Bathroom....This, his crowning achievement, is a bold reminder that (he) isn’t just a businessman, he’s taking care of business. It stands as a tribute to an unwavering visionary who looked down, saw a problem, and painted it gold.”

The annual State of the Global Climate report by the United Nations' top meteorological agency was released Monday, marking the first time the authors of the report have included the Earth's energy imbalance as a key indicator of the climate emergency.
The World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) inclusion of the imbalance only provides more evidence of what scientists have been warning for decades: The continued extraction of fossil fuels is causing heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide and methane to build up in the atmosphere and is causing planetary heating, which is leading to extreme weather including wildfires, drought, and severe hurricanes and cyclones.
The State of the Global Climate report explains that in a stable climate, incoming solar energy is roughly equal to the amount of energy leaving the Earth.
But with greenhouse gases at their highest level in the atmosphere in at least 800,000 years, that equilibrium has been thrown off, and the energy imbalance—which has increased steadily over the past two decades—is at its highest since the observational record began in 1960.
Instead of leaving the Earth system, energy is increasingly staying in the planet's surface and deep within the oceans.
Ashkay Deoras, a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading in the UK, who was not associated with the report, compared the trapped energy to a hot room.
“If you open the window, naturally, you will allow the hot air to escape,” Deoras told The New York Times. “But now what is happening is that, because of all these greenhouse gases, they are just trapping more and more heat. The planet is just not getting a chance to cool down.”
The report emphasized that the higher temperatures humans feel at the Earth's surface—which have been the hottest in history over the past 11 years—represent just 1% of the excess energy that isn't leaving the planet system.
Five percent of the excess heat is stored in continental land masses, while more than 91% is stored in the ocean.
As fossil fuel emissions have increased and built up, the ocean has been absorbing about 18 times the energy used by humans each year for the past two decades, according to the report.
“Scientific advances have improved our understanding of the Earth’s energy imbalance and of the reality facing our planet and our climate right now,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. “Human activities are increasingly disrupting the natural equilibrium and we will live with these consequences for hundreds and thousands of years.”
UN Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized that in addition to the energy imbalance, "every key climate indicator is flashing red" in the new report.
Last year was the second- or third-hottest year on record, depending on the data set, owing to La Niña conditions that temporarily cooled the planet. Earth was about 1.43°C warmer than the pre-industrial average, and 2024—when hotter El Niño conditions were in effect—remains the hottest year with global temperatures averaging 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels.
About 3% of excess energy warms and melts ice, and ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland lost significant mass in 2025, while the average Arctic sea-ice extent last year was the lowest or second-lowest on record.
The loss of Arctic and Antarctic ice is driving the long-term rise in the global mean sea level, with was around 11 centimeters higher at the end of 2025 than it was in January 1993, when satellite records began.
“The State of the Global Climate is in a state of emergency. Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits," said Guterres. “Humanity has just endured the 11 hottest years on record. When history repeats itself 11 times, it is no longer a coincidence. It is a call to act."
The secretary-general added in a video posted on social media that the world must "accelerate a just transition" to renewable energy to protect "climate security, energy security, and national security."
In this age of war our addiction to fossil fuels is destabilizing the climate, global economy & global security.
Now more than ever, we must accelerate a just transition to renewable energy.
Renewables deliver climate security, energy security & national security. pic.twitter.com/TrphJ2Zwa2
— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) March 23, 2026
Saulo noted that the impact of catastrophic planetary heating grew increasingly evident in 2025, with "heatwaves, wildfires, drought, tropical cyclones, storms, and flooding" causing thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in economic losses.
The World Weather Attribution found that a heatwave across the western US last week would have been "virtually impossible" without the climate emergency. Climate researchers also concluded last summer that devastating floods in central Texas were caused by "very exceptional meteorological conditions," and the climate crisis "supercharged" the conditions that led to the extreme rainfall and flooding that killed 1,750 people in South Asia late last year.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump—whose country is the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases—has taken steps to weaken the world's ability to respond to the climate emergency, withdrawing from dozens of climate- and energy-related international treaties and slashing climate research and emergency response spending.
Trump has also pushed for more fossil fuel emissions—investing in the expensive, pollution-causing coal industry; demanding that the Pentagon obtain energy from coal plants; and mandating oil and gas lease sales.
"The way ahead," said Guterrres, "must be grounded in science, common sense, and the courage to take urgent climate action."
US President Donald Trump's Labor Department on Monday unveiled a proposal that would welcome private equity and cryptocurrency investments into Americans' 401(k) plans, the culmination of an aggressive Wall Street lobbying push that could leave the retirement savings of millions vulnerable to the wild swings of so-called "alternative assets."
The proposed rule, now subject to a public comment period, was issued at the direction of a Trump executive order from last year that was characterized at the time as "the holy grail for private equity."
In addition to giving employers a green light to include private equity and crypto investments in 401(k) plans offered to workers, the new rule would establish a "safe harbor" allowing retirement account administrators to avoid legal action from employees who believe their funds were steered into excessively risky products.
"The legal immunity created by this safe harbor will incentivize financial advisers to pitch these toxic products, which will become ticking time bombs in tens of millions of retirement accounts, which will no doubt result in significant losses," warned Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy at the advocacy group Better Markets. "There are good reasons why 401(k) plans have been considered closed to private markets and cryptocurrencies, and those reasons have not changed. The only thing that has changed is the administration’s support for these industries and regulators’ willingness to do their bidding."
"This is no reason to endanger the retirement savings of millions of Americans," Schiffrin added.
Oscar Valdés Viera, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, similarly warned that "opening 401(k)s to these products risks turning workers’ retirement savings into a Ponzi-like scheme that throws a lifeline to an industry scrambling for fresh cash."
"This isn’t about advancing the interests of retirement savers, it is about opening a new profit center for crypto and Wall Street," said Viera. "Retirement savers should not be bailing out these high-risk industries and subsidizing the Wall Street and crypto billionaire class."
"Private equity firms should not get a free pass to loot workers’ 401(k) retirement savings."
Americans currently hold over $10 trillion combined in 401(k) plans, a huge trove of wealth that the private equity industry has been working for years to access. The Labor Department indicated that its proposed rule would apply to over 720,000 retirement plans covering roughly 118 million workers.
The American Prospect reported Tuesday that the managers of private equity firms are "already pressuring companies, third-party administrators, and the consultants who advise them to list their offerings" among workers' retirement plan options.
"One staffer at an institutional investor who is not authorized to speak to the media told the Prospect about their primary worry: that private equity will stick their most overvalued companies into continuation funds exclusively for 401(k) plan holders, or 'retail investors,' as they are known," the outlet continued. "Private credit firms are retailoring their funds for 401(k) plans as well, and some of the biggest have already struck deals with asset managers like Voya and Vanguard. 'I’d be shocked if the industry doesn’t attempt to dump their garbage onto retail,' the staffer said."
One recent analysis by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) found that private equity funds for retail investors "dramatically underperformed publicly listed stock indexes" in 2025 while charging much higher fees.
Jim Baker, PESP's executive director, said Monday that "private equity firms should not get a free pass to loot workers’ 401(k) retirement savings."
“The bar for including private equity in 401(k)s should be extremely high,” said Baker. “Private equity funds have lagged public markets while charging much higher fees, and public pension funds are pulling back from the asset class. Instead, this rule risks shifting more financial risk onto workers who rely on their retirement savings for long-term security.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also ripped the Labor Department rule, saying in a statement that "Americans facing an uncertain future in Trump’s economy will now have more reasons to question the security of their retirement savings—all so that Trump’s Wall Street buddies have another pile of cash to play with."
"Anyone who cares about the financial security of working people," said Warren, "should oppose this proposed rule."
Although the Corporation for Public Broadcasting dissolved at the beginning of the year, National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service still celebrated a win in court on Tuesday, when a federal judge in Washington, DC blocked President Donald Trump's executive order intended to strip the organizations of federal funding.
NPR's attorney, Theodore Boutrous, called US District Judge Randolph's permanent injunction "a victory for the First Amendment and for freedom of the press."
"As the court expressly recognized, the First Amendment draws a line, which the government may not cross, at efforts to use government power—including the power of the purse—'to punish or suppress disfavored expression' by others," he said in a statement to The Associated Press. "The executive order crossed that line."
Katherine Maher, NPR's CEO, similarly described the ruling as "a decisive affirmation of the rights of a free and independent press."
PBS said in a statement that "we're thrilled with today's decision declaring the executive order unconstitutional."
"As we argued, and Judge Moss ruled, the executive order is textbook unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and retaliation, in violation of long-standing First Amendment principles," the network added. "At PBS, we will continue to do what we've always done: serve our mission to educate and inspire all Americans as the nation's most trusted media institution."
Trump last May ordered the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to "cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my administration's policy to ensure that federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage." As private donations poured in to NPR and PBS, Congress then voted to claw back nearly $1.1 billion from CPB.
The congressionally created and funded nonprofit corporation, which distributed federal funding to locally managed public radio and television stations across the United States, then announced it would shut down—which it ultimately did following a January vote by its board of directors. Still, NPR and PBS fought back in court, leading to Tuesday's decision.
"The president may, of course, engage in his own expressive conduct, including criticizing the views, reporting, or programming of NPR, PBS, or any other news outlet with whom he disagrees," wrote Moss, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
"The government may also fund its own speech and may fund government programs that promote specific perspectives on issues of public importance, and it may decide which views or perspectives to convey—and which not to convey—in any such government speech or program," Moss continued. "And it may impose limits on federal grants to ensure that they are deployed to further the legitimate purposes of the program, and may pick and choose among applicants based on legitimate criteria."
"But the First Amendment draws a line, which the government may not cross, at efforts to use government power—including the power of the purse—'to punish or suppress disfavored expression' by others," the judge stressed. "As the Supreme Court and DC Circuit have observed on more than a dozen occasions, the government 'may not deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his constitutionally protected... freedom of speech even if he has no entitlement to that benefit."
Moss found that "Executive Order 14290 crosses that line. It does not define or regulate the content of government speech or ensure compliance with a federal program. Nor does it set neutral and germane criteria that apply to all applicants for a federal grant program. Instead, it singles out two speakers and, on the basis of their speech, bars them from all federally funded programs."
"It does so, moreover, without regard to whether the federal funds are used to pay for the nationwide interconnection systems," he explained, "which serve as the technological backbones of public radio and television; to provide safety and security for journalists working in war zones; to support the emergency broadcast system; or to produce or distribute music, children's, or other educational programming, or documentaries."
The judge noted that the order applied to grants from not only the now-defunct CPB but all federal entities, including the Department of Education, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and National Endowment for the Arts.
Because of those other potential sources of money, CNN reported Tuesday, "the ruling could—emphasis on could—lead to some funding for PBS and NPR in the future."
Tim Karr of Free Press also told Common Dreams that "should Congress decide to restore funding at some later point," the executive order "won't have any legal effect on preventing it from doing so."
Welcoming the decision in a statement, Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert said that "NPR and PBS are valuable resources for the American public. Children across socioeconomic backgrounds rely on their programming, and the political persecution of both stations by the Trump administration has been reprehensible."
"This ruling is a straightforward win for the rule of law," she continued. "The Constitution is very clear: Congress holds the power of the purse. This judicial ruling is appropriate, impactful, and a victory for democracy."
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, tied the development to the Trump administration's other attacks on the media, specifically those from Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
"As the court said, it's long been the law that the government can't circumvent the Constitution by conditioning benefits on censorship where it can't censor directly," Stern said. "That goes for publicly funded media, but it also goes for Brendan Carr's FCC conditioning broadcast licenses or merger approvals for private media companies on editorial concessions to please Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth conditioning access to the Pentagon on journalists forfeiting established rights, or Trump himself steering transactions like the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger to supporters of his who promise him 'sweeping changes' to bend the news to his liking."
"Virtually all of the administration's 'wins' in reshaping the media that Carr and Trump have bragged about at CPAC and in social media posts violate this well-established constitutional principle," he added, referring to the Conservative Political Action Conference that just concluded. "More news outlets should sue and win."
This article has been updated with comment from Free Press.
As the US Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments Wednesday regarding President Donald Trump's executive order revoking birthright citizenship, several legal experts, advocacy groups, and commentators warned about the dire consequences that would come from not striking it down.
Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, published an analysis on Monday explaining that, in an ideal world, the Supreme Court wouldn't even be entertaining arguments for upholding Trump's order because it so obviously violates the plain text of the US Constitution's 14th Amendment.
"Birthright citizenship is in the Constitution," wrote Waldman. "This has been the law for more than 150 years. The amendment overturned the notorious Dred Scott decision, which said that even free Black Americans could not be US citizens. The Supreme Court in 1898 confirmed the 14th Amendment’s plain meaning. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, it ruled that children born here are citizens, even if their parents are not."
Waldman argued that "Donald Trump tried to Sharpie this out of the Constitution" with his executive order, but insisted that the 14th Amendment is "open and shut," making it easy for the Supreme Court to rule against the president.
The New York Times' Jamelle Bouie echoed Waldman's arguments in a Wednesday column, writing that "there are few lines in the Constitution that are as straightforward as the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment," whose "explicit aim... was to settle the question of American citizenship for good."
Bouie also dissected assorted arguments made by right-wing legal scholars in support of Trump's executive order, finding that they fail to offer "any new evidence regarding the drafting of the 14th Amendment, the intent of its framers, or the public meaning as understood at ratification."
"The evidence in favor of the traditional view of the citizenship clause is overwhelming," Bouie added. "To rule otherwise is to say, in essence, that two plus two equals five."
Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of Common Cause, argued that the Supreme Court must strike down Trump's order because "the Constitution is not a suggestion, and its guarantees do not shift with the political winds of any one president."
"When the courts allow one president to change the definition of American citizenship with a stroke of a pen, it puts every American citizen at risk," Solomón added. "The Supreme Court must reject these unconstitutional overreaches before they cause irreversible harm to our families and our nation’s future."
Garrett Epps, legal affairs editor at Washington Monthly, warned that failing to uphold the 14th Amendment would create "an exploitable non-citizen class" who would live in the country without any constitutional rights or protections.
Picking apart Trump aide Stephen Miller's remarks about denying citizenship to children of a "foreign labor class," Epps argued that the real goal of the Trump administration's attack on the 14th Amendment isn't strictly mass deportations, but the elimination of rights to an entire group of US-based workers.
"As a practical matter," explained Epps, "reinstating a hereditary, lifelong, inferior status—which, after all, is what removing 'full political rights, including welfare and the right to vote' would mean—recreates the conditions for the growth of a racialized slave economy."
TV host and activist Padma Lakshmi, writing in a Wednesday New York Times column, also pointed to the horrific impact that eliminating birthright citizenship would have on families across the country.
"If the Supreme Court doesn't block this executive order, it would create a mess of legal and logistical consequences," Lakshmi argued. "Confusion would replace certainty, opening the door to discrimination and a patchwork of rules governing noncitizens’ access to our society. Hundreds of thousands of children born in the United States would be thrown into legal limbo every year."
The end result, Lakshmi said, "would create a permanent underclass of people born in the country but cut off from the rights that citizenship provides."
Two days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio unironically advised Iran to spend its public funds "helping the people of Iran" instead of on weapons, President Donald Trump announced that the US government has "to take care of one thing: military protection" and isn't able to provide people in the US with necessities like healthcare and childcare.
"Oh wow, he actually admitted it," said US Rap. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) in response.
At an Easter lunch at the White House Wednesday, the president said that "the United States can’t take care of daycare" and demanded that states fully fund childcare programs.
"We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You gotta let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too," said Trump. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things."
Trump: We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We're fighting wars. It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these things. pic.twitter.com/vLGpp7KJnm
— FactPost (@factpostnews) April 1, 2026
The wars the president has waged and threatened to wage since taking office last year include his invasion of Venezuela in January and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro; the killing of more than 160 people in boat bombings in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean; an oil blockade on Cuba that's left tens of thousands of people waiting for surgeries and unable to access essential medications, with Trump threatening to take over the country by force; and the current US-Israeli war on Iran.
The conflicts that Trump said Americans must sacrifice federal funding for public programs in order to continue are opposed by a majority of Americans, according to polls. All have been called violations of international law by legal experts.
Trump's comments on the government's inability to provide public services came as the Pentagon is seeking $200 billion to continue funding the war on Iran, which has killed nearly 2,000 Iranians and more than 1,000 people across the Middle East as the conflict has widened, and exacerbated the US affordability crisis by raising average gas prices to over $4 per gallon.
A 2021 analysis by The New York Times found that the US spends about $500 per family each year on early childhood care, or roughly 0.2% of its GDP. Other wealthy countries that the US considers its peers spend an average of more than $14,000 per family annually, with Norway spending close to $30,000, Finland spending more than $23,000, and Germany spending over $18,000.
The president has previously attacked childcare spending, cutting $10 billion in federal childcare funds to five Democratic-led states in response to a social services fraud scandal in Minnesota. Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last year are projected amount to about $1 trillion over the next decade, and hundreds of hospitals are at risk of closing or having to reduce healthcare services as a result of the cuts—which, in addition to funding Trump's military actions, helped pay for tax cuts for corporations and the rich.
"The warmongers in the White House and Congress will always fund death and destruction," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) Wednesday night after Trump's comments. "They will let people in our country starve and die before they stop funding wars."
Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Maine, said Trump's remarks were a simple statement of fact about the choice the administration has made about its priorities.
"Trump is right. A pointless war or universal daycare," said Platner. "He’s right: That’s the choice."
"The truth is, there are not enough factories, or skilled workers, or materials to effectively spend such a huge increase," said one expert. "It will be a recipe for waste, fraud, and abuse."
The budget document that President Donald Trump's White House is set to release Friday calls for $1.5 trillion in military spending for the coming fiscal year, an unprecedented sum that—if approved by Congress—would add nearly $7 trillion to the US national debt over the next decade.
The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, which got an early look at the president's fiscal year 2027 budget, reported that the plan includes roughly $1.15 trillion in baseline US military spending as well as $350 billion in supplemental funding "that Republicans could pass in a party-line budget reconciliation bill." The Journal doesn't specify the purpose of the proposed supplemental funding, but the Pentagon has asked Congress for at least $200 billion for the Iran war.
The budget, which would boost total US military spending by more than 40% compared to the current fiscal year, also reportedly calls for investments in Trump's so-called Golden Dome missile defense system, a project that critics have derided as an absurd boondoggle.
Earlier this week, Trump suggested the US federal government can't afford to fund childcare and other domestic social programs because it is "fighting wars."
William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in an analysis of the budget proposal ahead of its official release that "whatever vehicles the administration chooses to promote this huge increase, it will be doubling down on a failed budgetary and national security strategy."
"If passed as requested, $1.5 trillion in Pentagon spending—in a single year–will make America weaker by underwriting a misguided strategy, funding outmoded weapons programs, and crowding out other essential public investments," Hartung argued. "The Pentagon doesn’t need more spending, it needs more spending discipline. Spending billions of dollars on a Golden Dome system that can never achieve the President’s dream of a leak-proof missile defense system is sheer waste, as is continuing to lavish funds on overpriced, underperforming combat aircraft like the F-35, or multi-billion dollar aircraft carriers that are vulnerable to modern high-speed missiles."
"The truth is, there are not enough factories, or skilled workers, or materials to effectively spend such a huge increase," he added. "It will be a recipe for waste, fraud, and abuse."
In anticipation of the White House proposal, a broad coalition of nearly 300 advocacy organizations sent a letter to members of Congress on Thursday demanding that they reject Trump's request and any other proposed budget increases for the Pentagon, which recently failed its eighth consecutive audit.
"We must invest in critical human needs programs in our communities. Instead, we have cut those programs massively," the groups wrote, pointing to the record Medicaid and nutrition assistance cuts that Trump and congressional Republicans approved last year.
"The Pentagon is unaccountable to American taxpayers, having never passed an audit, while more than half of its budget (54 percent) is paid to corporate military contractors, whose profits are rising. Further gigantic increases would be grossly irresponsible," the groups continued. "Funding an unaccountable Pentagon by more than $1 trillion while underfunding human needs programs undermines our security by preventing us from investing in the shared prosperity that comes from more housing, health care, climate and public health protections, ending hunger, and providing quality public education."
"It's a struggle. Especially with everything else being inflated in the country," said one US Army vet, "you know, with groceries, gas... I'm like, what the hell?"
Just as President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress were warned would happen, close to 100,000 US veterans are currently behind on their mortgage payments or are in the process of foreclosure as a result of the White House's decision to shut down a Department of Veterans Affairs program that helped people with VA-backed home loans when they were behind on their monthly payments.
As NPR reported Thursday, more than 10,000 have already lost their homes, nearly a year after the Trump administration abruptly did away with the VA Servicing Purchase (VASP) program.
The program was rolled out during the Biden administration, after the VA ended a pandemic-era assistance program that had allowed VA home loan borrowers to gradually pay back mortgage payments that they had needed to skip.
Under VASP, the VA purchases home loans that were in default from mortgage services and then modified the loans.
In March 2025, a representative from the Mortgage Bankers Association told the House Veterans Affairs Committee that widespread foreclosures would result if the VASP program—which Republicans in Congress said had been created by former President Joe Biden for "political purposes... to undercut the VA Home Loan program—was not protected.
Despite the warning, the VASP program was halted two months later.
Nearly a year after the program's end, the VA is still developing a replacement to help veterans—many of whom are struggling to afford essentials just like the majority of other Americans as the cost of living crisis intensifies with rising fuel prices due to Trump's war on Iran.
Sources in the mortgage industry told NPR that many of the vets who have lost their homes so far had enough disability benefits or other income to avoid foreclosure, had the VASP program remained in operation.
NPR interviewed Leann Ledford, whose husband, a Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan, has a brain injury, experiences seizures, and suffers post-traumatic stress disorder. The family is one of tens of thousands who learned in October 2022 that the Biden administration had ended the earlier pandemic-era program and that they would have to pay a year's worth of back payments in one lump sum.
The Ledfords were also one of many veteran families who were unable to enroll in VASP before Trump abruptly shut it down.
Ledford told NPR that with her husband's $3,971 monthly disability check, they could have afforded mortgage payments under the VASP program.
Army veteran Jon Henry was also unable to enroll in VASP before it was shut down, and was forced to take a modified loan with payments that are $380 more per month than his original mortgage.
"It's a struggle," Henry told NPR. "Especially with everything else being inflated in the country, you know, with groceries, gas … I'm like, what the hell?"
NPR's reporting led Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), an Iraq War veteran, to denounced Trump as "the most anti-veteran president in history."
When Trump's new VA home loan assistance program is up and running—which isn't expected to happen for several more months, veterans will be able to move their missed payments to the back of their loan term. But in the current draft of the plan, reported NPR, "the VA is telling mortgage companies that if a new, modified loan at a higher interest rate only raises a veteran's monthly payment by up to 15%, they must place vets into that more costly loan."
"So a veteran with a $2,000 monthly mortgage payment could still be pushed into a modified loan that raises their payment by up to $300 a month. And they wouldn't be given the option of moving their missed payments to the back of their loan and keeping their original, lower-cost mortgage," reported the outlet.
Pete Mills of the Mortgage Bankers Association told the VA last month that under Trump's plan, "as drafted, veterans will continue to have worse options than similarly situated non-veterans."
Democratic lawmakers said if reports of Hegseth attempting to buy defense stock weeks before the war are true, it "would be a profound conflict of interest" and a "betrayal of the nation paying the price for this war."
Senate Democrats are pushing for an investigation into US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following a report that he attempted to make a “big investment” in weapons stock just weeks before President Donald Trump launched an aggressive war against Iran.
Three Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee—Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) were joined by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Jeff Merkley to send Hegseth a letter on Wednesday.
They told the secretary that his reported attempt to broker the deal "would be a profound conflict of interest and a potential violation of your federal ethics agreement—and betrayal of the nation paying the price for this war and the troops you are sending into harm’s way."
The Financial Times reported earlier this week that Hegseth's "broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF... shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran.”
However, the purchase was reportedly never made because the massive bundle of stocks was not available to Morgan Stanley clients at the time.
A Pentagon spokesperson has also denied the story, calling it "entirely false and fabricated" and claiming that neither Hegseth nor any of his representatives ever approached BlackRock.
But, as the lawmakers noted, FT reported that the inquiry was significant enough for BlackRock to flag it internally.
Hegseth and other Pentagon officials confirmed by the Senate are prohibited by law from owning or purchasing publicly traded stock in the 10 companies that have received the largest Defense Department contracts over the past five years.
But the fund held stocks in several of these companies, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls, Boeing, RTX Corporation, and L3Harris Technologies.
Reports of the proposed deal by Hegseth's broker come as the Trump administration has faced other accusations of trading on insider information about the president’s next moves to win big on prediction market services. Platforms like Polymarket have seen bettors take home monster winnings by placing wagers predicting major military actions in Venezuela and Iran just hours before Trump launched them.
The lawmakers noted that while the war is costing American taxpayers more than $1 billion per day and has saddled Americans with soaring gas prices, it has proven highly lucrative for major defense contractors, whose stocks jumped significantly in the days after the war was launched, even as the rest of the market took a tumble.
The Trump administration is currently demanding another $200 billion to prosecute the war on top of a $1.5 trillion budget request to fund the Defense Department, which the lawmakers said would likely result in these companies’ profits and stock prices continuing to climb.
The US-Israeli war against Iran, launched on February 28, has been condemned as illegal by many international law experts and human rights groups, who have accused the US of violating the UN Charter and committing war crimes.
According to a report on Wednesday from the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a US-based human rights monitor for Iran, more than 1,600 civilians have been killed since the war began, including 244 children. At least 13 US troops have also been killed since the conflict broke out.
The lawmakers told Hegseth regarding his reported investment attempt: “If this report is accurate, it would appear to represent an appalling effort to profit off of your knowledge of the president’s plans for war.”