I'm Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today’s read: 13 minutes.

New interview!

Before break, Managing Editor Ari Weitzman sat down with former New Jersey Governor and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman. Whitman explains her philosophy toward environmental regulation, why she left the Bush administration, and what she thinks has changed under President Trump. Plus, what even is the endangerment finding? You can watch the interview here!

Quick hits.

1. President Donald Trump announced the U.S. agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran proposed by Pakistan. Iran and Israel also agreed to the deal, and Iran’s foreign minister suggested that ships will be permitted to pass through the Strait of Hormuz during the pause, though he did not give precise details. (The ceasefire)
2. U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson was freed roughly one week after she was taken captive in Iraq by members of an Iran-aligned militia group. (The release)
3. Clay Fuller (R) defeated Shawn Harris (D) 55.9%–44.1% in a runoff in the special election to fill the House seat vacated by former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) in Georgia. (The election) Separately, liberal appeals court judge Chris Taylor defeated conservative appeals court judge Maria Lazar in Wisconsin’s state supreme court election, giving the court a 5–2 liberal majority. (The election)
4. Indianapolis City-County Councilor Ron Gibson said that 13 shots were fired into his home while he and his son were inside; neither were injured. The shooter reportedly left a note on the doorstep that read “No Data Centers.” (The shooting)
5. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters that he believes President Trump can and should take an active role in Justice Department investigations, while rejecting the notion that the president had “weaponized” the department. (The comments)

Today’s topic.

Trump’s 2027 budget. Last week, the White House released its budget proposal for fiscal year 2027, featuring an increase of 42% in defense spending to $1.5 trillion and a 10% decrease in non-defense spending to $660 billion. Specifically, the White House requested the budget to increase the capacity of the Navy, give pay raises to troops, resupply munitions, invest in critical resources, and build a “Golden Dome” missile defense system. The administration characterized the non-defense spending it had identified to cut as part of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and “woke programs” that drive government waste. 

Back up: Every year, the president submits a budget proposal for discretionary spending that Congress uses as a starting point for appropriation negotiations. After Congress receives the proposal, the House and Senate create their own budget proposals that must be negotiated and merged into finalized funding bills. By law, the president is required to submit their budget to Congress by the first Monday in February, but no president has submitted their budget by the statutory deadline since 2015. Furthermore, the Department of Homeland Security remains unfunded for the current fiscal year, and Trump’s recent proposal will not affect the ongoing shutdown.

The largest line-item increase in President Trump’s budget proposal is for the Department of Defense, including 5–7% pay raises for troops, $65.8 billion for a new “Golden Fleet” of battle and non-battle force ships and funding for the Golden Dome, which is estimated to cost $175 billion. Additionally, discretionary spending for Veterans Affairs would increase from $133 billion to $145 billion, Pell Grant funding would increase from $23 billion to $33 billion, and the Department of Justice’s budget would increase from $36 billion to $41 billion. The largest decreases are $4.6 billion (52%) from the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget and $4.8 billion (55%) from the National Science Foundation; the budget also proposed rescinding $15.2 billion of renewable energy funding approved by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), the Trump administration’s economic assumptions project that debt held by the public would decrease from a current level of 100% of GDP to 94% in 2036. However, the CRFB’s assumptions project public debt to increase to 125% of GDP by 2036 under the president’s plan, using a historical 1.8% GDP growth rate (opposed to the White House’s 3%) and factoring in the loss of tariff revenue deemed illegal by the Supreme Court. 

Democrats criticize the budget as increasing investment in the wrong areas. “Donald Trump is telling the American people our country somehow can’t afford child care, Medicaid, and Medicare, but is never too stretched to fund wars of choice,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA), ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said. President Trump defended the budget, saying that social programs should be funded at the state level. “We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country,” Trump said.

We’ll get into what the left and right are saying about the budget below. Then, Senior Editor Will Kaback gives his take.

What the left is saying.

• The left broadly decries the budget plan, criticizing the proposed hike in military spending and large cuts to domestic programs.  
• Some argue the budget would fuel the war in Iran while hurting the average American.
• Others say the administration’s justification for increasing defense spending is misguided.

In MS NOW, Bobby Kogan called the budget plan “historic — in one of the worst ways possible.” 

“The budget called for steep cuts to funding for education, housing and health, funneling resources toward the military as the war in Iran reaches its fifth week. This shift would leave the portion of the budget known as ‘nondefense discretionary,’ or NDD funding, which accounts for most domestic activities aside from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and SNAP, at its lowest level since at least Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency,” Kogan said. “The proposed defense funding increases are similarly extreme.”

“In fact, there’s nothing in the budget to suggest this jump reflects actual policy. The number is $1.5 trillion, I think, because Trump picked it: it’s a round number, and it’s big. That said, it is easy to imagine that the president will use this new war in Iran to justify this huge increase in military funding, and if Congress acquiesced, Trump would use that funding to conduct more immoral military strikes in Iran and in the process kill more civilians,” Kogan wrote. “As a percent of GDP, this would be the largest annual increase in defense funding outside a ground war in all of U.S. history.”

In Jacobin, Ben Beckett wrote “Trump’s $1.5 trillion for war comes from Americans’ pockets.”

“When Trump’s budget proposal came out on Friday, it became clear that he meant it. He wants Congress to increase the defense budget by 44 percent in 2027. This would make just the requested increase nearly the same size as the total military budgets of China and Russia combined,” Beckett said. “Some of this spending would simply add to the national debt, but Trump proposes to offset part of it by cutting 10 percent of nondefense spending from the budget. Many of the proposed cuts would come from reducing or eliminating housing aid and health programs for marginalized groups, agricultural research, and teacher training.”

“Trump’s budget proposal won’t be the final word on the budget, but there are strong reasons to believe he’ll get much of what he wants. And what Trump wants is war: most immediately, an unwinnable war on the Iranian people with shifting rationales and increasing brutality and sadism,” Beckett wrote. “Trump’s budget cuts are not just incidental to making war on Iran. They’re part of the same war that people in Trump’s income bracket are waging on Americans and Iranians alike. Let’s not be glib — bombing hospitals and schools is worse than defunding them. But while the tactics are different, the targets are strikingly similar.”

In The Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik made the case for “why Trump’s 2027 budget misfires.” 

“The administration minimizes the overall budgetary effect of its spending plans by projecting average growth in gross national product at 3% annually over the next decade. That’s an ambitious goal, to say the least. Over the last 25 years — that is, in this century — U.S. economic growth has reached or exceeded 3% in only three years, including a pandemic-era surge to 6.1% in 2021. Last year it was only 2.1%,” Hiltzik said. “On the other side of the ledger, the nondefense budget would be cut by 10%. But programs the White House has specifically targeted for being contrary to its ideology would suffer far more devastating cuts.”

“NASA may be enjoying a moment just now… But Trump proposes slashing the agency’s budget by $5.6 billion, or 23%. It gets worse: Trump would cut NASA’s science division by $34 billion, or 47%, canceling more than 40 projects, of which about 20 are currently underway,” Hiltzik wrote. “None of this means that the budget proposal isn’t valuable, to an extent. It’s a convenient one-stop window into Trump’s personal fixations: the elimination of ‘radical gender and racial ideologies that poison the minds of Americans,’ the horrors of ‘the globalist climate agenda,’ the ‘invasion’ of violent criminals from abroad, and so on. In other words, there’s nothing new under the Trumpian sun.”

What the right is saying.

• The right is split between support for the budget’s proposals and concern over its effect on the national debt. 
• Some on the right affirm the need to counter national security threats with military investment.
• Others say the budget plan is fiscally irresponsible.

In The New York Post, Rich Lowry explored “why Trump’s huge $1.5T defense budget is worth every penny.” 

“We are not exactly living in a time of peace and stability. The United States is embroiled in a war in the Middle East that has rocked global energy markets, while Russia has repeatedly invaded a neighboring country to its west, and China could be on the cusp of precipitating the greatest major-power conflict since World War II,” Lowry said. “This is not a time — if one ever existed — when the fate of the country depends on robust federal funding for community development block grants.”

“There is no doubt that the scale of the Trump budget, which would be the biggest single-year increase in defense spending since the Korean War, is equal to the international challenge that we face,” Lowry wrote. “In terms of bang for the buck, the administration has begun to fund more nimble, tech-driven defense firms, while it pushes the traditional big players like Boeing and Lockheed to become faster and more efficient. As a practical matter, the president is unlikely to get all the defense spending that he wants from Congress — which, when confronted with a choice between guns and [butter], always chooses both.”

The Washington Examiner editorial board said “Trump is right to rearm America.”

“Now it is up to the Republican-controlled Congress to turn Trump’s budget blueprint into reality, a much-needed step since the new spending levels would bring us in line with the 5% of gross domestic product we are asking our allies in the Atlantic and Pacific to spend on defending themselves,” the board wrote. “The threat we face from China is far more severe than the challenge posed by Russia, and we should be prepared to meet it at sea, in the air, and in space. Critically, Trump’s budget makes investments in all of these areas, including a request for 123 new Navy vessels, resupplying our depleted missile stockpiles, and new capital spending on space-based missile defense sensors and interceptors.”

“Unlike Biden, at least Trump has not made our Social Security more insolvent by promising benefits to even more retirees. But he still has not touched the program and has repeatedly promised he will not do so,” the board said. “Congress should approve Trump’s military buildup because the United States cannot deter China, reassure allies, and rebuild its industrial base on a bargain budget. But Republicans should not pretend that defense spending alone can secure us. Unless entitlement spending is addressed, today’s necessary rearmament will arrive alongside tomorrow’s avoidable debt crisis.”

In Cato, Dominik Lett wrote “Trump’s budget falls short on the spending programs driving the federal debt.”

“The budget omits even mentioning, let alone spelling out, the needed reforms to the major entitlement programs driving the debt, such as Medicare and Social Security. For the second year in a row, the president’s budget abdicates the fundamental responsibility of putting the debt on a sustainable path,” Lett said. “With deficits at nearly $2 trillion and publicly held federal debt set to exceed the nation’s entire economic output this year, Congress desperately needs fiscal responsibility. Congress ought to reject the president’s proposed spending boosts.”

“To be fair, the budget includes a number of worthwhile program cuts and eliminations. For example, the budget proposes eliminating Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), a federal subsidy program plagued by waste and pork-barrel politics,” Lett wrote. “The presidential budget is supposed to be the administration’s opportunity to explain to the American people how it would put our budget back on track. This budget entirely fails to do so. It includes no comprehensive 10-year fiscal plan to address mandatory spending and revenue, and thus no path to stabilizing the debt… And the budget continues the use of reconciliation to fund discretionary priorities, eroding the checks and balances that the appropriations process is supposed to provide.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where we give ourselves space to share a personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• The White House is trying to frame this as fiscal responsibility, but it’s really a massive spending increase.
• Our current situation justifies some kind of increase in certain military spending.
• The specifics for the request are unknown, but the source of funding is wishful thinking and it would continue our runaway federal deficits.

Senior Editor Will Kaback: The administration is presenting its budget as a blueprint for cutting wasteful federal programs, but the plan isn’t the vision of fiscal responsibility it claims to be.

Right off the bat, in Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought’s introduction, I was struck by the dissonance between claims that the Trump administration is in the midst of reining in out-of-control spending and the amount they requested in the FY2027 budget. Non-defense is given as a percent — a 10% decrease from FY2026 — while defense is given as a percent and a raw number — a 44% increase to $1.5 trillion. That’s an increase of roughly $500 billion; meanwhile, the 10% decrease to non-defense agencies would save about $73 billion. Even assuming all the cuts are made, which isn’t likely, they are overwhelmed by the increase in defense spending, meaning overall federal spending rises under this budget. 

Whether you think that level of defense spending is justified (more on that later), the overall budget is a continuation of over a decade of debt increases. In our 2024 review of President Biden’s budget and our 2025 review of President Trump’s, Isaac offered the same topline takeaway, which once again applies this year: “We are in a perilous moment with our debt and deficit, and I don’t see anything in this budget that is new, innovative, or helpful in the way we’ll need to escape said peril.”

In the non-defense categories, the proposal advances the ethos of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), shifting spending away from social programs, environmental spending, workforce programs, and foreign aid while seeking to downsize the overall federal workforce. If enacted, most agencies would lose a significant portion of their funding, and the Small Business Administration (–67%), Environmental Protection Agency (–52%), State Department and international programs (–30%), and Department of Labor (–26%) would be the biggest losers. 

Like most people, I’m very open to cracking down on wasteful government spending, of which there is plenty. What stands out to me in this budget, though, is how lazily the White House identifies programs to cut, most frequently by labeling them as “woke,” “radical,” or “leftist.” The section on the Department of Agriculture prescribes $510 million in cuts for National Institute of Food and Agriculture formula grants, claiming the program had previously funded grants for “Clothing Needs of Transgender People” and “Expanding Green Infrastructure as a Response to Environmental Injustice and Climate Change.” The “trans clothing needs” example appears to refer to one grant disbursed from 2018–2023 to the University of Hawaii. The “expanding green infrastructure” was one grant disbursed from the 2018–2020 funding period. Both grants were initially or completely sent out under the first Trump administration. I note this less as a gotcha and more to underscore how far the White House had to reach to find a way to sell these cuts to the president’s supporters. 

The tactic repeats itself again and again. The word “woke” appears 34 times in the budget document, “DEI” 26 times, and “transgender” 16 times. To state the obvious, the federal government doesn’t have enough programs focused on DEI such that cutting all of them would improve our fiscal outlook. Our federal deficit is driven primarily by four areas: healthcare, Social Security, defense, and servicing the existing debt. Only one of those areas falls under discretionary spending — defense — and the president’s budget would increase it by nearly 50%.

In fairness, these presidential budgets are essentially PR exercises, so I understand why the administration is taking this approach: Railing against perceived progressive excess was a successful strategy in 2024. But even as a PR tactic I think it fails. How much more is there to cut after railing against these programs for a full year? People want to know about the Iran War, gas prices and broader economic uncertainty, not a handful of DEI grants from eight years ago. 

Any real discussion of this budget should focus on defense spending. Upfront, I think the administration is mostly focusing on the right areas. Amid the Iran war, reduced munitions stockpiles loom large, as does the rising cost of damaged or destroyed aircraft, wear and tear on ships, and our elevated troop presence in the region. The budget proposal explicitly addresses these issues, highlighting shipbuilding, procuring critical munitions, aircraft development, and, perhaps most importantly, new investments in drone systems as key areas of funding. On paper, investing more in these areas is prudent, and I’d support temporarily increasing the defense budget to support this effort… if we knew exactly how that money was going to be disbursed. 

Unfortunately, we don’t. The budget is light on details, only specifying $65.8 billion toward shipbuilding and a 5–7% pay raise for service members. How much is going toward modernizing our drone systems, and how much to glossy distractions like the “Golden Dome,” which will conservatively take years and trillions of dollars to create? The budget doesn’t say. Absent those specifics, I can’t say whether $500 billion in new spending is justified. 

Either way, the White House’s assumptions about economic growth don’t support this level of spending. The administration projects real GDP growth will be 3.1% every year through the end of the decade, then drop only slightly to 2.9% in the first half of the 2030s. To put it mildly, this is a significantly rosier view of economic growth than most other forecasters. Annual GDP growth has hovered around 2% so far this century, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that it will be more like 1.8% on average over the next decade. The Federal Reserve estimates 2.0%. The budget also assumes inflation, as measured by the GDP price index, will fall from 2.7% to 2.0% by next year, then remain at that level for a decade. Comparatively, the CBO projects inflation won’t reach 2.0% until 2030. The White House assumes unemployment will fall to 3.7% and stay there for a decade; the CBO estimates it will remain above 4.0% through at least 2032. What’s more, lost tariff revenue negates some of the revenue the White House was counting on to fund its proposal. 

All this makes me deeply skeptical of the administration’s optimistic outlook. Vought argues that cutting wasteful spending, expanding domestic energy production, and revitalizing domestic industries will cumulatively put us on track for rapid growth and low inflation. The administration is assuming a best-case macroeconomic scenario across every major variable simultaneously — high GDP, low unemployment, low inflation, and low interest rates. These conditions very rarely coexist, but the administration assumes all these things will happen, for at least a decade… starting next year. 

To be fair, all modern presidential budgets contain some degree of fantastical thinking and suspect justifications. But I’m distressed by having this same conversation over and over, year after year, with neither party demonstrating a willingness to think outside the box or make tough decisions to address our spending dilemma. For now, two things seem clear: The Trump administration will likely end up with a lot less than it’s asking for here, and Congress will still authorize an unsustainable level of spending. We’ve been having this same conversation for years, and sadly, I don’t expect us to stop any time soon.

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Your questions, answered.

Under the radar.

Last week, the Trump administration announced a planned restructuring of the U.S. Forest Service, including the relocation of its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, Utah. As part of the restructuring, 57 of the Forest Service’s 77 research facilities across 31 states will close, along with its nine regional offices, affecting hundreds of employees. The agency will concentrate its research division in Fort Collins, Colorado, and has plans to move researchers to positions in nearby states. The New York Times has the story. 

A deeper look.

After World War I, the federal government’s spending power and expenditures began growing exponentially. In 1921, Congress enacted the Budget and Accounting Act, officially establishing a budget process for the executive branch by creating the Bureau for the Budget (now the Office of Management and Budget). The law also required presidents to submit annual budgets to Congress, and President Warren G. Harding was the first to do so in 1923. While the 1921 law initially centralized budget preparation in the executive branch, impoundment controversies under President Richard Nixon led to the passage of the Impoundment Control Act in 1974, which restored some oversight power to the legislature.

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered the HHS layoffs.
• The most clicked link in our most recent newsletter was the ad in our free version for Finance Buzz.
• Nothing to do with politics: A storm in Western Australia turned the sky an apocalyptic shade of red.
• Our last survey: 5,443 readers responded to our survey on Trump’s threats to strike Iranian infrastructure with 93% opposing strikes. “I’d like to think this is just another bluff, but I don’t know anymore,” one respondent said. “Responsible adults need to get involved. This is the problem of sycophants,” said another.

Have a nice day.

The number of parasitic worms in old cans of Alaskan salmon is increasing — that may actually be good news, according to University of Washington researchers. A higher number of worms indicates a strong and complex food web, because the worms need multiple species to survive, meaning the ecosystem has enough of the right creatures for reproduction. The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, which helped seal, sea lion, and orca populations recover, likely contributed to this shift. “Everyone assumes that worms in your salmon is a sign that things have gone awry," said Chelsea Wood, an associate professor at the University of Washington. “I see their presence as a signal that the fish on your plate came from a healthy ecosystem.” Science Daily has the story.