Trump defense chief reportedly orders Pentagon to make cuts as IRS faces mass layoffs – live
The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post.
Hegseth ordered the proposed cuts to be drawn up by 24 February, according to the memo, which includes a list of 17 categories that the Trump administration wants exempted. Among them: operations at the southern US border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense and acquisition of one-way attack drones and other munitions. If adopted in full, the proposed cuts would include tens of billions of dollars in each of the next five years.
According to the Post, the memo calls for continued “support agency” funding for several major regional headquarters, including Indo-Pacific command, northern command and space command. Notably absent from that list is European command, which has had a leading role in executing US strategy during the war in Ukraine; central command, which oversees operations in the Middle East; and Africa command, which manages the several thousand troops the Pentagon has spread across that continent.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/feb/19/trump-musk-ukraine-executive-orders-doge-politics-latest-updatesOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.works
12 replies
Reminder to file your taxes as soon as humanly possible to get your refund out of the government's hands (if you're expecting one).
I'm pretty sure muskrat already took it all
Also consider no longer giving your government free loans through your tax returns.
Also correct! Your withholding should only ever be set to give you a $100-$300 refund every year at absolute max, as you want to pay as close as you can to your true liability without incurring a tax bill when you file.
Taxes are not "free loans." Libertarian nonsense. When implemented properly, which even U.S. taxes often are at a more local level, you get a shitload of return. You know, like paved roads and food that isn't full of dangerous pathogens.
I’m pretty sure he means adjusting the claim level so instead of getting money back during tax time, you end up about what you owe or owe more. That way the money was in your pocket the whole time instead of the governments.
Yup that’s what I meant. And really just because of this whole current situation, ya know?
i thought lord diaper insists upon 5 percent gdp for defense spending by nato members? he's whined about it for like a decade now.
cutting u.s. defense spending by that much might drop the u.s. to under the 2 percent specified by the treaty.
oh, right.
the 5 percent thing was actually a warning.
because he's gonna do the stupidest thing (so far) and withdraw the u.s. from nato.
I'm not sure whether that's an 8% reduction each year from the previous year, or each year 8% of the current budget gets cut.
In the former case, we have 65% of the existing US military left at the end. Probably less, since I assume that there's some overhead to cutting -- like, if you have to lay someone in the military off, you still need to pay their pension.
In the latter case, we have 60%.
In either case, that seems like a difficult, radical change.
kagis
It sounds like the 8% thing each year for each of five years is actually just 8% once:
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2025/02/19/white-house-eyes-annual-8-cut-to-defense-budget-through-2030/
Trump should avoid Dallas, right?
Cutting into the military industrial complex, ballsy.
Then again, I suppose a lot of those cuts will just be directly given to the owners of said complex. Keep them happy and you can cut whatever the hell you want to
A Trump policy I actually agree with? Didn't expect that one, he's going to be pissing off a lot of senators with that.