Pentagon ordered to make $50B in budget cuts to spend on Trump priorities
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, last week. Photo: Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered military officials to find $50 billion in budget cuts for fiscal year 2026 to be redirected to align with President Trump's priorities for the department, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
Why it matters: The review to identify offsets from the Biden administration's FY26 budget is set to overhaul Defense Department priorities, with a Pentagon official noting its mandate is border security, ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and building Trump's planned Iron Dome missile defense shield.
By the numbers: Robert Salesses, performing the duties of the deputy defense secretary, said these offsets are targeted at 8% (about $50 billion) of the Biden administration's budget, "which will then be spent on programs aligned" with Trump's priorities.
What they're saying: "The Department of Defense is conducting this review to ensure we are making the best use of the taxpayers' dollars in a way that delivers on the President Trump's defense priorities efficiently and effectively," Salesses said in an emailed statement Wednesday.
- "Through our budgets, the Department of Defense will once again resource warfighting and cease unnecessary spending that set our military back under the previous administration, including through so-called 'climate change' and other woke programs, as well as excessive bureaucracy," he added.
- Salesses' comments echo those of Hegseth at a conference in Germany last week. "The Defense Department is not in the business of climate change, solving the global thermostat. We're in the business of deterring and winning wars," Hegseth said.
- "So, things like that we want to look for to find efficiencies and many others — the way we acquire weapons, system procurement."
Zoom out: The Defense Department, which has 128 coastal military installations in the U.S. alone, had previously identified climate change as a key threat and the Navy has held exercises to help be better prepared for extreme weather.
- The Navy in its Climate Action 2030 report described it as "one of the most destabilizing forces of our time, exacerbating other national security concerns and posing serious readiness challenges."
- A 2023 Congressional Research Service report citing Pentagon officials warned climate change "has growing implications for the costs of operating U.S. military installations and associated equipment," noting recent hurricanes and storms had caused billions of dollars in damage to bases.
Go deeper: Climate change poses growing threat to NATO
