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Better Uses for the Money Pete Hegseth Wants to Throw at Trump's Illegal Iran War
The $200 billion that Hegseth now wants for his and Trump’s Iran war could instead feed and care for everyone at risk of losing healthcare or food aid due to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Mar 25, 2026
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth would rather use your tax dollars to bomb Iranian families than feed American families.
That’s the upshot of news that Hegseth is prepared to request $200 billion in funding for the Pentagon’s new war on Iran. That’s far higher than earlier reports that put the request at $50 billion or $100 billion. And all of these astounding sums would come on top of the $1 trillion already budgeted for the Pentagon, itself a record.
It should be clear: Funding this unjust, unpopular, and illegal war comes directly at the expense of ordinary Americans.
Less than a year after the passage of Trump’s signature “Big Beautiful Bill,” which made deep cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—and right in the middle of an affordability crisis—this is the last thing the country needs. That same bill added $150 billion for the Pentagon, pushing the Pentagon budget over $1 trillion for the first time since World War II—and directly enabling the war on Iran.
This is a war of choice that is only making the world more dangerous and more expensive for Americans.
Half of Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities like food, housing, transportation, and healthcare. Trump’s Big Bad Bill threatens to take health insurance from 17 million people and some or all food assistance from 4 million people.
The $200 billion that Hegseth now wants for his and Trump’s Iran war could instead feed and care for all of those people—plus medical care for the 1.8 million veterans of the last forever war who still live with disabilities, for an entire year. For good measure, we could also expand Head Start to serve six times as many kids next year—from just over 700,000 to 4.2 million kids—with what’s left over.
What’s more, it comes on the heels of more shocking news about waste at the Pentagon—a problem for generations, but especially under this administration.
News recently broke, for example, that Hegseth’s Pentagon blew nearly $100 billion last September alone. As they raced to use up funds in their budget, the Pentagon shelled out millions on luxuries like lobster, steak, and crab—all while working Americans were battling rising food prices and getting their SNAP benefits cut.
“In the last five days of September alone, the department blew through $50.1 billion on just grants and contracts,” The New Republic reported. “For context, only nine other countries spend that much on the entirety of their defense budget per year. It’s also more than the total military budgets of Canada and Mexico combined.”
Too many Americans are hungry, sick, and struggling to afford housing and other necessities. We should spend our tax dollars meeting those needs—not throwing more at our $1 trillion Pentagon for a pointless war most of us oppose. Secretary Hegseth can cut back on steak and lobster if he needs the extra cash.
This is a war of choice that is only making the world more dangerous and more expensive for Americans. We should remember the lies that led us into war in Iraq a generation ago. That war ultimately cost nearly $3 trillion, which cost a generation of investments that could have made life better for struggling Americans today.
We must not go down that path again. Our tax dollars should be helping our neighbors and our communities, not feeding new forever wars.
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How to Defeat the Pro-Suffering, Pro-Hunger Policies of Trump's GOP
Food insecurity has long been a feature of Republican politics, not a bug.
Nov 16, 2025
Once upon a time, in what increasingly feels like the fairy tale world of the 1970s, Democrats and Republicans agreed that hunger was immoral. This consensus was embodied by the collaboration to champion the Food Stamp Program between Senate Agriculture Committee leaders and political icons, namely Republican Robert Dole and Democrat George McGovern. They had essentially revived a farm support program launched under FDR during the Great Depression, turning it into a cornerstone of the anti-hunger struggle and eventually an entitlement program, in which anyone who qualified for benefits could receive them regardless of Congressional appropriations.
While America never evolved into a welfare state like many of our European allies, through food stamps and other nutrition programs, we were able to hold the line on the lowest common political denominator: that in the midst of abundance no one should starve. As the poor balanced precariously on the knife edge of poverty, the food stamp program helped to prevent people from falling into the abyss of unfettered capitalism. And it did so not by giving the poor cash to spend as they chose but through vouchers redeemable for food at grocery stores. In the process, the food stamp program also created a powerful ally in the food industry, for which these benefits came to comprise a significant portion of their sales. This partnership became a double-edged sword, protecting the program during times of crisis, while strengthening an industry heavily reliant on worker and environmental exploitation.
By the 1980s, much of the progress made in previous decades was under challenge. Ronald Reagan threw one million people off the food stamp program rolls, reviving the Calvinist trope that the poor were lazy, scamming, and otherwise undeserving of public aid. Globalization led to stagnating wages, faltering labor unions, and disappearing manufacturing jobs. In response, the anti-hunger sector — comprising advocacy organizations, churches, food banks, and other community-based groups — responded predictably to meet the food need through expanding food charity exponentially. In subsequent decades, as the Clinton Administration’s welfare reform legislation arguably further drove the expansion of the charitable sector, the anti-hunger sector also sought to increase benefits and remove barriers to participation in the food stamp program.
However, what the anti-hunger community largely failed to do was to develop an analysis of the underlying causes of the crisis and the long-term alliances to build power. In other words, anti-hunger groups could have mobilized their community to increase wages, facilitate unionizing, or regulations that would limit businesses’ ability to offshore jobs. Instead, they focused on food provisioning and bolstering nutrition assistance programs. And they partnered with corporate America, which donated food and money, served on their boards of directors, and lobbied together. In essence, the anti-hunger community had triangulated, positioning itself as neither on the right nor the left but as a morally-centered and centrist sector.
As a result of their efforts — which were compounded by the desperation of the Great Recession and the Covid-19 crisis — the food stamp program (now known as SNAP or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program) participation swelled to some 42 million persons. SNAP evolved into a work support program, subsidizing low-wage employment, with over three-quarters of SNAP households having at least one employed adult.
Fast forward to November 2025, when the administration had been fighting tooth and nail not to fund SNAP during the government shutdown. But the conventional wisdom among the media explaining this resistance has been incomplete.
First, the press highlighted the cruel and callous nature of the administration, given that the immorality of hunger amidst abundance no longer motivates policy. The media pointed out MAGA’s belief in a dog-eat-dog world, bifurcated into winners and losers. These beliefs are the “roid rage” version of the Reagan-era meme of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen.
Second, the media called out the administration for using the poor as pawns in the political battle over the government shutdown. They interpreted the administration’s actions to be of a more tactical nature — that is, as leverage to defeat the Democratic Party in the shutdown battle (which was arguably successful).
While both of these observations hold much water, they are missing additional context. Consider the following:
- Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” threatens the integrity of the SNAP program, forcing states to shoulder more of the costs, reducing future potential benefit increases, and tightening exemptions for work restrictions. According to the Food Research and Action Center, these changes will “increase hunger, push more families into deep poverty, and shift costs onto already strained state budgets.”
- The Administration ended $1 billion of food donations to schools and food banks through the termination of the Local Food Purchasing Act.
- USDA cancelled the purchase of $500 million of surplus foods, known as bonus commodities, for food banks. For decades, these commodities had been purchased to stabilize farming sectors and distributed to charitable organizations.
- In the international realm, the elimination of USAID and $128 million of food aid annually will “threaten decades of progress in reversing malnutrition.”
- Last month, the USDA announced it would no longer issue its annual report on the state of food insecurity, despite having done so since 1995. This report has been widely touted by academics as the gold standard in measuring hunger, and has been deployed by numerous other countries.
When viewed together, these actions certainly highlight an administration and political movement devoid of a moral compass on the matter of food insecurity. Yet, if we consider these shifts in conjunction with their other policies — such as ending collective bargaining for federal employee unions, restricting minimum wage in federal contracts and for certain workers, and virtually dismantling the National Labor Relations Board — it becomes evident that Trump’s pro-hunger policies are part and parcel of a decades-long shift in the balance of power to from labor to capital, harking back to at least the 1980s. Profoundly, Trump’s policies reflect a desire to reverse the social gains of the progressive and civil rights movements of the 20th Century.
In economic terms, anti-hunger programs such as SNAP, school meals, or food banking (which only provides one-ninth of the food of the SNAP program) have a complex relationship to wages. When benefits are tied to work requirements, these programs, along with Medicaid, enable businesses to avoid paying fair wages and provide health insurance, bolstering corporate profits. On the other hand, robust social assistance can drive up pressure to increase the minimum wage, as stronger safety nets theoretically keep more people, such as single mothers, out of the labor force (hence the One Big Beautiful Bill’s tightening of work requirements).
So, what’s Trump’s endgame for nutrition programs? He appears to be at odds with much of the American public, which does not buy into the cruelty of driving more people to desperation. Certainly, hunger has become a political football, highlighting his transactional nature. He appears to hold the erroneous but commonly held belief that the recipients of nutrition assistance are people of color, and if they’re not going to vote for him, then why should he help them?
Yet, to understand the deeper threat to this country, we also need to see the patterns behind his polices for what they are: an assault on progressive policies that reduce inequality, all as a means of shifting the balance of power even further towards plutocracy. Trump’s policies are not new; they follow the same neoliberal logic of the past 45 years, which has led to the rise of food banks. What is new is the brazen disregard for the poor, the callousness, and the disregard for the immorality of hunger. The veneer of care has been stripped off, the soft power of food aid trashed in favor of naked political gain.
This pro-hunger, pro-suffering movement will only be defeated when we build a mass movement — one that empowers the anti-hunger community to mobilize its tens of millions of donors and recipients, not to retreat into Bush’s “kinder gentler nation,” but to demand a new America defined by an equitable distribution of wealth.
This story was reprinted with permission from The MIT Press Reader. It was written by Andrew Fisher, the author of “Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance Between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups.”
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Trump Is Making Older Americans Unsafe, and He Doesn't Care
When before has a president been so personally and negatively intrusive in the lives of seniors?
Nov 13, 2025
Aging, like time, ticks on, day by hour by day. Then, suddenly, it’s there, mocking our inability to sweep aside, should we even want to, this iron curtain. For seniors, the concept of time itself differs from that of younger people, because the future is in the everyday.
But aging in a Trumpian world brings fear and destruction as strand by strand of the safety net is plucked away until it’s shredded. And Donald Trump doesn’t care.
Seniors make up an ever larger American demographic that’s being made ever more unsafe in the richest country in the world. Social Security, healthcare, even access to food, not to speak of general well-being are all under threat. Trump doesn’t care.
The President’s Heavy Hand
Social Security is a return on what workers have paid into the federal government over many years. The recent fright about Social Security offices closing or seniors having to prove they’re eligible (or that they even exist) in order to continue receiving what workers 62 and over are owed is not only demeaning and insulting but also saps confidence, threatens well-being, and challenges life in America as we’ve known it. And count on one thing: Trump doesn’t care.
An aging society now under siege should be everyone’s problem since (if we’re lucky) we all get old.
The Social Security Department is run extremely efficiently and had no need for Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and crew remaking it. Less than one penny of every dollar it gets is spent on its administration, while the other 99 cents come back in benefits.
Social Security has been called a crucial guardrail against government change, a rail that, unfortunately, seems to be weakening, month by month, in the second era of Donald Trump amid changes so thoughtless that they take one’s breath away. For example, some Social Security offices are now being closed, ensuring that many elderly or infirm people who are housebound will no longer be able to reach them by phone to register to receive their checks. Yes, cruelty before our very eyes. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has insisted that we must defend this lifesaving program, which lifts 27 million Americans out of poverty each year.
In recent weeks, President Trump has announced an end to the issuing of the paper Social Security checks that now arrive by mail, rather than being deposited directly into a bank account. Doesn’t he know that it’s the oldest, sickest, and poorest among us who may not have a bank account, or be able to get to a bank, or make the change via computer, or who—yes!—may not even have a computer? Of course, Trump doesn’t care.
Health Care in Danger
Worse yet, Americans face drastic cuts to an entire healthcare system: Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).
Congress was until recently shut down thanks to the opposition of the Democrats to a bill that contains huge cuts to Medicaid and doesn’t extend subsidies for Obamacare. Such cuts, if carried out, will affect millions of seniors and result in the closing of nursing homes and clinics, especially in rural areas and inner cities. If that bill were to pass into law, millions of people would lose a substantial part of their healthcare, with the most damaging and profound effects felt by an aging population.
It’s no secret that seniors have more healthcare problems than younger people. In an aging population, health and wellness are spiraling situations filled with sudden problems like falls, or slowly developing problems like arthritis and osteoarthritis, or simply the endless strain on worn-out joints and ligaments. Cancer, too, is more prevalent in people over 65.
Women, in particular, would feel the pain of such cuts, were they to happen.
Women use the healthcare system more than men do. Recently, Ms Magazine pointed out that women make up the majority of Medicaid recipients, both because they’re more likely to be caregivers and because they’re more likely to need long-term care as they age.
Veterans who fought in the Vietnam War of the last century and the Gulf wars of this century are also in that aging demographic. And like all aging bodies, theirs will register more health needs as the Trump administration cuts the Department of Veteran Affairs and VA hospital staff whose numbers have fallen every month since Trump was inaugurated a second time.
How all of this will affect or damage individual mental health is still being discovered. As a start, however, sickness, hunger, and the lack of enough money for emergencies can result in depression, fear, and far worse. And right now, sadly enough, the heavy hand of the Trump administration continues to press down on the general well-being of seniors (especially those on disability).
Unprotecting Seniors
Clearly, the Trump administration is more interested in self-care than senior care. Why else enact a bill to remove earned healthcare protections that have long been the expected staples of an aging life? When before has a president been so personally and negatively intrusive in the lives of seniors?
Food insecurity is now a fact of life in an aging demographic where nutrition is synonymous with health and longevity, in short with life or death. Though nutrition is necessary for young and old alike, it’s a must for the aging body. Yet food insecurity is now being experienced by millions of seniors, a future threat that has become a present reality.
I’ve written of hunger before, what it feels like to be a poor child growing up. Now, the question must be asked again in a different context: What does it feel like to be old and hungry? Trump doesn’t care.
At a time when the cost of living for essentials—food, rent, and healthcare—continues to rise, the dependence of seniors on the government’s care for the safety net is being whittled away.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP (think food stamps), is having its funds cut drastically. Until recently, SNAP provided significant amounts of food for poor families, though it was never quite enough. Supplies of food from farms and elsewhere that help stock rural as well as inner-city food banks have also decreased due to cuts in funds, including for food banks run by state, city, and church organizations.
Presently 4.8 million seniors 60 and older receive food via SNAP. However, it’s estimated that many more eligible seniors are not receiving food help. Attention must be paid: Seniors do not have enough to eat and—dare I repeat this in the richest country in the world?—Trump doesn’t care, but we must.
Past administrations have opted for less government but without tearing away as much of the safety net as the Trump administration continues to do. His cuts are careless, dangerous, and done without either significant thought or understanding. An aging society now under siege should be everyone’s problem since (if we’re lucky) we all get old.
Recently in Great Britain huge numbers of the elderly turned out en masse to shout ENOUGH, give us what we need, what we’ve earned, so that we can live with food, shelter, and our earned rest after years of work. Isn’t it time for elderly Americans, too, to turn out en masse to shout out our anger, dismay, and refusal to be placed in such a dangerous situation?
Project 2025, Russell Vought’s project to reshape the government in a second Trump presidency (about which Trump swore, during the election campaign, that he knew nothing) chronicled well ahead of time all that he and his administration are now doing to the detriment of us all, but especially to seniors. The Trumpian version of the invocation that we should all pull ourselves up by our bootstraps in no way takes into account the millions of people who have no boots with straps to pull up.
It’s also important to emphasize that all of this is happening in the richest country in the world, one that spends tens of millions of dollars to build a single jet fighter plane, and yet is now cutting funds to programs that help people get enough to eat. Our fury needs to be demonstrated.
The destruction being visited on an aging demographic doesn’t discriminate. It includes many seniors who wear MAGA caps, too. (Perhaps Trump doesn’t care about them either.) We can only hope that their support for a president determined to offer them so little and take away so much will diminish.
At a time when the cost of living for essentials—food, rent, and healthcare—continues to rise, the dependence of seniors on the government’s care for the safety net is being whittled away. Trying to keep the heat and electricity going, the water running, and food on the table is hard enough on a fixed income without having to worry about what President Trump and his Project 2025 cronies plan to take away from us next.
So many of today’s seniors have been workers, activists, parents, and more, all of which has contributed to the well-being of this country, and they have earned care and rest, as well as access to enough food, healthcare, and shelter to get by in a reasonably comfortable fashion. Trump doesn’t care.
Yes, people of all ages feel the heavy hand of the Trump administration in their lives, but the elderly, the sick, and the poor feel it the most, especially those living on fixed incomes.
Our Rights, Our Dignity
Seniors must insist on their rights and respect for their dignity—and not only to each other but out on the streets of this country, supported by Americans of all ages. After all, seniors are someone’s grandparent, parent, sibling, aunt, uncle, cousin, neighbor, or friend.
Because anger at having needs refused, especially as you get older, eats away at your body and soul, expressing it is not only healthy but allows us to feel less alone and more empowered. The millions of us who went onto the streets on No Kings Day to say no to what this administration is doing demonstrated the power of numbers, which is not a small thing. In that context, taking senior fury to the streets, with the participation of younger people, couldn’t be more significant when it comes to publicizing the importance of our needs being met. To remain quiet, to “take it” (so to speak) will only help the Trump administration hide the devastation now being visited upon us.
At 79 years old, Donald Trump has all his health, wellness, and food needs taken care of. His life is the assured good life, with hours of rest at his golf clubs. We seniors need to disturb that rest.
Here are some of the worries being expressed daily by seniors:
If my Social Security check doesn’t arrive on time or the funds are mysteriously cut, how will I survive?
If Medicaid is cut, how will I be able to get cataract surgery, or hernia surgery, or steroid injections for my pain?
Without Medicaid, how will I afford an ambulance to get to a hospital in an emergency?
Will lack of funds close my food bank?
And those are just a sampling of the daily worries impeding the earned rest of us seniors.
Statistics: Cold numbers can tell a truth but still do not accurately represent the stress that cutting funds will cause. Follow the dots from those cuts to a small house in the rural south, a cold apartment in an urban high rise, or the “gray wave” of homeless seniors sleeping on the streets, and it’s there you can see such statistics in action, taking the form of worry, illness, hunger, and insecurity. And all of that is happening as Trump permits millions of dollars to be spent on upgrading and furnishing a gift plane from Qatar. Again: In the richest country on earth, how can we allow such treatment to go on without raising our voices? We can’t. We mustn’t.
At 79 years old, Donald Trump has all his health, wellness, and food needs taken care of. His life is the assured good life, with hours of rest at his golf clubs. We seniors need to disturb that rest, become the thorn in his side. We must loudly proclaim our right to feel safe, to be free from hunger and assured of our healthcare and shelter.
Trump rules by fear, the use of which keeps many of us from demonstrating our outrage publicly. Hopefully, seniors who have already lived long and experienced so much won’t be silenced by such fear. We have a collective voice. Numbers matter on the streets and at the ballot box, at town halls and in the hallways of Congress. Along with younger generations who will one day be seniors themselves, it’s time for us to shout NO to all the ways senior needs are now being undermined and ignored. How dare Trump tarnish our golden years!
Unfortunately, an entire society, both young and old, is today experiencing an authoritarian threat to our lives. The insecurity it produces has shaken the very foundations of our American world and so makes it difficult for an aging population to hold on, to remain steady. Yet seniors are the very people who have helped to build this country in ways too numerous to list.
The present leadership protects its power instead of its people. In particular, the Trump administration threatens Black and brown seniors in shameful, racist ways. History has shown that what’s now called DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) has long been part of the backbone of a thriving society. Among other things, Trump’s indiscriminate actions against immigrants are beyond immoral and reach into the homes of seniors, too. (Where does he think his grandparents, his mother, and two of his wives came from?)
As long as voices are raised, anger shared, and street corners filled with demonstrators, hope remains. Throughout history wrongs have been righted by significant numbers of people of all ages refusing to comply. Now is the time to do what history has taught us or, like a dropped ball of yarn, this society will spool too far away to retrieve.
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