Trump budget proposes $1 trillion for defense, slashes education, foreign aid, environment
May 2, 2025
The White House unveiled a budget blueprint Friday that would pump more money into defense and homeland security, while taking an ax to programs the Trump administration has already targeted, including education, foreign aid, environment, health and public assistance programs.
The proposal outlines President Donald Trump’s vision and provides recommendations to Congress for fiscal year 2026 spending, but lawmakers are not required to follow it. The blueprint released Friday is an outline, otherwise known as a “skinny budget,” with a more comprehensive plan expected to be released in coming weeks.
The proposal follows Trump’s priorities of beefing up the nation’s defense and immigration enforcement capabilities. It would increase defense spending by 13% to $1 trillion. It would also provide a “historic” $175 billion investment to “fully secure the border,” according to an Office of Management and Budget letter sent to Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs the Appropriations Committee, which was obtained by CNN.
The administration is pushing to have these increases – which includes $119 billion in defense spending – included in the budget reconciliation bill Congress is currently assembling, which would allow it to be approved without Democratic votes in the Senate. Democrats have typically objected to raising defense funding without corresponding increases to certain non-defense spending.
Several GOP senators, however, took issue with the fact that the budget would only increase defense spending when the reconciliation bill is included; otherwise it holds defense spending flat.
The blueprint also calls for sweeping cuts to a multitude of discretionary programs that the Trump administration has been dismantling since it took office in January. It would slash $163 billion from non-defense, discretionary spending, a nearly 23% reduction, bringing it down to roughly $557 billion, before a nearly $44 billion infusion from Congress’ reconciliation bill.
The administration “protected” Transportation, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and “numerous other priorities,” a senior administration official told reporters on Friday. The proposal also preserves funding for Title 1 funding for schools with many low-income students, special education funding, as well as Pell Grants. And it provides nearly $27 billion for disaster assistance and almost $3 billion for wildfire suppression.
But that means that other agencies and programs will bear the brunt of the cuts.
“This is a pretty historic effort to deal with the bureaucracy … that we believe has grown up over many years to be entrenched against the interests of the American people,” the official said, noting that the administration worked closely with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to prepare the outline. “We feel this is a joint project.”
The proposal calls for eliminating multiple diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, environmental justice efforts and other “woke” programs, according to the OMB letter.
Among the agencies and programs recommended for cuts are the National Park Service, climate science research, foreign economic and disaster assistance, UN peacekeepers, certain education funding to schools, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and rental assistance. It would also slash nearly $2.5 billion from the Internal Revenue Service, a frequent target of Republicans.
Overall, the discretionary budget would be $1.7 trillion, a 7.6% cut from the current fiscal year. The proposal does not make recommendations for so-called mandatory spending programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps.
Several key Republican senators, however, were not impressed with the administration’s budget proposal.
“Based on my initial review, however, I have serious objections to the proposed freeze in our defense funding given the security challenges we face and to the proposed funding cuts to – and in some cases elimination of – programs like LIHEAP, TRIO, and those that support biomedical research,” Collins said, referring to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and TRIO educational opportunity outreach program.
“Ultimately, it is Congress that holds the power of the purse,” the Maine Republican said in her statement.
Sen. Roger Wicker, chair of the Armed Services Committee, said that OMB’s request equals a fifth straight year of Biden administration-level funding for defense, which translates into a cut in military spending after taking inflation into account.
“President Trump successfully campaigned on a Peace Through Strength agenda, but his advisers at the Office of Management and Budget were apparently not listening,” the Mississippi Republican said in a statement.
“The Big, Beautiful Reconciliation Bill was always meant to change fundamentally the direction of the Pentagon on programs like Golden Dome, border support, and unmanned capabilities – not to paper over OMB’s intent to shred to the bone our military capabilities and our support to service members,” he added.
Democrats also decried the blueprint.
“This budget proposal would set our country back decades by decimating investments to help families afford the basics, to keep communities safe, and to ensure America remains the world leader in innovation and lifesaving research,” Sen. Patty Murray, vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement.
What Trump’s budget proposal would cut:
Foreign affairs
The blueprint proposes a drastic cut in the State Department and international programs’ budget – nearly 84% lower than the last fiscal year, including rescissions and cancellations. Without those rescissions factored in, the proposed budget is $28 billion lower than last fiscal year.
The proposal highlights a more than $1.5 billion cut in peacekeeping operations, which the administration argued are “wasteful,” a $3 billion reduction for disaster assistance, and a $1.6 billion cut in the Food for Peace program.
It eliminates all funding for the National Endowment for Democracy, which has been targeted by Trump and Musk. And it cuts “most assessed and all voluntary contributions to UN and other international organizations,” in line with a Trump executive order. It reduces the State Department and USAID operations budget by $2 billion.
Clean energy and electric vehicle charging programs
The budget proposes cutting $15 billion in programs from a bipartisan law passed in 2021, including gutting funding from a program that would install EV chargers on highways. It also proposes cutting $2 billion in funding from the Energy Department office promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy, as well as cutting $80 million from a program at the Interior Department that put wind and solar on public lands.
Nuclear energy and waste management
The budget proposes cutting over $400 million from Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, saying it wants to stop funding “non-essential research.” The budget for the DOE also proposes cutting $389 million from a program that cleans up and stores nuclear waste at several different locations around the country. The budget would maintain current funding levels for cleaning up the Hanford nuclear waste facility in Washington state, but “reduces funding for various cleanup activities at other sites,” although it doesn’t specify where.
National Park Service
The budget proposes cutting the National Park Service operating budget by $900 million, and cutting its construction, historic preservation, and national recreation funds collectively by hundreds of millions more. It proposes recategorizing smaller and lesser-known national park sites as state-level parks, saying these sites “receive small numbers of mostly local visitors.”
Climate research
The budget would slash Earth science research at NASA, including eliminating what it says are “low-priority climate monitoring satellites.” It would also cut funding for climate research at the National Science Foundation and make sweeping reductions to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s climate monitoring and research functions. At NOAA this would include focusing next-generation satellites more on weather than climate. The budget also proposes cutting $235 million from EPA’s climate and environmental justice research.
Science research
The budget proposes a large reduction in funding to the National Science Foundation, which would see a 56% reduction from fiscal year 2025 enacted levels. That includes climate and clean energy research funding but also what the proposal describes as “woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences; and programs in low priority areas of science.” It would also end funding to programs categorized as DEI-related.
Housing assistance
The budget includes sweeping cuts to federal programs that providing housing assistance.
The Trump administration has proposed saving more than $26 billion by eliminating the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rental assistance program, including Section 8 vouchers, and replacing it with a plan to allow states to design their own rental assistance programs “based on their unique needs and preferences.” The plan would also include a two-year cap on rental assistance for able-bodied adults.
More than 2.3 million low-income families use the Section 8 housing voucher program, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The budget also proposes eliminating the $1.25 billion Home Investment Partnerships Program, which provides grants to states and local governments and low-interest loans to developers to expand the supply of affordable housing.
It also includes cuts to organizations and non-profits that work on fair housing issues.
Giving states and local governments control of rental assistance programs could lead to less funding for low-income Americans in the long-term, said Deborah Thrope, the deputy director of the National Housing Law Project. It comes at a time when buying and renting homes has become increasingly unaffordable.
The president repeatedly proposed steep cuts to HUD’s budget during his first term, though they never successfully passed Congress.
Health care programs
The budget proposes massive cuts to spending for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, and elimates a broad range of health programs focused on HIV/AIDS prevention, maternal health and family planning under the Health Resources and Services Administration.
The CDC proposal more than halves the agency’s budget from $9 billion to $4 billion in a plan that “refocuses” the agency on its core mission. That includes cuts and merges for state health funding and a massive reduction to the agency’s funding on infectious diseases, opioids, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases. The budget for those projects would be reduced to $300 million, from $1.3 billion in 2023.
The NIH would see a nearly $18 billion funding cut and four institutes — focused on minority health, nursing research, global health and integrative health — eliminated entirely. The administration already dismissed most of those institutes’ directors and cancelled funding to hundreds of related research grants. The proposal echoes an internal document reviewed by CNN last month, which would reorganize the NIH’s 27 research institutes into eight new entities.
The reorganization “would align with the President’s priorities to address chronic disease and other epidemics,” and eliminate research on climate change, gender ideology, and “divisive racialism,” according to the budget document.
Heating and cooling assistance
The administration is calling for the elimination of the roughly $4 billion LIHEAP program, which helps about 6 million Americans afford their utility bills. It said the program is unnecessary because states have policies preventing utility disconnections for low-income residents, which means LIHEAP mainly benefits utilities. (Most states have temporary winter shut-off protections and some have temporary summer rules, but all require households to pay off their bills when the protection period ends, according to the National National Energy Assistance Directors Association.)
The president’s budget also noted that the Government Accountability Office raised fraud and abuse concerns in a 2010 report. The Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the program, implemented GAO’s anti-fraud recommendations, according to the report.
Education funding
The proposal would slice $12 billion from the Department of Education, or 15% of its budget, and would eliminate many K-12 and higher education programs.
It would also consolidate 18 grant programs into a new $2 billion formula grant designed to reduce federal influence on schools and students, as well as bureaucracy. And it would consolidate seven programs for students with disabilities, and cut $64 million in funding for Howard University, the nation’s only federally chartered historically Black university.
Smaller agencies and programs
The proposal calls for the elimination of more than a dozen smaller agencies, some of which the administration is already dismantling. They include: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AmeriCorps, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, 400 Years of African American History Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, and the US Institute of Peace.
The budget would also eliminate the $1.6 billion Job Corps program, which it called a failed experiment to help America’s youth and said was “plagued” by violence, assault, sex crimes, drugs and death. It would also cut the Senior Community Service Employment Program, which provides community service and work-based job training for low-income, older Americans. The administration said it fails at its goal of moving seniors to unsubsidized employment.
What Trump wants to spend more money on:
Veterans’ care
The budget would increase spending on veterans’ medical care – both at VA medical centers and by community providers – by $3.3 billion. This amount includes a $1.1 billion increase for ending veterans’ homelessness.
America First Opportunity Fund
This new $2.9 billion fund would focus on investments that support some of the nation’s key partners, such as India and Jordan. It would also support repatriation, counter China and fund new activities to strengthen America’s national security.
Separately, the budget also spotlights a $2.8 billion increase in the budget of the Development Finance Corporation.
Make America Healthy Again
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would receive $500 million for his signature “Make America Healthy Again” initiative. That funding would go to nutrition policy, research on physical activity, technology usage, environmental exposures and “over-reliance on medication and treatments,” per the proposal.
Air and rail travel safety
The budget includes a request for $13.8 billion for Federal Aviation Administration operations to support hiring air traffic controllers and increasing their salaries, as well as updating the agency’s telecommunications systems. It’s a funding boost of $359 million.
Also, it would provide $5 billion for the modernization of FAA systems and facilities that comprise the US National Airspace System, including radar replacement. That’s an increase of $824 million.
The administration would also increase rail safety and infrastructure grant funding by $400 million, a 400% increase over the fiscal year 2025 level.
Mars exploration
Human space exploration would receive a boost of $647 million. A total of more than $7 billion would be allocated for exploring the moon, plus $1 billion would be invested in new Mars-focused programs, which is an area of interest for Musk.
Charter schools
The proposal calls for investing $500 million, an increase of $60 million, to expand the number of charter schools in the US.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
CNN’s Gabe Cohen contributed to this report.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the amount of money the White House’s budget proposal would cut from the Department of Education. It would eliminate $12 billion.
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