Trump eyes huge ‘woke’ cuts in budget blueprint

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Friday eyed massive cuts targeting “woke” and “wasteful” spending in his first budget blueprint since he returned to power, while boosting defense and border security.

Republican Trump aims to cut non-defence spending by a huge $163 billion -- or 22 percent -- in 2026 as he digs in on the conservative, cost-cutting drive led by billionaire Elon Musk.

Trump would also massively cut foreign aid even while stepping up defense spending to $1.01 trillion and pouring money into homeland security as part of his anti-immigration drive. But the budget proposal is more of a wish-list at the start of Trump´s second term and he faces a bitter battle in Congress, with Democrats calling it a “gut punch” that hammers health and education.

The White House said that many of the proposed cuts stemmed from the radical efforts by Musk´s Department of Government Efficiency to slash the US government. “We´re joined at the hip with DOGE,” an official from the White House´s Office of Management and Budget told reporters in a call on condition of anonymity.

“This is a pretty historic effort to deal with the bureaucracy,” the official said. “It is woke and it is wasteful, and dividing us on the basis of race and identity in the country and honestly weaponized against it.”

The White House provided an entire fact sheet on cuts to “woke programmes”, saying it was “eliminating radical gender and racial ideologies that poison the minds of Americans” and countering “cultural Marxism.”

Trump´s budget would also confirm the blow to foreign aid that his administration has already delivered since his inauguration in January. It would formalise the closure of the US international development agency USAID, dramatic cuts to which have already been widely criticized around the world.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a link to the budget proposal on X, saying that thanks to Trump “common sense leadership has been restored.”