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Votes on Israel aid vs. US public opinion

The House voted on an amendment last week that would have stripped funding for Israel from next year’s State Department budget, including $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing, a military aid program that functions as a gift card for Israel to spend on US-made (and some Israeli-made) weapons. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) sponsored the amendment. The amendment failed, 104–314.

Massie’s amendment would have been adopted had House votes reflected public opinion. According to a May 2026 New York Times/Siena poll, US registered voters oppose sending additional aid to Israel by a 57–37 margin. Using that poll as an analog for public support for last week’s votes, Massie’s amendment should have been adopted, 253–165, not rejected, 104–314. That’s a 149-vote discrepancy between public opinion and House votes.

Which party was further out of step with its base?

Among Democratic voters, opposition to US aid to Israel exceeds support, 74–20; among Republican voters, opposition trails support, 37–59. The polling on Democratic voters translates to 152 Yes votes on the amendment; there were 103 actual Yes votes from House Democrats — a 49-vote discrepancy. The aforementioned polling on GOP voters translates to 84 Yes votes on the amendment; there was only 1 actual Yes vote from the House GOP — an 83-vote discrepancy. The 37% of GOP voters who oppose aid to Israel have virtually no intra-party representation in Congress on this issue.

By that measure, House Republicans were further out of step with their base. However, if you asked each Republican member to justify their vote, every one could point to the same poll I just showed you. A majority of GOP voters support US aid to Israel (59%).

The same excuse is not available to the 98 House Democrats who opposed the amendment. In doing so, they rejected a view held by three in four Democratic voters. Money helps explain why.

Votes on Israel aid vs. money from pro-Israel donors

I looked at how much each House Democrat accepted from pro-Israel donors before voting on the amendment to cut more than $3.3 billion in US aid to Israel. Then I looked at how they voted on the amendment.

Those data are in an interactive table below that you can sort by name, vote, or amount received. Amounts came from an OpenSecrets dataset which covers the 1990 through 2024 election cycles.

Above the table is a chart that shows what happened when I compared House Democrat votes on Israel funding with political funding from the Israel lobby: House Democrats who voted against cutting US aid to Israel received three times as much money from pro-Israel donors as those who voted in favor. (Median = 3.1 times as much.)

Democrats who voted against the amendment accepted an average of $348,239; those who voted in favor received $115,932 on average. All together, $34 million in pro-Israel cash was behind the votes against cutting aid to Israel.

Did the money actually buy votes? Or did the money simply help keep in office politicians who are comfortable ignoring voters?1 Neither option is very good.

^Alt text for screen readers: Democrats who opposed cutting Israel aid got 3 times the money from pro-Israel donors. Voted to cut US aid to Israel: $116,000. Voted against cutting US aid to Israel: $348,000. Data: House votes on House Amendment 235 to H.R>8595, to prohibit funds for Israel, including $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing (July 2026); OpenSecrets, pro-Israel money to Congress (1990–2024).

The table below includes all active House members, their vote on the amendment to cut aid to Israel from the State Department budget, and how much each received in pro-Israel donations over their career through the 2024 election.

If you sort the table by donations, the names at the top might not be who you expect. Among the top Democratic recipients, there are basically two groups.

The vieux riche are the seemingly indefinitely tenured members who’ve steadily racked up sizable career takings. This group includes Steny Hoyer (D-MD), former House Minority Leader; Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), former Chair of the Democratic National Committee; and Brad Sherman (D-CA), who has served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee for nearly 30 years and is now its second-highest ranking Democrat. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also qualifies. However, despite being in office longer than the available data on campaign funding (1990–2024), Pelosi didn’t even crack the top 30 current House recipients of pro-Israel cash.

The nouveau riche are newer House members who are already millionaires in terms of pro-Israel donations. This group includes Wesley Bell (D-MO), George Latimer (D-NY), Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Shontel Brown (D-OH), and Haley Stevens (D-MI) — all top 15 House recipients of pro-Israel cash, despite first being elected in 2024, 2024, 2022, 2020, and 2018, respectively.

Stevens hadn’t quite topped the $1 million mark as of the 2024 election,2 but I’m including her anyway because she has already taken more than $2.3 million in pro-Israel cash in her Senate primary against pro-universal healthcare and anti-genocide candidate Abdul El-Sayed. By the end of the 2026 election cycle, Stevens will likely be the largest recipient of pro-Israel money ever, topping Joe Biden’s $4.2 million career takings.

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Alexander L., Alissa Q., Amin, Andrew R., AT., B. Kelly, Barbara B., Bart B., BeepBoop, Ben, Ben C.,* Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Carol V., Catherine L., Chris, Chris G., Claudia, Cole H., Coleman J., D. Kepler, Daniel M., Dave, David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Dharna N., Elizabeth R., Emily H.,* Errol S., Ethan R., Foundart, Fran Q., Francis M., Frank R., Fred R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Heath P., Hunter S., IBL, Irene B., Isaac, Isaac L., Jacob, James G., James H., James N., Jamie LR., Jcowens, Jeff, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jessica S., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Joshua R., Julia G., Julian L., Katrina H., Keith B., Kesh L., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Lenore B., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Lou B., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mark G., Marvin B., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Ron C., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Scott H., Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, Stan C., TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tom B., Tony L., Tony T., Troy, Tyler M., Victor S., Viviane A., Wayne H., William H.,* William P.

* = founding member

-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)

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*ICYMI: The real cost of the Iran War: $103 billion in 120 days

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Situation

The House Budget Committee advanced a budget resolution this week that tees up a $95 billion reconciliation bill.

This is the third reconciliation bill of the second Trump administration. The first, enacted last July, was the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (since renamed, owing to its unpopularity) that paired tax cuts with military and paramilitary spending, financed by slashing social programs and adding to the deficit. The second reconciliation bill — the Secure America Act — was passed in June, providing still more paramilitary spending, including $39 billion for ICE, $26 billion for CBP, and a $5 billion discretionary account (slush fund) for the Homeland Security Secretary.

What a reconciliation bill is and what this one will likely include are discussed below.

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How much has the US spent on the Iran War?

The US spent more than $103 billion in the first four months of the Iran War, according to my new article, “The real cost of the Iran War: $103 billion in 120 days,” for Popular Information.

My May 6 cost estimate for the war’s first 60 days — also published by Popular Information — was covered by independent media, featured by the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, and cited in a May 27 letter from 20 Senate Democrats to the Congressional Budget Office. No other cost estimate came closer to the amount Trump later requested for the initial phase of the war. Pentagon officials said $25 billion–29 billion; think tanks estimated $26 billion–40 billion; my May estimate put the war’s cost at $71.8 billion. In June, Trump requested $72 billion for war costs.

But that estimate was just for the war’s first two months, and Trump’s request wasn’t designed to cover the war’s entire cost — the administration plans to finance additional expenses through another reconciliation bill. Hence my new 120-day cost assessment.

This table gives an overview of the estimated $103 billion the US spent on the Iran War from February 28 to June 27, 2026. (A far more granular breakdown can be found in the methodology section of the article.) Note that this total refers only to direct war costs — the near-term budgetary costs directly tied to the war, including operations, personnel, and matériel — and not indirect costs, which refer to broader budgetary and economic costs like veterans care and inflation. Below the table is an explanation for why my estimate is $65 billion higher than the prevailing non-government estimate.

^Source. Alt text for screen readers: US spent $103 billion in first 120 days of Iran War. Estimated US war costs, February 28 to June 27, 2026, in billions of dollars. Operations (mobilization, administration, combat), 28.5; Weapons (missiles, interceptors, bombs, other), 46.7; Losses (damaged or destroyed military assets), 20.3; Subsidies (paying for Israel’s bombs, interceptors), 2.9; Other (war costs to nonmilitary US agencies), 4.8. Total cost of the first 120 days of the Iran War: 103.3. Direct war cost estimates based on author’s analysis of procurement and O&S data, open-source intelligence, officials’ statements, media reports. Figures subject to revision as new information becomes available.

Why you should trust this estimate

Let’s agree to establish the following standard: Cost estimates for the Iran War should be mostly right or at least respectably wrong, and their methodologies transparent enough for readers to make that determination for themselves.

The analysis and methodology behind the table above lend credibility to the estimate, because they show where all the numbers came from and why they’re there.1

Three of the most popular sources of war cost estimates have not met that standard.

• Trump administration officials, who have become increasingly brazen in lying about the war’s cost. A recent, parody-level example: on June 30, the Trump administration’s budget director, Russell Vought, told the House Appropriations oversight subcommittee that the Iran War had cost $30 billion — less than a week after Vought himself wrote to the House Speaker requesting $72 billion for war costs.

• AI cost trackers, which dress up an arbitrary and capricious methodology with an air of technological sophistication, leading some to mistake the outputs as credible data. At least when Trump administration officials lie you’ve got someone to be mad at; AI cost trackers spread disinformation without authorship, thereby removing any possibility of accountability.

• Establishment think tanks, which possess more than enough technical expertise to produce a proper comprehensive cost assessment of the Iran War, but don’t due to competing ideological or financial factors. A comparison between the most recent estimate from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and my own is discussed below.

On June 23, CSIS estimated that the Iran War had cost “around $40 billion,” roughly on par with estimates from other prominent Washington, DC-based think tanks. The CSIS table below provides an overview.

^Source: CSIS

The single largest discrepancy between the CSIS estimate and my own is the amount for operations: I said $28.5 billion; CSIS said $755 million, claiming the Iran War’s operational costs “were not large because most of these costs were already in the budget.”2

Clearly there is some disagreement over how to calculate the war’s incremental costs — the costs that would not have been incurred if not for the war. But there can be no disagreement over which estimate is out of sync with reality.

On June 24, a day after CSIS published its June estimate, the White House requested at least $21 billion for “operational costs incurred by the Department of War during [the Iran War],”3 including:

• “$17.3 billion for operational costs”

• “$1.7 billion for readiness” (“readiness” is primarily funded through the Pentagon’s Operation & Maintenance (O&M) account)

• “$1.5 billion for fuel costs” (military branches use their O&M budgets to purchase fuel)

CSIS downplayed the war’s operational costs by claiming they were already funded. Trump administration officials did the same thing during congressional hearings in April and May, only to reveal tens of billions of dollars in “urgent” [read: unbudgeted] operational war costs in June. As I noted in April, there’s a vast difference between what officials say the war costs and how much they’ll ultimately ask the public to pay for it.

The article should end here. But analyzing CSIS’s estimate reveals a scandal: it only selectively applies the methodology that dramatically understates war costs.

In Trump’s supplemental funding request, there’s at least $21 billion for operations (itemized above) and at least “$21 billion for munitions.” For operations, CSIS’s estimate was at least $20 billion lower by comparison. But for munitions, CSIS’s estimate was $5 billion higher.

CSIS waved off nearly all operational costs on the grounds that they were already budgeted for, but claimed that the expended missiles and bombs were not, thereby requiring supplemental funding to replace them — on top of the munitions already purchased through this year’s military budget.4

There’s no empirical rationale for this inconsistency. For example, the Pentagon reprogrammed $8 billion in operations funding last June for the 12-day war — a war of a far lower scale, intensity, and duration than this year’s. The forces surged to the Middle East and Europe for the 2025 war were steadily drawn down until the historic buildup ahead of this year’s conflict. On the munitions side, the 2026 budget dramatically increased the number of munitions eventually fired during this year’s war. For example, 194 Patriot interceptors were purchased in 2025 but 310 in 2026, excluding the additional Patriot interceptors procured this year using reconciliation (mandatory) funds.

If CSIS was planning to wave off costs on the presumption that they were already budgeted for, they should have at least done so consistently, meaning for both operations and munitions. They would have still been wrong, but at least consistently wrong.5

How arms industry funding influences national security “expertise”

If you’re a major Pentagon contractor, what type of content would you want the think tank you’re donating to to produce right now? Your demands — which you would never have to say out loud if you’re donating enough money — would likely be as follows:

1. Restrict your criticism of the Iran War to its depletion of munition stockpiles needed to fight the next war.

2. Tally munition expenditures and by all means make your war cost estimate plausible, but understate the total cost.

As an arms company, you want to draw attention to the number of munitions the US is expending to create demand for the replacements you sell. But you don’t necessarily want to draw attention to the spiraling cost of the war itself: a war cost estimate that attracts press attention risks making a historically unpopular war even more unpopular. Mounting public opposition not only threatens the longevity of this highly profitable war but also the passage of the annual Pentagon budget, 54% of which goes to Pentagon contractors. The share of Americans who support decreasing military spending has already grown from 40% in 2025 to 55% in 2026.

CSIS ranks third among all think tanks in accepted donations from Pentagon contractors. Its top donors include Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin, maker of the THAAD and Patriot missile defense systems. The US has fired more than 1,300 Patriot interceptors during the Iran War.

These donations matter. One study analyzing think tanks and donations from military contractors found that “such stakeholder funding has real effects on intellectual freedom. Given the widely-held view that democracy relies on intellectual independence, this finding calls for a serious debate about conflicts of interest in foreign policy analysis.”

Let’s revisit those two demands you made earlier as a hypothetical arms company donor to your think tank donee:

1. Restrict your criticism of the Iran War to its depletion of munition stockpiles needed to fight the next war (e.g., see CSIS, “Last Rounds? Status of Key Munitions at the Iran War Ceasefire,” 21 Apr 2026).

2. Tally munition expenditures and by all means make your war cost estimate plausible, but understate the total cost (e.g., see CSIS, “The War May Be Ending. What Did Epic Fury Cost?,” 23 Jun 2026).

I’m not making character judgements about the authors of the CSIS estimate. I don’t know them, their motivations, or their circumstances. But the fact of the matter is that an arms industry-funded think tank produced exactly the type of content that benefits arms companies. CSIS simultaneously sounded an alarm over the US’s rapid consumption of costly munitions and dwindling stockpiles — thereby fomenting demand for replacing them with newer, costlier munitions — while downplaying the cost of the overall war.

The cost of war is a serious matter. War cost estimates should be mostly right, or at least respectably wrong. Do you think the CSIS estimate meets this standard, or do you think it falls into the third, “disreputably wrong” category? And do you think CSIS, as a top think tank recipient of arms industry cash, really cares what you think?

Still better than those AI war cost trackers, though.

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Alexander L., Alissa Q., Amin, Andrew R., AT., B. Kelly, Barbara B., Bart B., BeepBoop, Ben, Ben C.,* Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Carol V., Catherine L., Chris, Chris G., Claudia, Cole H., Coleman J., D. Kepler, Daniel M., Dave, David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Dharna N., Elizabeth R., Emily H.,* Errol S., Ethan R., Foundart, Fran Q., Francis M., Frank R., Fred R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Heath P., Hunter S., IBL, Irene B., Isaac, Isaac L., Jacob, James G., James H., James N., Jamie LR., Jcowens, Jeff, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jessica S., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Joshua R., Julia G., Julian L., Katrina H., Keith B., Kesh L., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Lenore B., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Lou B., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mark G., Marvin B., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Ron C., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Scott H., Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, Stan C., TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tom B., Tony L., Tony T., Troy, Tyler M., Victor S., Viviane A., Wayne H., William H.,* William P.

* = founding member

-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)

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*Listen to my interview with Fran Quigley: How the Arms Industry is Robbing the Working Class of a Better Life

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War costs

The Trump administration is about to send Americans the bill for a war they never wanted.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Pentagon leaders told lawmakers the department needs about $80 billion to recoup its Iran War expenses. The administration is expected to send a formal war funding request to Congress this week. The funding would be on top of the $1.1 trillion military budget Congress approved earlier this year.

America’s most unpopular war

The Iran War is now the most unpopular US war in history.

When I compared public opinion on the Iran War to past major US conflicts in May, the ongoing war hadn’t quite reached Vietnam’s level of unpopularity. But polling from June shows that the Iran War has now sunk to –32% net support — below the –31% recorded in the final poll during the Vietnam War. (Net support = % support minus % opposed.)

That alone doesn’t fully capture how historically unpopular the Iran War is. Based on my analysis of 153 public opinion surveys across 7 major US conflicts, the Iran War is the most unpopular US war in history in at least three ways:

1. The Iran War started with lower public support than any other US war. At –13%, it’s the first — and only — war to begin with negative net support.

2. The Iran War currently has lower public support than any other US war. At –32%, it trails the Vietnam War’s ending net support.

3. At no point have more Americans supported the Iran War than opposed it. In terms of net support, it’s the first US war to be fought entirely under water.

The first graph below covers the first two findings, while the second covers the third.1 Polling for each war includes the first survey after the war started, the last survey before the war ended, and (for the second graph) all the surveys conducted in between. The methodology section is under the graphs.

Data for the past six wars came from Gallup, which for reasons unknown, decided not to consistently poll this war. For the Iran War, I used data from Economist/YouGov, which has produced the best surveys on the war in terms of frequency, question wording, and continuity with the historical data.2

Gallup asked respondents whether they thought a given war was or was not a mistake;3 Economist/YouGov polls asked whether respondents support or oppose the war.4 Both question formats can yield more forgiving readings of war support than actually exist. Compare, for example, the responses to two Economist/YouGov questions asked this month:

• Do you support or oppose the war with Iran?

  • All respondents:

    • Support: 28%

    • Oppose: 60%

  • Republican respondents only:

    • Support: 67%

    • Oppose: 20%

• Do you think we should make a deal to end the war in Iran as quickly as possible?

  • All respondents:

    • Yes: 65%

    • No: 13%

  • Republican respondents only:

    • Yes: 54%

    • No: 26%

Among Republicans, support for the Iran War is at 47% (per the first question), but support for prolonging the war — not ending it as soon as possible through diplomacy — is at –28% (per the second). A significant portion of the US adult population is effectively saying, “Yes, I support fighting this war; yes, I want to stop fighting it ASAP.”

Among all Americans, net support for prolonging the Iran War — as opposed to ending it ASAP — stands at –52%.

^Alt text for screen readers: Top chart: Iran War: No US war began or ended with less public support. The image shows two column charts stacked on top of each other. This chart shows two column graphs stacked on top of one another: the first shows the starting net support for the last seven U.S. wars; the bottom chart shows the ending (or in the Iran War’s case, latest net support) during each war. Here is each war with its starting and ending (or latest) net support: World War II, 95%, 62%; Korea, 45%, 14%; Vietnam, 37%, –31%; Gulf, 57%, 21%; Afghanistan, 80%, –1%; Iraq, 52%, –14%; Iran, –13%, –32%. Iran War data is through 79 days. Polling data: Gallup (Dec 1941–Apr 1946; Aug 1950–Jan 1953; Aug 1965–Jan 1973; Jan 1991–Jan 1992; Nov 2001–Jul 2021; Mar 2003–Aug 2010); Economist/YouGov (Mar–Jun 2026). Bottom chart: Iran War: Most unpopular US war in history. The image shows the trajectories in popularity of the last seven U.S. wars. Here is each war with its starting and latest net support: World War II, 95%, 62%; Korea, 45%, 14%; Vietnam, 37%, –31%; Gulf, 57%, 21%; Afghanistan, 80%, –1%; Iraq, 52%, –14%; Iran, –13%, –30%. Iran War data is through 79 days. Data: Gallup (Dec 1941–Apr 1946; Aug 1950–Jan 1953; Aug 1965–Jan 1973; Jan 1991–Jan 1992; Nov 2001–Jul 2021; Mar 2003–Aug 2010); Economist/YouGov (Mar–Jun 2026).

Methodology

Polling for each war includes the first survey after the war starts, the last survey before the war ends, and all surveys conducted in between. In other words, net support (= % who support the war – % opposed to the war) for wars that had yet to begin are not included; neither is net support for wars that had already concluded. For example, the most recent Gallup poll on the Afghanistan War shows –4% net support, but that poll was conducted in August 2022, a year after the war ended; hence, it isn’t included in this study. The final poll on the war before it ended took place in July 2021, showing –1% net support.

For war start and end dates, I defaulted to the federally designated “periods of war” outlined in Code of Federal Regulations, Title 38, Part 3, Section 3.2. I amended these dates in a few cases. For example, the official start date for the Gulf War is August 2, 1990, marking Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. However, the Gallup poll asked whether the US made a mistake in deploying troops in response, which didn’t happen until August 7. There are no reliable polling data for US wars before WWII.

Here’s a war-by-war breakdown:

World War II (December 7, 1941 – December 31, 1946)

Start – end: December 7, 1941 – December 31, 1946

Start – end for polling data: December 12, 1941 – April 10, 1946

Two days after the US declared war on Japan (Dec 8, 1941 — which I adopted as the start of the conflict for this study), a Gallup/American Institute of Public Opinion (AIPO) poll asked Should President Roosevelt have asked Congress to declare war on Germany, as well as on Japan? Results: 90% yes, 7% no (+83 net support). Germany declared war on the US the next day (Dec 11, 1941). Four days after the US declared war on Japan (Dec 12, 1941), Gallup/AIPO asked Do you approve, or disapprove of Congress declaring war against Japan? Results: 97% approve, 2% disapprove (+95% net approval). I chose the latter as the polling start date, because the question referred to a real declaration of war, not a hypothetical one. I suspect net support for war with Germany would have been higher had the poll been taken when the Japan poll was.

Polling data is sparse for this conflict. Only two other polls were taken before the end of the “period of war”: Do you think you, yourself, will feel it was a mistake for us to have entered this war? (Feb 2, 1944: 77% no, 14% yes) and Do you think it was a mistake for the United States to enter World War II? (Apr 10, 1946: 77% no, 15% yes). The latter was chosen as the polling data end date. However, I see why one could choose the former, hence why I provided the question and data.

Korean War (June 27, 1950 – January 31, 1955)

Start – end: June 27, 1950 – January 31, 1955

Start – end for polling data: August 20, 1950 – January 11, 1953

The first poll (asking Do you think the US made a mistake in (deciding to defend) going into war in Korea, or not?) was taken 54 days into the conflict; the final poll was conducted after 929 days (Jan 11, 1953).

Vietnam War (November 1, 1955 – May 7, 1975)

Start – end: November 1, 1955 – May 7, 1975

Start – end for polling data: August 27, 1965 – January 12, 1973

I chose as the start date when the first regular US combat troops arrived in Da Nang, Vietnam (Mar 8, 1965) to reflect the recurring poll question that started in August of that year (In view of the developments since we entered the fighting in Vietnam, do you think the U.S. made a mistake sending troops to fight in Vietnam?)

The first poll was 172 days into the conflict (Aug 27, 1965) and the final poll before the end of the war was after 2,867 days (Jan 12, 1973).

Persian Gulf War (August 2, 1990 – April 6, 1991)

Start – end: August 2, 1990 – April 6, 1991

Start – end for polling data: September 10, 1990 – January 6, 1992

Polling data is scarce for this conflict. The first and second surveys (Sep 10 and Nov 29, 1990) asked, Do you think the US made a mistake in…sending troops to Saudi Arabia or not? For that reason, I adopted August 7, 1990 — when the US began deploying military assets and personnel to Saudi Arabia and the broader Middle East in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait five days earlier — as the start of the conflict.

The third Gallup poll, which was conducted nine months after the end of the war (Jan 6, 1992), asked, Thinking back to the Persian Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, all in all, do you think the situation in the Persian Gulf region was worth going to war over or not? The reason I chose the third survey as the polling end point — despite data collection happening after the end of the war — is that prior surveys were conducted before Operation Desert Storm (Jan 17, 1991), the second part of the Gulf War, following Operation Desert Shield.

Afghanistan War (October 7, 2001 – August 30, 2021)

Start – end: October 7, 2001 – August 30, 2021

Start – end for polling data: November 8, 2001 – July 6, 2021

There’s a slight variation in language from the original recurring poll question that began in 2001 (Thinking now about U.S. military action in Afghanistan that began in October 2001, do you think the United States made a mistake in sending military forces to Afghanistan, or not?) and the one that replaced it from 2013 onward (Looking back, do you think the United States made a mistake sending troops to fight in Afghanistan, or not?). The final poll used in this study (Jul 6, 2021) showed –1% net support (46% said the war wasn’t a mistake; 47% said it was).

Note on the line chart that the Afghanistan War is truncated to February 2014 in an effort to make more legible the nest of lines on the left side of the chart. The ending value is the same as July 2021 (–1%). The truncated version works anyway if you wanted to isolate the combat-centric portion of the war from the train-and-equip-centric portion. Obama declared an end of the combat mission in Afghanistan (“Operation Enduring Freedom”) in December 2014, transitioning to a much smaller force presence and a new mission (“Operation Freedom’s Sentinel”) centered on building up Afghan military and police forces. (Obama: “to preserve the gains we have made together, the United States…will maintain a limited military presence in Afghanistan to train, advise and assist Afghan forces and to conduct counterterrorism operations against the remnants of al Qaeda.”

Iraq War (March 19, 2003 – December 15, 2011)

Start – end: March 19, 2003 – December 15, 2011

Start – end for polling data: March 24, 2003 – August 5, 2010

After Obama announced the end of the US combat mission in Iraq (Aug 31, 2010), polling became much less frequent. The final polling date per this study’s methodology was 497 days before the declared end of the invasion on December 15, 2011. The final poll (Aug 5, 2010) registered –14% net support (41% said the war was not a mistake; 55% said it was).

Iran War (February 28, 2026 – ongoing)

Start – end: February 28, 2026 – Ongoing

Start – end for polling data: March 2, 2026 – June 1, 2026

Data collection for the first poll began a day before the war started, so the survey question was for some respondents a hypothetical (Would you support or oppose the U.S. using military force to overthrow the government of Iran?). For the ten polls since then, the question has been Do you support or oppose the war with Iran? Given that regime change by military force was reportedly the plan, I don’t have an issue with this slight variation in the survey question.

Per the most recent poll (June 1), net support for the war stands at –32% (28% support, 60% oppose). Other recent polls show higher net support (e.g., Ipsos, –27%) while some lower net support (e.g., New York Times/Siena, –34%), but all show a foreign policy disaster. Based on nine surveys from May 11 – May 18, the median net support for the Iran War is –26%.

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Alexander L., Alissa Q., Amin, Andrew R., AT., B. Kelly, Barbara B., Bart B., BeepBoop, Ben, Ben C.,* Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Carol V., Catherine L., Chris, Chris G., Claudia, Cole H., Coleman J., D. Kepler, Daniel M., Dave, David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Dharna N., Elizabeth R., Emily H.,* Errol S., Ethan R., Foundart, Fran Q., Francis M., Frank R., Fred R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Heath P., Hunter S., IBL, Irene B., Isaac, Isaac L., Jacob, James G., James H., James N., Jamie LR., Jcowens, Jeff, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jessica S., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Joshua R., Julia G., Julian L., Katrina H., Keith B., Kesh L., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Lenore B., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Lou B., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mark G., Marvin B., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Ron C., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Scott H., Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, Stan C., TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tom B., Tony L., Tony T., Troy, Tyler M., Victor S., Viviane A., Wayne H., William H.,* William P.

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-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)

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Housing security is deteriorating in the country that just produced the world’s first trillionaire. Nearly one in four tenants fell behind on rent in 2025, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest report on household economic well-being. At 23%, the share who fell behind on rent last year was two percentage points higher than in 2024, six points above 2022, and 13 points above 2019.1 That’s as far back as the Fed’s survey data goes.2

There are two graphs below. The first shows the share of tenants behind on rent, broken down by income.3 The second shows average US monthly rent.4 As you’d expect, the two graphs move in sync. Nearly.

The 7 percentage point rise in tenants behind on rent from 2019 to 2021 coincided with an 11% increase in rent, including a 9% increase in 2021, alongside a global pandemic and economic recession. But when rent shot up 12% in 2022 alone, there wasn’t a corresponding increase in tenants behind on rent — it even fell a percentage point among those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000. At least not in 2022. The impact of that price shock became apparent in the data a year later.

One explanation for the apparent lag is that the pandemic welfare state, despite beginning to unravel, was still fairly robust in 2022 — extra SNAP benefits, Medicaid continuous enrollment, child care stabilization grants, student loan pause, emergency rental assistance, ACA enhanced subsidies, and more remained active — which helped folks withstand the initial onslaught of spiraling rental costs on their household budgets. Another, more grim explanation is that people stayed current on rent by first exhausting their savings before turning to borrowing. The meteoric rise in credit card debt and historic decline in personal savings in 2022 lend credence to this theory.

Both had a limited shelf life while higher rents were here to stay. The share of tenants behind on rent grew by 2 percentage points in each of the next three years, and by an average of 3 points among renters with incomes below $100,000.

^Alt text for screen readers: Top chart: Nearly 1 in 4 US renters fell behind on rent in 2025. Share behind on rent in the past 12 months, by income. All incomes: 2019, 10%; 2021, 17%; 2022, 17%; 2023, 19%; 2024, 21%; 2025, 23%. Incomes under $50,000: 2019, 12%; 2021, 23%; 2022, 23%; 2023, 27%; 2024, 28%; 2025, 32%. Incomes from $50,000 to $100,000: 2019, 6%; 2021, 9%; 2022, 8%; 2023, 14%; 2024, 16%; 2025, 17%. Incomes over $100,000: 2019, 2%; 2021, 2%; 2022, 2%; 2023, 2%; 2024, 6%; 2025, 5%. Data: Federal Reserve Board, Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED). Bottom chart: Rent has increased 37% since 2019. Average US monthly rent: 2019, $1,383; 2020, $1,419; 2021, $1,540; 2022, $1,727; 2023, $1,798; 2024, $1,850; 2025, $1,898. Data: Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI).

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Alexander L., Alissa Q., Amin, Andrew R., AT., B. Kelly, Barbara B., Bart B., BeepBoop, Ben, Ben C.,* Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Carol V., Catherine L., Chris, Chris G., Claudia, Cole H., Coleman J., D. Kepler, Daniel M., Dave, David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Dharna N., Elizabeth R., Emily H.,* Errol S., Ethan R., Foundart, Fran Q., Francis M., Frank R., Fred R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Heath P., Hunter S., IBL, Irene B., Isaac, Isaac L., Jacob, James G., James H., James N., Jamie LR., Jcowens, Jeff, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jessica S., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Joshua R., Julia G., Julian L., Katrina H., Keith B., Kesh L., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Lenore B., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Lou B., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mark G., Marvin B., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Ron C., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Scott H., Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, Stan C., TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tom B., Tony L., Tony T., Troy, Tyler M., Victor S., Viviane A., Wayne H., William H.,* William P.

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-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)

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*Read my latest opinion piece in MarketWatch: Your portfolio can’t afford the real bill for the Iran war

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I collected public opinion data on seven US wars: World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the ongoing Iran Wa…

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*My latest for Popular Information: The real cost of the Iran War: $72 billion for the first 60 days

*Coverage of my war cost estimate: Expert: Iran war cost $72 billion over first two months ; Expert Puts True Cost of Trump’s Iran War at $72 Billion—Nearly 3 Times Higher Than Pentagon Said ; How Much Has the Iran War Actually Cost? A Lot More Than $25 Billion

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Situation

The Iran War has pushed inflation to its highest point since May 2023. Gasoline prices, for example, are 28% higher than last year. Fresh vegetables cost 12% more; coffee, 18.5%. The list goes on.

Wages haven’t kept up with rising prices. This week, the US Department of Labor reported a 0.5% drop in “real” (inflation-adjusted) average hourly earnings in April and a 0.3% drop over the previous 12 months.

In the context of record household debt, the reported drop in wages is even worse than it sounds.

The debt blind spot

The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to calculate real wages. CPI has several shortcomings,1 one of which is the exclusion of debt. Debt is experienced as a rapidly increasing cost at the household level but isn’t incorporated into the price index the way other household costs are. This further strains the link between real wages and real economic security — the ability to reliably make ends meet. As economist Nathan Tankus explained in his 2024 election autopsy:

“Ordinary households do not respect the boundaries of the Bureau of Labor Statistics methodologies. Most Americans are not aware, nor do they care, that mortgage interest rates were removed from price indices by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1983. They also do not care that credit card interest rates are not in these indices either. As far as they are concerned interest rates are a price they pay — and both those interest rates went way up over the past few years.”

Credit card debt

Since 2019, US credit card debt has risen 14% faster than inflation ($848 billion to $1.252 trillion). The average monthly card payment has increased 6% faster ($1,492 to $1,994).2

The number of cardholders unable to pay their monthly credit card balance has grown by 11% since 2019 (99.96 million to 111.4 million). The number making only the minimum payment or less has also grown by 11% (24.78 million to 27.54 million).3 The share of credit card debt 90+ days delinquent in the first quarter of 2026 is the highest it has been since the first quarter of 2011.4 More than a fifth of cardholders incurred a late fee in the previous year.5 Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Capital One and Citigroup collected $146 billion in credit card revenue last year.

Spiraling credit card debt reflects (and compounds) the deteriorating economic security in the richest country in the world. Two facts illustrate this point. First, the personal savings rate dropped by 51% from 2019 to 2026.6 Second, it’s nearly 30% more expensive to have the same unpaid balance in 2026 than in 2019, as credit card APR increased from 17% to 22%. I’m reminded of that James Baldwin quote about how expensive it is to be poor.

The Iran War will amplify credit card debt’s effect on economic insecurity. Since the US and Israel started the war, lower- and middle-income Americans have increasingly relied on debt to sustain household spending. The economic fallout will worsen as the war drags on, which appears to be the commander-in-chief’s intent. Waging war is not only central to Trump’s politics; it’s a defining feature of the performative “peace through strength” foreign policy doctrine championed by Republicans and tacitly enabled by Democrats.

I’ll leave you with two charts. The first shows the recent surge in credit card debt; the second shows how much more expensive that debt is to carry.

^Alt text for screen readers: Top chart: U.S. credit card debt is historically high. Orange line chart starts at roughly $700 billion in 2003 and ends with $1.25 trillion in the first quarter of 2026, with peaks of approximately $850 billion and $875 billion in 2008 and 2019, and troughs of approximately $675 billion from in 2013 and $800 billion in 2021. Figures: 2003:Q1-2026:Q1, current dollars. Data: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, May 2026. Bottom chart: Credit card debt is historically expensive. This purple line chart shows credit card APR (annual percentage rate) starting at 12.7% in 2003 and ending at 21.5% in the first quarter of 2026, fueled by a rapid increase after 2021. Since 2023, credit card APR has hovered around 22%. Figures: 2003:Q1-2026:Q1, current dollars. Data: Federal Reserve, Commercial Bank Interest Rate on Credit Card Plans, Accounts Assessed Interest.

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Alexander L., Alissa Q., Amin, Andrew R., AT., B. Kelly, Barbara B., Bart B., BeepBoop, Ben, Ben C.,* Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Carol V., Catherine L., Chris, Chris G., Claudia, Cole H., Coleman J., D. Kepler, Daniel M., Dave, David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Dharna N., Elizabeth R., Emily H.,* Errol S., Ethan R., Foundart, Fran Q., Francis M., Frank R., Fred R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Heath P., Hunter S., IBL, Irene B., Isaac, Isaac L., Jacob, James G., James H., James N., Jamie LR., Jcowens, Jeff, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jessica S., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Joshua R., Julia G., Julian L., Katrina H., Keith B., Kesh L., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Lenore B., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Lou B., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mark G., Marvin B., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Ron C., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Scott H., Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, Stan C., TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tony L., Tony T., Tyler M., Victor S., Viviane A., Wayne H., William H.,* William P.

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-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)

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*Findings from the previous Polygraph newsletter were featured in this Forbes op-ed and this Yale debate. Thank you to my paid subscribers for making that research possible.

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Situation

President Trump’s budget proposal for next year manages to be $361 billion larger than last year’s despite cutting $300 billion in social programs and other public investments. The main reason is the vast increase in military spending.

The $1.504 trillion military budget serves as the lifeblood for Trump’s next war(s) and his justification for slashing social programs. “We’re fighting wars,” Trump said earlier this month. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things…we have to take care of one thing: military protection.” The White House tried and failed to message its way out of the resulting public backlash. A few days earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “Imagine if instead of spending billions of dollars supporting terrorists or weapons, Iran had spent that money helping the people of Iran.”

US infrastructure for drinking water and wastewater received C– and D+ grades respectively from the American Society of Civil Engineers last year. Next year’s budget proposal slashes funding for water infrastructure. For the Pentagon, a river of money; for workers, a river of effluent.

What $1.5 trillion could fund instead

Federal agencies released detailed budget justifications early this month in time with the White House’s overarching budget, but the Pentagon’s was delayed until a few days ago. Why? Budgeting beyond WWII-level military spending when there’s nowhere near WWII-level military demand has created a glut, an overabundance, un embarras de richesses — a fact made clear in this actual headline in the Washington Post: “Trump aides struggle with how to spend $500 billion more on military.” A $1.5 trillion budget is more than the Pentagon knows what to do with.

One way to express the severity of this failure of governance is to illustrate what $1.5 trillion could accomplish when put toward other ends. Oddly, doing so makes the Pentagon’s “problem” somewhat relatable — $1.5 trillion really is a hell of a lot of money. The graph below shows what I did with the equivalent of Trump’s proposed 2027 military budget. Globally, I eliminated hunger and extreme poverty; domestically, I ended homelessness, covered every person without health insurance with Medicaid, implemented universal pre-K for three- and four-year olds, issued another round of $600 relief checks, and built enough solar infrastructure to power half of all households. I still have $77 billion left over.

What’s more, while the massive, trillion-dollar-plus annual military budgets like Trump proposed for 2027 are “the new normal,” the $596 billion for solar and $141 billion for relief checks are one-time costs. Only $690 billion is for yearly expenses (though the $93 billion for world hunger isn’t planned to be needed after 2030).

Methodology is below the chart.

^Alt text for screen readers: What $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon could fund instead. This column chart compares the $1.504 trillion requested military budget for 2027 against a set of alternatives. In billions: 93, End world hunger; 318, End global extreme poverty; 29, End US homelessness; 214, Medicaid for uninsured; 35, Universal US pre-K; 141, Send $600 checks to 235M Americans; 596 , Power half of US households with solar. Proposed and estimated costs are annual, except solar (overnight capital cost) and $600 checks (matching cost of January 2021 relief payments). Data: President’s Budget for fiscal year 2027, author analysis.

Methodology

Power half of US households with solar

There are 134.8 million US households (as of Dec 2025) and 50% of that is 67.4 million. On average, each household uses 10,500 kWh of electricity per year, creating an annual electricity demand of 707.7 billion kWh.

Assuming a 25% capacity factor, 1 kW of utility-scale solar produces an average of 2,190 kWh per year (0.25 times 8,760 hours in a year). Dividing 707.7 billion kWh by 2,190 kWh per kW equals 323.1 million kW, the estimated utility-scale solar capacity required to meet household demand.

According to the Department of Energy’s PV System Cost Model, the estimated cost per kW is $1,488 to $2,200 for MSP. I chose the midpoint — $1,844 — for this analysis. Multiplying 323.1 million kW by $1,844 equals $595.8 billion, the estimated one-time cost to build the solar capacity to power half of US households.

Note that this estimate includes energy storage, allowing solar power to be delivered at night rather than only matching aggregate electricity demand. DOE’s model calculates the cash cost of an installed system by factoring in the following expenses:

• Module – The cost to the installer of photovoltaic modules, as delivered.

• Inverter – The cost to the installer of equipment for converting direct current (dc) to alternating current (ac), as delivered.

• Energy Storage System (ESS) – The cost to the installer of adding an energy storage system, as delivered.

• Structural Balance of System (SBOS) – The cost to the installer of structural balance of system components, as delivered.

• Electrical Balance of System (EBOS) – The cost to the installer of electrical balance of system components, as delivered.

• Fieldwork – The cost to the installer of work performed at the installation site.

• Office work – The cost to the installer of work performed off-site.

• Other – Costs incurred by the project developer not included elsewhere.

Send $600 checks to 235M Americans

Division N of Title II of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (P.L. 116-260), provided $600 “recovery rebates” to eligible taxpayers, providing $141 billion in tax relief, according to IRS data. There were 146.5 million second-round tax rebate payments, including 41.7 million to married couples filing a joint return. All told, the $600 checks reached about 235 million Americans, including dependents (eligible filers also received $600 per child).

Universal US pre-K

The simple annualized cost is $35.1 billion, based on Penn Wharton’s estimate (“We estimate that nationwide universal preschool education for three- and four-year-olds will cost $351 billion over the next 10 years.”)

Medicaid for uninsured

There are 27.1 million Americans without health insurance, according to the Census Bureau (2024). Average annual Medicaid spending per full-benefit enrollee is $7,909, according to KFF (2023). Multiplying these two numbers together gives you $214.4 billion.

End US homelessness

The National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) estimates it would cost $15.1 billion to fully address sheltered homelessness through a Housing First policy. This policy is about getting people without a home into one as quickly as possible and for as long as needed. Optional support services are offered as well.

My estimate is nearly double NAEH’s for two reasons. First, the NAEH figure is also calibrated to 2022, and homelessness has rapidly increased since then. I accounted for the rise in homelessness using the latest population data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD’s point-in-time counts show sheltered homelessness rising from 348,630 in 2022 to 497,256 in 2024 — a 43% increase — yielding an adjusted cost estimate of roughly $21.5 billion to cover the current sheltered population. Second, the NAEH figure applies to sheltered homelessness but not unsheltered.

To account for unsheltered homelessness, I adjusted the $21.5 billion figure upward by 36%, matching the share of people experiencing homelessness who are unsheltered (274,224 out of 771,480). This yields an estimated $29.1 billion annual budget.

This is a rough estimate. Combining the strongest available cost model with the most recent population data requires bridging different measurement systems: the NAEH cost model is based on households counted over the course of the year while the HUD data counts individual people at a single point during a year. As a result, there are simplifying assumptions, like household homelessness increasing proportionately with individual homelessness and per-household costs remaining consistent across time and populations.

End global extreme poverty

A recent working paper estimates that the cost of ending extreme poverty through direct cash transfers is $318 billion, or roughly 0.49% of OECD GDP.

The US would not be expected to front the entire cost. If the US financial contribution matched its contribution to the UN regular budget (22% in 2025), the annual cost to the US would be $70 billion.

End world hunger

Ending world hunger by 2030 would cost $93 billion per year, according to UN estimates.

The US wouldn’t be expected to front the entire cost. If the US financial contribution matched its contribution to the World Food Programme (32% as of 2025), the annual cost to the US would be $29.5 billion through 2030.

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Alexander L., Alissa Q., Amin, Andrew R., AT., B. Kelly, Barbara B., Bart B., BeepBoop, Ben, Ben C.,* Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Carol V., Catherine L., Chris, Chris G., Claudia, Cole H., Coleman J., D. Kepler, Daniel M., Dave, David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Dharna N., Elizabeth R., Emily H.,* Errol S., Ethan R., Foundart, Fran Q., Francis M., Frank R., Fred R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Heath P., Hunter S., IBL, Irene B., Isaac, Isaac L., Jacob, James G., James H., James N., Jamie LR., Jcowens, Jeff, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jessica S., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Joshua R., Julia G., Julian L., Katrina H., Keith B., Kesh L., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Lenore B., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Lou B., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mark G., Marvin B., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Ron C., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Scott H., Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, Stan C., TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tony L., Tony T., Tyler M., Victor S., Viviane A., Wayne H., William H.,* William P.

* = founding member

-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)

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ICYMI: US spends $2.1 billion a day on the Iran War

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Trump’s budget proposal, in brief

The White House’s recent budget proposal outlines how the president wants to spend the public’s money next year. The gratuitous cuts to civilian agencies suggest the goal is smaller government. But that’s not the case — next year’s budget would still be $361 billion larger than last year’s. Trump’s concern isn’t the size of government; it’s what the government does and who it does it for.

So what does Trump want the government to do in 2027? More war, more (militarized) policing, and less of everything else. Based on his budget request, Trump sees little point in government outside performing those first two functions. War and policing receive record funding; funding for all other government functions is cut by $300 billion. (I will refer to the latter spending category as “public investment” for the rest of the article.1) Slashing funding for the former and surging spending for the latter is how you budget for the 1%.

Trump’s budget proposal, a breakdown

War & policing

Of the $2.2 trillion Trump requested, 80% — $1.8 trillion — is tied to war and policing.

Most of that is the $1.5 trillion military budget, which would be the largest ever. Adjusted for inflation, Trump wants to spend $260 billion more on the military in 2027 than the US did in 1945. It isn’t World War II-level spending; it’s parody-level.

Another $282 billion comes from the Departments of State, Veterans Affairs, Justice, and Homeland Security2 (the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons funding is part of the $1.5 trillion figure). Only the parts of these agencies’ budgets linked to war and policing were counted. For example, the DHS budget includes disaster relief funding, but that funding isn’t included in the aforementioned $282 billion. Conversely, DHS funds ICE, and ICE’s budget is certainly included in that figure.3

Public investment

The remaining 20% of Trump’s budget proposal — $441 billion — is for government functions related to agriculture; community and regional development; education; health; housing and income assistance; international affairs; natural resources and environment; science, space, and technology; training, employment, and social services; transportation and more.

Funding for this array of purposes is labeled as “public investment” in the chart below. In 2025, public investment spending made up 40% of the enacted budget. Trump wants to halve that share, equal to a $300 billion cut.

Public investment is intended to be productive spending, designed to yield a return — better transit, more affordable food, healthier workers, etc. — to enhance economic growth or human security. Spending on war and policing does not share that aspiration. It’s a cost of enforcing order — less about managing disorder than enforcing a certain social order (at home) and geopolitical order (abroad), neither of which are sustainable.

If you’re looking for a reasonable balance between these two types of spending, you won’t find it in Trump’s budget request. You won’t find it in recently enacted budgets, either.

(Article continues after graph.)

^Alt text for screen readers: 80% of Trump’s budget goes to war and policing. Proposal halves funding for public investments, still increases deficit. The red-orange stacked column chart is as follows: Military, $1.5 trillion; Department of State military aid, $11.2 billion; Department of Veterans Affairs, $145.3 billion; Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, $125.4 billion; Other, $441.2 billion. Amounts: requested discretionary funding plus supplemental discretionary via reconciliation. Military: budget function 050. Agency amounts only include funding related to war and policing. Data: President’s Budget for fiscal year 2027, Office of Management and Budget.

The chart above will draw criticism for three main reasons:

1. I clearly tried to make the graph look like a Rothko painting but didn’t quite pull it off.

Fair enough :(

2. I categorized veterans care as war-related spending.

Why isn’t the VA budget considered a public investment? First, it’s a war cost. Second, the care it delivers is exclusive, not public. Third, like other war-related funding, it crowds out other priorities. I’m not suggesting the VA budget be cut like I have for the Pentagon; I’m arguing that, like Pentagon spending, its growth displaces available funding for social programs and other public investments.

Military and non-military spending are the two fundamental categories of the budgets Congress passes each year. Generally speaking, congressional Republicans aim to increase the former and cut the latter; congressional Democrats used to prefer the opposite, but now want to increase both.

Both parties are heavily invested in the fight over the non-military amount — what happens to that number is a major part of how they gauge their political success. Both parties badly want to report “wins” to their base on this issue.

Republicans and Democrats appear to have come to a tacit agreement in recent years: increase non-military spending for military-adjacent programs (like veterans care) and policing functions while cutting public investment funding by nearly as much. Under this arrangement, both parties end up winners (different story for workers). Republicans can claim victory because public investments were cut, having been squeezed out of the non-military budget. Meanwhile, Democrats can tout historic increases in non-military spending.

It’s this budgetary sleight-of-hand that allowed Democratic leaders to boast in December 2022 that their 2023 budget bill — the final spending bill passed under the Democratic trifecta — included “the highest level for non-defense funding ever,” while cutting public investment spending by $55 billion ($99 billion in 2026 dollars).

In 1980, veterans care took up 4% of the non-military spending in the discretionary budget, 7% in 2000, and 10% in 2020. It jumped to 15% under Biden. Including the relevant DHS and DOJ funding, 24% of ostensibly non-military spending in Biden’s last enacted budget (2024) went to military-adjacent, militarized, or policing programs — the highest share on record to that point. It’s 25% this year, and 33% in Trump’s proposed budget for next year.

Trump’s proposal didn’t fall from the sky. The graph below shows that where the president wants to take us we’ve been headed for a while. It’s as if Trump observed a preexisting defect in US politics, then proceeded to inject it with vast quantities of epinephrine and anabolic steroids. (Note: To more clearly present the gap between military and public investment spending discussed above, the graph excludes VA, DHS, DOJ, and DOS funding.)

^Alt text for screen readers: US budgets less for improving lives, more for ending them. Discretionary spending by function, constant 2026 dollars. This chart shows war spending increasing steadily since 2017 and shows public investment spending peaking in 2020 before steadily falling ever since. Trump’s 2027 budget includes $1.5 trillion in war spending and only $432.3 billion in public investment. Amounts reflect discretionary funding plus supplemental discretionary funding via reconciliation. Budget function 050 in war category; others minus 700, 750 in public investment. Data: Office of Management and Budget, Congressional Research Service.

3. The discretionary budget doesn’t capture all government spending.

Indeed, discretionary spending is the money that the president proposes and Congress enacts each year through funding bills.4 Not included in the chart above is standard mandatory spending — primarily payments for benefits programs that are funded automatically through formulas — or interest on the national debt. Including those other two, the total projected budget for 2027 is $8.3 trillion.

Viewed in the context of all federal spending, funding for war and policing appears far less overwhelming. Or does it?

With the additional war- and policing-related spending in mandatory accounts (mostly disability and other payments to veterans), the total climbs from $1.8 trillion to $2.2 trillion.

So while it’s 80% of the proposed discretionary budget but only 26% of the entire projected budget, that 26% is more any other government expenditure. Here are the top five largest sources of US spending across discretionary and mandatory accounts for 2027:

1. War and policing: $2.2 trillion

2. Social Security: $1.8 trillion

3. Medicare: $1.2 trillion

4. Interest on debt: $1.1 trillion

5. Medicaid: $1.0 trillion

Including its share of the interest on the national debt, there’s $2.5 trillion for war and policing in the 2027 budget — 29% of the $8.3 trillion total.

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Alexander L., Alissa Q., Amin, Andrew R., AT., B. Kelly, Barbara B., Bart B., BeepBoop, Ben, Ben C.,* Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Carol V., Catherine L., Chris, Chris G., Claudia, Cole H., Coleman J., D. Kepler, Daniel M., Dave, David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Dharna N., Elizabeth R., Emily H.,* Errol S., Foundart, Fran Q., Francis M., Frank R., Fred R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Hunter S., IBL, Irene B., Isaac, Isaac L., Jacob, James G., James H., James N., Jamie LR., Jcowens, Jeff, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jessica S., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Joshua R., Julia G., Julian L., Katrina H., Keith B., Kesh L., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Lenore B., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Lou B., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mark G., Marvin B., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Ron C., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Scott H., Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, Stan C., TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tony L., Tony T., Tyler M., Victor S., Viviane A., Wayne H., William H.,* William P.

* = founding member

-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)

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Latest VIP newsletter: Iran War: Cost of the first week

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How much has the US spent on the Iran War?

The Trump administration won’t say and prefers the cost not be discussed.

The US spent an estimated $28.7 billion in the first two weeks of the Iran War, or $2.1 billion a day on average. This is based on my analysis of officials’ statements, federal procurement and operations data, and reporting on military deployments and armament use. This estimate refers only to direct war costs — near-term expenses for military operations, munitions, and the like — and not indirect costs, which include broader and longer-term factors like economic impact and veterans’ care.

This might be a higher estimate than you’ve seen elsewhere. Those estimates are too low. This one could be too.

Below:

• Summary table

• Why most estimates are too low

• Why this estimate could be too low

• Methodology and itemized war costs

^Alt text for screen readers: US spends $2.1 billion a day on the Iran War. Estimated US war costs, 28 February–13 March 2026. Table format: Expense; Description; Cost. Rows: Operations; Mobilization, administration, combat; $4.25 billion. Weapons; Missiles, interceptors, bombs, other; $20.77 billion. Losses; Damaged or destroyed military assets; $2.71 billion. Subsidies; Pay for Israel’s bombs, interceptors; $1.01 billion. Total; Cost of the first two weeks of the Iran War; $28.74 billion. Average cost per day: $2.05 billion. Estimated direct costs based on author’s analysis of officials’ statements, procurement and O&S data, open-source intelligence, media reports. Figures subject to revision as new information becomes available.

Why most estimates are too low

In a recent closed-door briefing with select lawmakers, Pentagon officials estimated the war had cost $11.3 billion in the first week. That figure, despite not accounting for much besides munition expenses, is the closest the Trump administration has come to saying how much it’s spending on the Iran War. Mainstream media outlets repeat the figure over and over, as their compulsive need to cite figures from government officials clashes with officials not giving any. It’s also the basis for popular cost estimates from think tanks.

For example, CSIS originally said the war had cost $3.7 billion over the first 100 hours, which became one of the most widely cited estimates, though probably not for the reason CSIS intended. In the media, the chasm between the CSIS and Pentagon estimates became a popular trope for how the cost of the Iran War was smashing expectations.1 CSIS then released another estimate — this one built pretty much entirely around the Pentagon’s — which became popular in its own right, even serving as the basis for estimates by news outlets and other think tanks.

The prevailing war cost estimates have two things in common. First, they’re all better than the dozens of AI-generated war cost trackers, which are empty calories empirically. Worse, they’re unaccountable. Numbers wrong? Blame the model. There’s no one to hear your justifiable criticism; it’s like being cut off in traffic by a driverless car.

Second, because the prevailing cost estimates are ultimately based on the Pentagon’s, they reproduce its inherent flaws. The biggest is munition expenditures (which is pretty much all the Pentagon’s estimate included, given all the other types of war costs it left out). The result is a pervasive understatement of how expensive the Iran War actually is.

The Pentagon tracks munition “burn rate” costs by merging operational logistics (what’s being fired in what quantities) with financial values (what each one costs). My beef is with how it determines unit costs. I don’t think the Pentagon’s method is wrong; I do think it’s irrelevant — so immersed in the internal logic of departmental bookkeeping that its conclusions are too insular to be of much use. The war costs that show up on the Pentagon’s ledger are different (read: lower) than the war costs the US public will be asked (read: forced) to pay.

For example, the Navy logs the number of SM-2 interceptors it’s firing into the Ordnance Tracking System; that quantity gets fed into the Navy Enterprise Resource Planning system, which multiplies the reported quantity by the SM-2’s current unit cost; that figure goes into the Agency Financial Report, which eventually gets rolled up into the Pentagon’s consolidated financial statements. The cost to fire one SM-2 is based on something called Moving Average Cost, which determines unit cost by dividing the total value of the SM-2’s stockpile by the number of SM-2s in it. The value of a munition’s stockpile is a historical average that changes with every new purchase of that munition. If its unit cost is $1.1 million and 50 are withdrawn from the stockpile and fired, the Pentagon’s ledger would show $55 million in expenses from consuming those munitions. The war cost estimate unnamed Pentagon officials gave lawmakers likely reflects this accounting method, as it’s the department’s standard.

How does this standard lead to underestimates of war costs? The aforementioned interceptor illustrates the mechanics perfectly: The US military has reportedly fired lots of SM-2 interceptors during the Iran War, but the Pentagon doesn’t buy SM-2s anymore; they’re being phased out. The SM-6 — the more advanced and expensive successor — is purchased instead. So each time an SM-2 is fired in the ongoing war, the Pentagon’s accounting system registers a cost closer to the SM-2’s $1.1 million unit cost from 2011 than the $5.3 million unit cost in 2026 for the SM-6 that will replace it. For US taxpayers, the cost of firing 50 SM-2s isn’t $55 million; it’s $265 million.2

Some prevailing estimates have used replacement costs, but for estimates they designed to fit within the Pentagon’s $11.3 billion figure, which reflects Moving Average Cost. Using replacement costs doesn’t correct much when you’re working within a vastly understated pot of funds.

Why this estimate could be too low

Three reasons, among several others:

1. US military assets and personnel poured into the Middle East and Europe as part of a historic buildup ahead of the war. I haven’t yet accounted for the prepositioning of assets, and my estimate for personnel is probably too low. The only pre-war personnel cost I included is for activating reservists, which reflects mobilization at the scale of last year’s war with Iran, adjusted for the 3.8% troop pay increase in 2026. For the June 2025 war, the US mobilized 17,193 reservists — 12,396 deployed to CENTCOM and 4,797 to EUCOM — totaling $1.96 billion, based on my analysis of Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force budget documents. This money came from the $8 billion war fund made available by Sec. 1421 of P.L. 119-4 and executed on 16 June 2025, a day after Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth announced the US was surging forces into the Middle East in a “defensive” maneuver. The US bombed Iran five days later (using funding from Biden’s Israel aid bill — one of the more obscure reasons why concern over Palestine doesn’t make one a single-issue voter). I haven’t yet found data indicating specifically how much higher my 2026 estimate should be.3

2. The single most expensive military asset reportedly damaged or destroyed by Iranian forces is a $1.3 billion AN/FPS-132 early-warning radar at a US base in Qatar. Because the radar was originally funded by a US foreign military sale to Qatar, I did not include any potential restoration costs for it in my estimate. Methodologically, this is a questionable decision, as it assumes Qatar has the appetite to pay the US to replace a billion-dollar radar destroyed in a war the US basically started for fun. (It certainly wasn’t out of necessity.)

3. Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said the ongoing war “has seven times the intensity of Israel’s previous operations against Iran during the 12-day war.” If that translates to anywhere near seven times the cost, I’ve badly underestimated US war costs.

Israel spent an estimated $6.7 billion on the 12-day war in June 2025, based on my analysis of Israeli budget documents. In September 2025, the Knesset approved a supplemental bill to cover military costs related to its June war with Iran and its planned “conquering” of Gaza in May. A table from the explanatory section of the bill (below) shows 22.7 billion shekels for the military (lit. “Ministry of Security”), 245 million for national insurance allowances, 6.2 billion for intelligence agencies, and 1.7 billion for interest payments. Ignore the rightmost column with budget codes.

Including the funding for intelligence agencies, there were 28.94 billion shekels in total military spending in the bill, including 6.4 billion for IDF personnel — the bill increased personnel expenses (“הוצאות כח אדם”) to 39.02 billion shekels, up from the 32.66 billion in the original 2025 budget. The Israeli government attributed the additional personnel funding to the May–August 2025 Gaza offensive and the remaining 22.5 billion shekels — $6.7 billion — to the war with Iran.4 This is plausible. The original 2025 budget assumed Israel’s March assault (during the purported ceasefire) but likely did not account for the full costs of its May assault (also during the purported ceasefire). Israel called up tens of thousands of reservists for the May operation, which was plagued by setbacks and ultimately failed, hinting at significant overruns in personnel costs. It’s also plausible that the bulk of the supplemental funding was for the June 2025 war, which quickly went over budget due to operations (including the tens of thousands of flight hours for bombing missions and Mossad actions in Iran), munitions (like the thousands of bombs Israel dropped on Iran), and firing an estimated $1.25 billion in interceptors.

If by “seven times the intensity” Hegseth meant seven times the cost of the June 2025 war, my estimate is about $20 billion too low.

Methodology and itemized war costs

Operations

Estimated cost: $4.25 billion

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has data showing how much it costs to operate various combat units. I estimated the type and quantity of units participating in the Iran War by referring to open-source intelligence and media reports. For example, using USNI’s fleet tracker, I counted 15 destroyers operating in the Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and Eastern Mediterranean at the start of the war. Each costs $4.2 million per week to operate.

However, CBO’s data is calibrated to peacetime and not wartime, and war makes everything more expensive, including war.

To estimate how much more expensive war makes military operations, I analyzed operating (specifically, Operation and Support) spending in the regular or “base” Pentagon budget and in the supplemental war budget from 2003–2014. To isolate the proportional increase in operating costs attributable to war, I did two things. First, I measured wartime operations spending relative to base operations spending rather than in absolute terms to help control for cost growth not directly related to war (base operations spending rose by roughly 13% above inflation from 2003–2014). Second, I measured operations spending on a per–active-duty troop basis to help control for cost growth solely attributable to the scale of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

War increased operating costs by 33% on average from 2003–2014, which translates to a 1.33 wartime operating cost multiplier that I used to convert the CBO data from peacetime to wartime costs. Although the multiplier is derived from data for a particular time (2003–2014) and place (Iraq, Afghanistan), it provides a benchmark for how combat has historically increased operating costs. I suspect this multiplier is low, based on my more granular research. To name just one example, the inflation-adjusted increase in operating costs for three helicopters — CH-47D, UH-60L, and AH-64D — from 1998 (peacetime) to 2007 (wartime) was 140%, 262%, and 541%, respectively.

Weapons

Estimated cost: $20.77 billion

The weapons itemized below are grouped into offensive and defensive munitions. I make this distinction because each group requires its own methodology.5

Offensive

The last time the Pentagon provided a figure on the number of munitions it dropped or fired during the war was on March 3, when CENTCOM Commander Bradley Cooper said the US had “struck nearly 2,000 targets with more than 2,000 munitions.” On March 4, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine told the press, “I know there have been a lot of questions about munitions…I want to tell you, teammates,6 as a matter of practice, I don’t want to be talking about quantities…we consider it an operational security matter.” You know the Trump administration really doesn’t want people talking about war costs when they deny transparency into the vaguest of metrics.

However, the Pentagon discloses the number of targets it has struck, albeit imprecisely — “over 6,000” as General Caine said in a March 13 briefing — which can be used to infer munition expenditures.

How do you estimate munition costs based on the number of targets alone?

First, guess what General Caine meant by “over 6,000” targets. My guess: 6,400.

Second, multiply the estimated targets by the average number of munitions US and/or NATO forces used per target during a recent war. Or three wars, if you’re a show-off with poor time management.

• Operation Iraqi Freedom (first 30 days only), Iraq, 19 Mar 2003–18 Apr 2003

  • 29,199 munitions released / 19,898 targets struck = 1.47 munitions/target*

  • *Adjusted to 1.01 munitions/target to account for non-precision-guided munitions, though this might be an over-correction.7

• Operation Unified Protector (NATO), Libya, 31 Mar 2011–31 Oct 2011

  • 8,112 munitions released / ~6,000 targets struck = 1.35 munitions/target

• Operation Inherent Resolve, Iraq & Syria, 16 Oct 2014–20 Jan 2017

  • 65,461 munitions released / 39,608 targets struck = 1.65 munitions/target

Average of these wars’ average munitions per target = 1.36 munition/target. 6,400 targets times 1.36 munitions per target = 8,704 munitions.8

Of these 8,704 munitions, I assumed a 35-65 split between the very expensive, long-range, “stand-off” munitions used en masse during the early days of the war and the less expensive, short-range “stand-in” munitions the US has used more frequently since. The estimated split is based on officials’ statements.

Stand-off munitions

Quantities were estimated based on media reports, open-source intelligence, historical data, and forensic analysis of arms and munitions use. Munitions (unit cost) include: Tomahawk ($2 million), ATACMS ($1.6 million), PrSM ($2.5 million), AGM-88 HARM/AARGM/AARGM-ER ($1.9 million for the AARGM-ER, which replaces the AARGM, which replaced the HARM) JASSM ($2.9 million), JSOW (shares JASSM’s $2.9 million unit cost, as JASSM replaces the JSOW. However, I halved the associated cost to account for JASSM having twice the payload of JSOW.)

This includes 725 Tomahawk missiles, matching the rate at which they were fired during the first two weeks of Operation Iraqi Freedom — approximately 400 were fired during the first four days of both the 2003 Iraq War and 2026 Iran War. Other estimated quantities: 75 ATACMS, 55 PrSM, 1,016 JASSM, 600 AGM-88, 575 JSOW.

Stand-in munitions

The estimated quantities9 of the following guided bombs are based on the distribution of guided bombs dropped during the first 30 days of the 2003 Iraq War (2,000lb bombs, 36%; 1,000lb, 17%; 500lb, 47%).

• 2,000lb GBU-31 (MK84/BLU-109 warhead + JDAM)

  • Quantity: 1,728

  • Unit cost: $107,266 (warhead $39,250 + JDAM $68,016)

• 1,000lb GBU 32 (MK83/BLU-110 warhead + JDAM)

  • Quantity: 846

  • Unit cost: $78,923

• 500lb GBU 38 (MK82/BLU-111 warhead + JDAM)

  • Quantity: 2,248

  • Unit cost: $74,975

Estimated Hellfire expenditures were based on media reports and open-source intelligence.

• Hellfire missile

  • Quantity: 400

  • Unit cost: $249,506 (JAGM replacement cost, as JAGM is replacing the Hellfire)

These figures exclude the unspecified but reportedly large number of LUCAS one-way drones fired (~$35,000 each) as they were likely used predominately to saturate enemy defenses rather than destroy specific targets (Cooper likely excluded these drones from his munitions count on March 3). Also excluded are many of the “tens of thousands of pieces of ordnance” General Caine said were dropped on March 2.

*See more cost data here.

Defensive

Counter-missile

• Number of missiles Iran fired: 1,224

• Share of Iranian missiles that survived the boost phase: 93%

  • During the June 2025 war, 93% of Iranian missiles (546/588) survived the boost phase.

• Share of surviving missiles considered threats and engaged by American, Israeli, or Gulf air defenses: 81%

  • The share was 62% during the June 2025 war, but with the reduced distance between Iran and US bases in the Gulf — which reduces the time for determining whether a missile is a threat — I assumed that half the missiles assessed as non-threats in 2025 are considered threats in 2026.

• Missiles US and US-friendly forces attempted to shoot down: 922

• Average number of interceptors (missiles used to shoot down incoming missiles) used to shoot down each Iranian missile: 1.7

  • Although 1.1 were used per Iranian missile in the June 2025 war (361 interceptors for 339 missiles), US forces averaged two interceptors for each Houthi missile in 2024–25, and used 30 Patriot interceptors to shoot down 13 Iranian missiles fired at al-Udeid air base that Iran warned were coming.

• Interceptors fired at Iranian missiles: 1,567

• Share of interceptors fired by US forces: 86%

  • The US fired 72% of the interceptors during the June 2025 war (Israel fired 101; the US fired 230 defending Israel and 30 defending al-Udeid). For the 2026 war, I estimated conservatively that the US would assume half of the non-US burden from 2025, given Iran’s focus on attacking US military bases, and the relative decline in air defense capacity of Gulf countries compared to Israel.

• Interceptors fired by US forces: 1,348

I assumed a reverse mix of the interceptors the US fired during in June 2025 (with SM-3 split evenly with SM-6/SM-2s) because of the emphasis on US military bases as targets, where Patriot batteries are prevalent. This yielded an estimated 778 Patriot interceptors fired, which I later adjusted slightly to 800 to match the figure given by officials. (Will anyone be impressed by how close I got using my model? Probably not — most people have stopped reading at this point and the people who still are likely aren’t impressed by that sort of thing, presumably having made much more impressive estimates themselves recently. Thanks for reading, by the way.) I offset the resultant increase by subtracting 22 from the SM-3 total, due to the interceptors being in comparatively fewer stockpiled quantities.

• Patriot

  • Quantity: 800

  • Unit cost: $4.6 million

• THAAD

  • Quantity: 156

  • Unit cost: $15.5 million

• SM-3

  • Quantity: 185

  • Unit cost: $28.7 million

• SM-6/SM-2

  • Quantity: 207

  • Unit cost: $5.3 million (SM-6 unit cost, as it replaces the SM-2)

Counter-drone

• Number of drones Iran fired: 2,700

• Share of drones determined to be a threat and engaged by air defenses: 87%

  • It was 73% during the June 2025 war, but I halved the number of non-threatening drones due to the significantly shorter distance from origin to target.

• Percent of drones shot down by the US: 70%

  • The US shot down 18% during the June 2025 war, but I quadrupled the rate for 2026 due to the targeting of US bases.

• Drones shot down by US forces: 1,648

• Interceptors required to shoot down each drone: 2

  • This might be generous, considering it took US fighter aircraft two Sidewinder missiles to shoot down a balloon over Lake Huron in 2023.

• US munitions used on Iranian drones: 3,297

The approximated mix of the 3,297 munitions is based on the mix (also approximated) that US forces used to shoot down Houthi drones. For example, 40% of Houthi drones shot down during Operation Rough Rider were felled using APKWS, so I assumed the same figure here.

• AMRAAM

  • Quantity: 330

  • Unit cost: $1.4 million

• AIM-9X Sidewinder

  • Quantity: 989

  • Unit cost: $485,000

• APKWS

  • Quantity: 1,319

  • Unit cost: $39,494

• Coyote

  • Quantity: 330

  • Unit cost: $126,538

• Other

  • Total cost (est): $1.6 million*

  • *This includes a range of other munitions reportedly used to down Iranian drones, like 30mm rounds fired from Apache helicopters and 20mm fired from C-RAMs. This is a very rough estimate.

Losses

Estimated cost: $2.71 billion

Most of it is due to damaged infrastructure (largely radars) on US bases in the Gulf. The damage initially reported is usually revealed to be much worse once satellite imagery is examined. Unfortunately, satellite imagery can be on tape delay or worse, per ABC: “Since the conflict began, Planet Labs imposed a 14-day delay in releasing images from the region, while Vantor does not share imagery of U.S. military locations.” This is servile, cowardly, and ultimately undemocratic behavior. These companies should reassess their policies, including those that allowed invertebrates to assume leadership positions.

A notable loss of equipment was the three F-15 fighter aircraft shot down over Kuwait on March 1. How much each one costs depends on the media outlet. Good Morning America, for example, says they’re $31 million each. The Pentagon paid $103 million each in 2025.

Additional losses itemized here.

Subsidies

Estimated cost: $1.01 billion

The US-Israeli war with Iran is for the sole strategic benefit of Israel. It is against the strategic interests of the United States. What’s more, the US is covering a significant chunk of Israel’s war costs. That is apparent in pending arms sales that include tens of thousands of bombs, many of which come directly from US stocks (rather than waiting months or years for a contractor to produce them). These are classified as sales, but they aren’t sales in the conventional sense. US military aid functions like a gift card, where Israel is the purchaser but not the funder. Americans pay for these arms deals.

The $1.01 billion estimate reflects the value of bombs and interceptors Israel has expended that can be covered by military aid.

Bombs

Israel reportedly dropped 11,000 bombs during the first two weeks of the war. To estimate the cost, I multiplied the reported quantity by an even mix of the following precision-guided bombs (unit costs reflect 2026 procurement data and include the cost of the warhead and guidance kit, if applicable): 2,000lb GBU-31, $107,266; 1,000lb GBU-32, $78,923; 500lb GBU-38, $74,975; 250lb Small Diameter Bomb, $67,000.

Interceptors

Israel has fired an estimated 820 interceptors from its David’s Sling, Iron Dome, and Arrow 3 platforms through roughly the first two weeks of the war. In 2025, the US provided $40 million, $110 million, and $50 million in missile aid, respectively, for these systems, enough to fund 40 interceptors for David’s Sling, 2,750 for the Iron Dome, and 17 for the Arrow 3. Expect Trump to include billions of dollars for Israeli interceptors in any war funding request.

I may revisit this methodology. For bombs, why didn’t I just put the value of the pending arms deals? For interceptors, why did I only include the $200 million in US missile aid earmarked for procurement and not the other $300 million for R&D, when the latter frees up Israeli funding for missile procurement?

There’s always time for methodological adjustments during endless war.

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Alexander L., Alissa Q., Amin, Andrew R., AT., B. Kelly, Barbara B., Bart B., BeepBoop, Ben, Ben C.,* Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Carol V., Catherine L., Chris, Chris G., Claudia, Cole H., Coleman J., D. Kepler, Daniel M., Dave, David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Dharna N., Elizabeth R., Emily H.,* Errol S., Foundart, Fran Q., Francis M., Frank R., Fred R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Hunter S., IBL, Irene B., Isaac, Isaac L., Jacob, James G., James H., James N., Jamie LR., Jcowens, Jeff, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jessica S., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Joshua R., Julia G., Julian L., Katrina H., Keith B., Kesh L., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Lenore B., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mark G., Marvin B., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Ron C., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Scott H., Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, Stan C., TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tony L., Tony T., Tyler M., Victor S., Wayne H., William H.,* William P.

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-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)

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Situation

The House ended the partial government shutdown last week by passing legislation containing five full-year spending bills for 2026 — Pentagon ($839 billion); Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education ($195 billion); Transportation and Housing and Urban Development ($103 billion); Financial Services and General Government ($26 billion); State Department ($50 billion) — and a temporary funding extension for the Department of Homeland Security (prorated based on its $89 billion 2025 budget).

The spending package originally contained a full-year Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, but the Senate replaced it with a two-week funding measure after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents murdered legal observer Alex Pretti, RN, which followed the murder of Renee Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.1 The Senate approved the amended legislation on January 30, sending it back to the House.2 Democratic leaders said they would use those two weeks to negotiate ICE reforms as a condition for approving the full-year DHS funding bill.

Assessing Democratic leadership’s proposed ICE reforms

On Wednesday, House and Senate Minority Leaders Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) proposed ten reforms for ICE, which you can read here. None of them involve reducing ICE funding.

The question isn’t whether these proposed reforms are any good. The question is whether they’re worth $11 billion. Why? Because there’s $11 billion for ICE in the pending 2026 DHS bill, and agreeing to the reforms unlocks the Democratic votes needed to pass it.

If you’re ICE, it’s an easy choice: take the money. First let Jeffries and Schumer concede some of their ten demands, then ignore the rest once the DHS bill passes. You’ll eventually get a strongly worded letter from Jeffries and Schumer for disregarding the agreed-upon reforms, but it’s not like your livelihood (budget) will be in danger. If Democratic leaders won’t try to cut ICE’s funding after it murders someone, they’re not going to block funding over masks and military apparel.

Trump administration goals — including deporting 1 million people per year and producing media content that shows the use of overwhelming force against immigrants — require ICE to function as a paramilitary force and occupy major metropolitan areas. Based on their proposal, Jeffries and Schumer are saying they can stop ICE’s warrantless arrests, arbitrary detention, and summary executions without ending its occupation of US cities, even though those illegal actions are part and parcel of military occupations. Money is policy: you can’t give ICE a budget larger than all but 15 militaries worldwide and expect the agency to demilitarize its behavior. Jeffries and Schumer know this.

The limits of Democratic opposition to state violence

The Jeffries–Schumer proposal speaks to a broader theme: Even when Democrats object to state violence, they’re still willing to fund it. This applies to both paramilitary (ICE) and military spending.

On January 29, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) introduced a war powers resolution prohibiting US forces from attacking Iran without congressional approval. A smart move, considering recent reports warning of an imminent US attack and Trump himself setting the precedent for the US bombing Iran — something of a red line for past administrations — in June. This time around, the goal appears to be regime change.

The next day, Kaine voted to hand Trump a record military budget. The $839 billion Pentagon funding bill, when combined with the military spending in the reconciliation bill and other 2026 funding bills,3 totals $1.02 trillion.

Within 48 hours, Kaine objected to a unilateral war with Iran and approved the funding needed to fight one. He’s willing to take action reasserting Congress’ warmaking powers, but checking executive overreach using Congress’ power of the purse is apparently too much to ask.

Kaine’s position represents the extent to which the Democratic leaders want the party to be anti-war. For party leadership, it’s OK to be pro-war and it’s OK to introduce non-binding resolutions against war, but funding war is non-negotiable. Increasing military spending is acceptable if not encouraged; cutting it is anathema.

To illustrate this point, when the GOP reconciliation bill was being considered in the House last summer, Democratic leadership discouraged its members from proposing amendments striking the bill’s more than $150 billion in military spending. (I heard this directly from Hill staff.) Keep in mind that most amendments Democrats submitted to the Big Beautiful Bill weren’t given a vote; they were symbolic. But House Democratic leaders didn’t even want to give the faintest suggestion that the party opposed a massive increase in military spending.4

Democratic leadership has apparently decided that the party will not constrain war abroad or at home by reducing military or paramilitary spending, regardless of who’s president.

Reining in the US paramilitary budget

An alternative to the Jeffries–Schumer ICE proposal: Refuse to pass a DHS bill with ICE funding.

Some argue that such a demand would be pointless because ICE already has funding from the GOP reconciliation bill ($19 billion annually over the next four years, on average). Republicans, they say, would scoff at Democrats’ demand, let temporary DHS funding lapse, and allow other DHS agencies to shut down indefinitely. Democrats’ hands are tied.

I don’t find this argument convincing. First, I don’t think the GOP would be fine leaving the rest of DHS unfunded. Take FEMA, for example. How long would congressional Republicans be willing to deny a Republican administration the ability to respond to hurricanes, floods, and the like over extra ICE funding? Or take TSA — how much patience does the Trump administration have for an extended airport security staffing shortage? Republicans’ hands are tied.

Second, the fact that ICE already has funding is not an excuse to give them more. The $11 billion in the pending DHS bill would be on top of the projected $19 billion from the reconciliation bill for 2026.5 Giving ICE that extra $11 billion would nearly triple its 2025 budget, which was already a record high.

The table below ranks the pending $30 billion ICE budget among the highest funded militaries. It comes in at 16th, exceeding the military spending of countries like Canada, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Sweden, Iran, and Switzerland. (Combined funding for ICE and the adjacent CBP stands at $66 billion, which would rank 8th.)

^Alt text for screen readers: ICE funding exceeds the military budgets of all but 15 countries. This table ranks the proposed $30 billion ICE budget for 2026 among the largest military budgets worldwide. It has 3 columns — ranking, military or agency, and funding — and 40 rows, 39 of which are country military budgets and 1 is the ICE budget. ICE is ranked 16th, larger than the military budgets of countries including Canada, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Sweden, Iran, and Switzerland. The ICE budget refers to the proposed 2026 discretionary spending in H.R.7147 plus average annual reconciliation funding in P.L.119-21. Military budgets are sourced from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Alexander L., Alissa Q., Amin, Andrew R., AT., B. Kelly, Bart B., BeepBoop, Ben, Ben C.,* Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Carol V., Catherine L., Chris, Chris G., Claudia, Cole H., Coleman J., D. Kepler, Daniel M., Dave, David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Dharna N., Elizabeth R., Emily H.,* Errol S., Foundart, Francis M., Frank R., Fred R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Hunter S., IBL, Irene B., Isaac, Isaac L., Jacob, James G., James H., James N., Jamie LR., Jcowens, Jeff, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jessica S., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Joshua R., Julia G., Julian L., Katrina H., Keith B., Kesh L., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Lenore B., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mark G., Marvin B., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Ron C., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Scott H., Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, Stan C., TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tony L., Tony T., Tyler M., Victor S., Wayne H., William H.,* William P.

* = founding member

-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)

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*ICYMI: How much aid has the US given Israel? After uncovering over $7 billion in previously unreported funds, this is the most accurate tally of US aid to Israel to date.

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House vote

Last night, the House passed a bill that pushes this year’s military budget past the $1 trillion mark. The legislation garnered the support of 149 Democrats. Just 3% of Democratic voters want to increase military spending, but 70% of House Democrats just voted for an increase.

The question is whether Democrats should be let off the hook for that vote because the Pentagon bill was bundled with two other spending bills. One reason they shouldn’t is that three-quarters of the money in the three-bill “minibus” is military spending. There’s $839 billion for the Pentagon, but only $195 billion for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and $103 billion for the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.

Another reason is that military spending enables the performative shows of force that increasingly define Trump’s foreign policy. The scale of these violent and dangerous performances will grow to fit the expanded military budget the House just gave him (pending Senate approval). The aforementioned $839 billion is on top of the $156 billion in military spending included in the Big Beautiful Bill1 and is in addition to the military spending in other 2026 budget bills, including $34 billion from the Energy Department bill (mostly for nuclear weapons); $20 billion from Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; $7 billion from Commerce, Justice, and Science; $3 billion from Homeland Security; $400 million from Transportation; and $50 million from Financial Services. Of the 12 annual spending bills, 7 include military spending.

Taken together, the pending 2026 military budget totals $1.02 trillion. Note that I only counted the money that fits within the US government’s definition of military spending,2 which excludes certain costs of war (e.g., Veterans Affairs budget) and paramilitary forces (e.g., ICE budget).3

A third reason is that this money is controlled by an executive department that can’t pass an audit. The Pentagon doesn’t properly track its spending or resources. This means that House members overwhelmingly approved a historic transfer of wealth without knowing how taxpayer dollars will actually be used.

Naturally, 89% of House Republicans — who last year slashed social welfare in the name of reducing government waste, fraud, and abuse — voted to increase funding for the single largest driver of that waste, fraud, and abuse.

30 years of failed audits

It got lost in the news cycle, but over the holidays, the Pentagon failed its eighth consecutive audit. Sounds bad. But even this framing shortchanges the department’s breathtaking negligence. The Pentagon has had 30 years to pass an audit, and it still hasn’t passed one.

The Chief Financial Officers Act (CFO) of 1990 required 24 major executive branch departments and agencies to prepare annual financial statements and have them audited. However, the CFO Act required only limited financial statements for certain agency activities. The Government Management Reform Act (GMRA) of 1994 filled this gap, directing those 24 CFO Act agencies to prepare agency-wide audited financial statements for fiscal year 1996 by March 1, 1997.4

The Pentagon submitted agency-wide financial statements for audit from 1996–2001, and failed all of them. Technically, they resulted in “disclaimers of opinion” — when an organization’s books are such a mess that there’s not even enough evidence to form an audit opinion. That’s tantamount to failure, but it’s somehow worse than the lowest grade auditors can give (“adverse opinions”). At least in those cases, there are financial records for auditors to evaluate. The Pentagon couldn’t even produce the materials auditors grade. In 2001, Congress decided to spare the Pentagon further humiliation by passing a law allowing the department to skip the annual agency-wide audit beginning in 2002. This was undone by a 2014 law that led to the resumption of full audits in 2018. The Pentagon has failed all eight audits since then, all receiving disclaimers of opinion. If auditors can’t even gather enough evidence to say what specific problems are going on, it’s likely that actual fraud is far greater than reported fraud. So the recently disclosed $10.8 billion in fraud isn’t just the tip of the iceberg, it’s the tip of that tip.

The underlying theory of the CFO Act and GMRA was that adopting private sector-style financial accounting and reporting standards would make federal agencies more efficient and accountable. Financial audits — third-party investigations of an organization’s books — support government accountability by revealing how agencies spend public money and manage the things they purchase.

Is there another system (a complex, if you will) more in need of greater accountability? The Pentagon owns 82% of the federal government’s total physical assets, eats about 50% of the budget Congress passes each year, and sends 54% of its own budget to for-profit companies. It doesn’t know the number, value, or location of all its matériel scattered across the globe on land, sea, and sky. In 2025, the Pentagon couldn’t account for at least 43% of its assets and 64% of its budgetary resources.5 How can Congress or the New York Times claim the military is under-resourced when the Pentagon itself doesn’t know what it already has?

Congress made the problem worse last night by approving a massive increase in military spending. How? Consider the following. The Pentagon couldn’t account for 47% of its assets in 2022 and 43% in 2025 — a modest improvement. However, the Pentagon is missing more stuff now than it was in 2022. Because it acquired more and more assets during the intervening years, the dollar value of the items it couldn’t account for increased by $342 billion, totaling $2 trillion in 2025.6 So while the share of the assets it can’t account for fell by 9% (or four percentage points), the dollar value of those missing assets increased by 21%. Congress rewards the Pentagon’s incompetence faster than it makes progress on audits.

The graph below shows how long it’s taken major federal agencies to pass an audit. (If you’re unsure of any of the acronyms, see here.) After the agency-wide audit requirement kicked in for 1996 (2005 for the Department of Homeland Security), some agencies passed the same year, while others took longer. All told, 23 of the 24 CFO Act agencies have received a clean audit opinion.

On average, it takes a federal agency just under two and a half years to pass an audit. The Pentagon hasn’t passed one in thirty.

^Alt text for screen readers: The Pentagon has had 30 years to pass an audit. It still hasn’t passed one. All other major federal agencies have received a clean audit opinion. This chart shows how many years each agency took to pass an audit. All CFO Act agencies were required by law to undergo agency-wide audits beginning in fiscal year 1996, except for the Department of Homeland Security, which was in 2005. Here is each agency and the first year each one passed an audit: Agriculture, 2002; Commerce, 1999; Pentagon, never passed an audit; Education, 1997; Energy, 1996; HHS, 1999; Homeland Security, 2013; HUD, 1998; Interior, 1997; Justice, 2001; Labor, 1997; State, 1997; Transportation, 1999; Treasury, 2000; Veterans Affairs, 1999; EPA, 1997; GSA, 1996; NASA, 1996; NSF, 1998; NRC, 1996; OPM, 2000; SBA, 1996; SSA, 1996; USAID, 2003.

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Alissa Q., Amin, Andrew R., AT., B. Kelly, Bart B., BeepBoop, Ben, Ben C.,* Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Carol V., Catherine L., Chris, Chris G., Claudia, Cole H., Coleman J., D. Kepler, Daniel M., Dave, David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Dharna N., Elizabeth R., Emily H.,* Errol S., Foundart, Francis M., Frank R., Fred R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Hunter S., IBL, Irene B., Isaac, Isaac L., Jacob, James G., James H., James N., Jamie LR., Jcowens, Jeff, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jessica S., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Joshua R., Julia G., Julian L., Katrina H., Keith B., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Lenore B., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mark G., Marvin B., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Ron C., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Scott H., Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, Stan C., TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tony L., Tony T., Tyler M., Victor S., Wayne H., William H.,* William P.

* = founding member

-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)

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*ICYMI: War is Trump’s answer to the affordability crisis

*Thank you, Catherine L., for supporting Polygraph! If you’re enjoying this newsletter, please consider joining Catherine and the other paid subscribers thanked at the bottom of each note.

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Situation

Last week, the House passed legislation funding the State Department for the rest of the year by a 341–79 margin, as part of a two-bill “minibus.” This morning, the Senate released the text of a four-bill spending minibus, including the Pentagon.

Between the pending 2026 budget bills for the State Department and Pentagon, there’s more than $4 billion in aid for Israel. Here’s a breakdown of this $4,017,117,000:

State Department bill

• $3.3 billion in military aid, of which “not less than” $250.3 million is for Israel to spend on arms from Israeli companies. The remaining amount functions as a gift card for Israel to buy US weapons.1

• This amount is in line with the terms of the ten-year Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Israel that has been in effect since 2019. However, contrary to popular belief, the MOU isn’t legally binding. The US gives billions of dollars in military aid to Israel each year because each year, Congress decides to do so.

• $14.6 million in economic aid, including $117,000 for an Israeli scholarship program, $3 million for Israeli development programs, $5 million for “historical, archaeological, and cultural initiatives, including in Jerusalem, that strengthen and deepen the United States-Israel special relationship,” and $6.5 million for resettling refugees in Israel.

• Meanwhile, the bill prohibits funding for UNRWA, originally established by the UN General Assembly to provide relief to the Palestinians expelled by Israel during the Nakba.2 It also prohibits funding for UN investigations into Israeli human rights violations. The bill requires certification that the Palestinian Authority is “acting to counter incitement of violence against Israelis and is supporting activities aimed at promoting peace, coexistence, and security cooperation with Israel” in order to be eligible for humanitarian or development assistance.

Pentagon bill

• $702.5 million in military aid, including $500 million for missile programs, $80 million for anti-tunneling, $75 million for counter-drone, and $47.5 million for “emerging technology.”

• The Pentagon’s Israel aid programs are labeled as “cooperative,” implying an equally shared burden and benefit. In reality, it’s just more military aid. For example, $273 million of the $500 million in missile aid in 2026 is for the Arrow 3 system, even though the US has never purchased the Arrow system and has never intended to.3

How much aid has the US given Israel?

By the time the House passed the 2026 bill with $3.3 billion for Israel, the US had already given Israel $352 billion in aid since its founding. This includes $263 billion in military aid and $89 billion in economic assistance. These inflation-adjusted amounts4 are shown on a cumulative basis in the graph below.

These figures are the products of my own research — research that I wouldn’t have made the effort to do if I thought existing figures fully captured US aid to Israel. I found over $7 billion in aid that was previously unaccounted for, mostly through a FOIA request on an obscure military assistance program. This amounts to a 2% improvement over the existing data — framed this way, my contribution sounds considerably less impressive.

The methodology section (just south of the chart) compares my findings to the three most widely cited sources on the question posed above: USAFacts, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Congressional Research Service. No two sources offer the same findings, largely because foreign aid data has to be pieced together. While the US government maintains a foreign aid database (ForeignAssistance.gov), it doesn’t cover all assistance programs, funding levels for those programs only go back to 2001, and there’s a lag time in reporting. Moreover, due to transparency issues in US foreign assistance — particularly regarding Israel — everyone’s findings are estimates. Some estimates are better than others, though.

*

The chart below starts in 1951, when the US began providing economic aid to Israel. Military assistance started in 1959. Cumulatively, the latter overtook the former in 1974, and the gap has progressively widened, particularly since economic aid fell off in the late 1990s–early 2000s. Israel still receives economic assistance — $24 million per year over the last decade, on average — but the cumulative effect is nearly imperceptible when juxtaposed with the billions of dollars in annual military aid. (For examples of how Israel uses the weapons it acquires with US military aid, see here and here.)

The military aid illustrated in the graph adhere to a bureaucratic definition of the term, meaning that only funding provided to Israel through official military assistance and “cooperative” programs is counted. For example, the $6 billion the US spent directly defending Israeli territory against counterattacks by Iran in April 2024, October 2024, and June 2025 doesn’t count as military assistance, even though the US was literally assisting Israel militarily. The point is that yes, the aid figures are enormous, and no, they don’t fully capture the financial costs of the US’s Israel policy.

^Alt text for screen readers: The U.S has given Israel $352 billion in aid. Cumulative U.S. aid to Israel, by type. Total aid, 1951 to 2025, $352 billion; including $263 billion in military aid and $89 billion in economic aid. Figures in constant 2025 U.S. dollars. Data: ForeignAssistance.gov, Freedom of Information Act request (Data Liberation Project), CRS, DSCA, GAO, author’s analysis of legislation and reporting language.

Methodology

It’s just methodological talk from here on, so feel free to attend to the rest of your emails. Thanks for opening this one.

Foreign aid data isn’t stored in one place. However, the bulk of it can be found at ForeignAssistance.gov, which is jointly managed by the State Department and USAID (or what’s left of it). First, use the live dashboard for funding data going back to 2001. Second, consult the static U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants “Greenbook” for the years before 2001. Third (optional), cross-reference the overlap period (2001–20), and reconcile any discrepancies.

This is more or less the starting point for each of the following four sources on all-time US aid to Israel: USAFacts, Council on Foreign Relations, Congressional Research Service, and Polygraph. What separates them is the level of effort in accounting for the foreign aid not included in State-USAID data.

USAFacts

A hefty portion of military aid to Israel is funded by the Pentagon. Most Pentagon-funded aid is for missile programs. This missile aid is not included in the State-USAID data. Not counting missile aid in a typical year means omitting $500 million in military aid to Israel. In 2024, it meant omitting $5.7 billion.

USAFacts based its graph only on State-USAID data and is therefore missing $18.5 billion5 from the missile aid omission alone.

^USAFacts (accessed 19 Jan 2026).

Council on Foreign Relations

CFR reports $330 billion in total US aid to Israel as of 2024, including $244 billion in military aid and $86 billion in economic aid (in constant 2024 dollars).

This is a considerably better estimate than the one above because CFR bothered to include missile aid. However, in the notes section of their graph, CFR says it started counting missile funding in 2006. Why? Pentagon funding for Israel’s Arrow program dates back to the $52 million included in the 1990 military spending bill. Excluding missile aid from 1990–2005 means CFR’s estimate is $2.3 billion6 lower than it otherwise would be.

CFR has a $100 million annual budget.

^CFR (accessed 19 Jan 2026)

Congressional Research Service

The best estimate so far. Not only does CRS include missile aid data in full, it collected all that data for us in the first place. The report containing its estimate is the single best resource on US aid to Israel; it even cites an article written by your boy.

The table below summarizes its tally. It’s slightly inconvenient that there’s no year-by-year breakdown or an inflation-adjusted total, making it all the more annoying that USAFacts and CFR set out to do those things and failed. Not a big deal.

I have questions, though. For example, why does its military aid count for 2021–25 omit funding for the Pentagon’s tunnel, drone, and emerging technology aid programs? What about the Excess Defense Articles program (discussed below)? More confounding is that CRS mentions all those programs in its report, and even itemizes annual funding levels for some of them.

^CRS (accessed 19 Jan 2026)

Polygraph

My estimate is 2% higher than CRS’s: $5.2 billion more in nominal terms or about $7 billion more in constant 2025 dollars.7 This 2% mostly comes from resolving a discrepancy between how much aid the State Department said went to Israel through a certain military aid program versus how much aid for that program appears in the State Department’s database (ForeignAssistance.gov).

The program in question is the Excess Defense Articles (EDA) program. It’s essentially the international equivalent of the 1033 program, through which the Pentagon sends matériel it deems excess to police for free. EDA does the same thing for foreign countries. CRS notes that Israel has received $6.6 billion worth of matériel through the EDA program. However, less than a sixth of that amount appears in State-USAID data, which means less than a sixth of the funding is represented in the military aid totals of USAFacts, CFR, and CRS.

The problem is that the government says one thing, but its data shows another. I solved this problem using a FOIA request published by the Data Liberation Project, which shows complete EDA data for 1993–2023. It reveals unreported data that account for the discrepancy between the State Department’s official number on the value EDA transfers to Israel and the sum of the figures in its database.8

The discrepancy comes down to how the value of arms transferred through the EDA program are counted. The Pentagon’s own EDA dataset (which only goes back to 2013) lists two values for each item transferred through the EDA program: the original cost and an adjusted cost. The original cost is the item’s acquisition value, i.e., how much the US government originally paid for the thing. The adjusted cost is between 5% and 50% of the original cost. The State Department’s official number refers to original cost, but for whatever reason, only the adjusted costs are tallied on ForeignAssistance.gov.

The adjusted value is only there for the rare instances of an EDA sale, and is irrelevant when the item is given away for free, which for Israel is 99.7% of the time. Only 9 of 3,426 EDA transfers to Israel from 1993–2023 were sales. (I threw out those 9 cases for this study.)

The value of transfers through the 1033 program — the domestic equivalent of the EDA program — are recorded by original acquisition cost. For several reasons, I believe that this is the most accurate way to track EDA transfers too. The administration agrees: a State Department fact sheet from April 2025 states, “Since 1992, the United States has provided Israel with $6.6 billion worth of equipment under the Excess Defense Articles program, including weapons, spare parts, weapons, and simulators.” If the State Department understood the value of EDA transfers in terms of their adjusted costs, it would’ve said $1 billion, not $6.6 billion. Using the FOIA data, I counted $6,562,489,557 for the aggregate original value of EDA transfers to Israel from 1992–2024 (constant 2025 dollars), which rounds to the State Department’s official figure.

The FOIA request provides EDA data for 1993–2023. My graph includes estimated EDA data for 1990–92 and 2024–25. A 1994 GAO report provided EDA data for 1990–92 as a lump sum ($454,583,000). I divided that amount evenly across those three years ($151,527,667), before adjusting for inflation. For 2024, I estimated $83,694,574 based on the $14,555,578 in adjusted value reported for 2024 on ForeignAssistance.gov multiplied by 5.75, the average ratio of original to adjusted value from 1990–2023. For 2025, I estimated $137,343,797, based on the average acquisition value of transfers from 1990–2023.

*NB: A previous version misstated Israel’s GDP per capita compared to US states. That sentence has been removed.

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Alissa Q., Amin, Andrew R., AT., B. Kelly, Bart B., BeepBoop, Ben, Ben C.,* Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Carol V., Catherine L., Chris, Chris G., Cole H., Coleman J., D. Kepler, Daniel M., Dave, David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Dharna N., Elizabeth R., Emily H.,* Errol S., Foundart, Francis M., Frank R., Fred R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Hunter S., IBL, Irene B., Isaac, Isaac L., Jacob, James G., James H., James N., Jamie LR., Jcowens, Jeff, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jessica S., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Joshua R., Julia G., Julian L., Katrina H., Keith B., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Lenore B., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mark G., Marvin B., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Ron C., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Scott H., Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, Stan C., TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tony L., Tony T., Tyler M., Victor S., Wayne H., William H.,* William P.

* = founding member

-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)

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8

If anyone from DLP is reading this: Thank you for your terrific work. Also, there are several instances of the Pentagon recording the original value in the adjusted value column, and vice-versa, evidenced by the instances in which the adjusted value is higher than the original (which should never be the case for EDA transfers). These mistakes are present in the source PDF, i.e., they’re not your fault. Happy to talk more.

*Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA) cited Polygraph in a recent letter to the Treasury Secretary on military contractor stock buybacks. You can help Polygraph appear in more footnotes by becoming a paid subscriber, like Dharna N. just did (thank you, Dharna!)

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*Latest newsletter for VIPs: Trump’s war for oil has bipartisan backing: Last month’s bipartisan passage of the $901 billion military bill gave Trump tacit approval to attack Venezuela.

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Situation

Last weekend, Trump bombed Venezuela, kidnapped its president, and threatened Cuba, Colombia, Greenland, Mexico, Venezuela (really the whole Western Hemisphere), and Iran with military force. This week, Trump said he’s going to propose a $1.5 trillion military budget next year, as Congress prepares spending bills that would give him $1 trillion this year.

The warning signs have always been there with Trump. We’re now seeing the beginning of what those signs were warning against. War is no longer just part of Trump’s political agenda; war is his political agenda. It’s a one-size-fits-all solution to all of Trump’s problems. Or so he hopes.

War is Trump’s answer to the affordability crisis

Foreign policy starts at home. For Trump, home is where his biggest political problem lies. The Epstein investigation looms large, but even that isn’t as massive a political liability as the affordability crisis, a major factor in his historically bad approval ratings. He’s desperate for a distraction.

I’m not about to argue that there’s one issue solely responsible for Trump going all-in on neoconservative aggression. There are many relevant factors, evidenced by Trump transparently fighting a war for oil companies in Venezuela, the performative aspect of his broader foreign policy, and the longstanding status of the United States as an imperial power. (I use “imperial” descriptively here, not pejoratively.1) Rather, my argument is that wars abroad can distract from problems at home, that this function is Trump’s intent, and that it’s a key part of the administration’s strategy. We’re witnessing a violent, cynical act of political self-preservation.

Trump is using war to divert the public’s attention away from his inability to govern. Here are three reasons why.

1. Trump has failed to address voters’ top concern

Affordability — the trendy term for economic security, referring to one’s ability to reliably make ends meet — is deteriorating in the United States, and has been since roughly early 2022.2 It’s been voters’ top concern for about as long. In July 2022, YouGov added “inflation/prices” as an option in its near-weekly survey on what issue Americans say is the most important. This analog for affordability immediately became the most popular selection. Analyzing the polling data, I reported last month that US voters had ranked affordability as their top concern for 41 months straight. It’s now been 42 consecutive months.3

If voters had no longer had a problem affording increasingly high costs, they wouldn’t continue ranking it as their top concern. But since they do, they do. The polling data’s message is that Trump has failed to fix the issue most responsible for his 2024 election victory, and one he campaigned heavily on. Pervasive insecurity at the human level — including economic insecurity and food insecurity, particularly among the working class — was once Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s greatest political liability. Now Trump owns it.

2. Trump has no plan to fix the affordability crisis

Trump has no credible solution to the affordability crisis, a fact the administration tacitly admits from time to time. For example, the latest annual report on food insecurity from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) was quietly released last week, covering 2024. (It was supposed to be published in October, but delayed due to the government shutdown and presumably the 18,000 layoffs at the USDA.) The study found that 48 million Americans live in food insecure households, or 14.4% of the population — a 32.1% increase over 2019. Food insecurity is the highest it’s been in over a decade.4

The Trump administration is so confident they’ll be able to fix the rising hunger problem that they not only canceled the next annual food security report, but every one thereafter, claiming that they (the reports) “do nothing more than fear monger.” Unless Congress intervenes, the USDA will not provide a study later this year revealing the effects of further fraying the social safety net during an affordability crisis. Convenient, considering the Big Beautiful Bill’s sizable social welfare cuts, particularly to SNAP (formerly, Food Stamps).

^Alt text for screen readers: Food insecurity has grown by nearly a third since 2019. Americans living in food insecure households, %: 2019, 10.9%; 2020, 11.8%; 2021, 10.4%; 2022, 13.5%; 2023, 14.3%; 2024, 14.4%. Data: United States Department of Agriculture, December 2025.

3. Trump is making the affordability crisis worse

On January 1, enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace subsidies expired, thereby doubling monthly health insurance premiums for roughly 20 million people. Two days later, Trump launched his attack on Venezuela.

The type, timing, and sequence of these events so perfectly exemplify my argument (that Trump is using war to divert the public’s attention away from his inability to govern) that I feel like they almost undermine it. Last week’s lapse in welfare followed by a dramatic escalation in warfare is a parody-level illustration of my point. After all, I’m not implying direct causality, but in that particular case, the Trump administration seems to be.

However, that exaggeration is closer to the truth than naïvely arguing that the affordability crisis has no bearing whatsoever on Trump’s escalation in Venezuela and seemingly everywhere else. That would be like saying it’s purely a coincidence that the one pandemic-era policy Democrats managed to keep alive all this time (at least until a few days ago) — after promising to make many of them permanent — is the one that sends tens of billions of dollars each year to health insurance companies.5

The expiration of the enhanced ACA Marketplace subsidies marks the official end of the pandemic welfare state, illustrated below. Notice how relief policies overlap in 2021? Now look at 2021 in the food security graph above — welfare expansion in 2021 produced a record drop in hunger, despite the economic recession. (The US also shrunk its military budget and ended a forever war in 2021.6)

^Alt text for screen readers: The rise and fall of the U.S. pandemic welfare state. A sample of pandemic-era relief, 2020 to 2025. This range chart plots the start of pandemic relief policies in green and their end in gray. Foreclosure ban, March 1, 2020 to July 31, 2021; eviction ban, September 1, 2020 to August 26, 2021; additional unemployment coverage, March 27, 2020 to September 4, 2021; extended unemployment benefits, March 27, 2020 to September 4, 2021; child tax credit expansion, March 11, 2021 to December 31, 2021; earned income tax credit expansion, March 11, 2021 to December 31, 2021; universal free school meals, March 18, 2020 to June 30, 2022; extra SNAP benefits, March 18, 2020 to February 28, 2023; uninterrupted Medicaid coverage, March 18, 2020 to March 31, 2023; Women, Infants and Children Nutrition Program increase, June 1, 2021 to September 30, 2023; child care stabilization grants, April 15, 2021 to September 30, 2023; student loan pause, March 13, 2020 to September 30, 2023; emergency rental assistance, December 27, 2020 to September 30, 2025; Affordable Care Act Marketplace enhanced subsidies, March 11, 2021 to December 31, 2025. Source: Author analysis (Stephen Semler).

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Alissa Q., Amin, Andrew R., AT., B. Kelly, Bart B., BeepBoop, Ben, Ben C.,* Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Carol V., Chris, Chris G., Cole H., Coleman J., D. Kepler, Daniel M., Dave, David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Dharna N., Elizabeth R., Emily H.,* Errol S., Foundart, Francis M., Frank R., Fred R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Hunter S., IBL, Irene B., Isaac, Isaac L., Jacob, James G., James H., James N., Jamie LR., Jcowens, Jeff, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jessica S., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Joshua R., Julia G., Julian L., Katrina H., Keith B., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Lenore B., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mark G., Marvin B., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Ron C., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Scott H., Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, Stan C., TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tony L., Tony T., Tyler M., Victor S., Wayne H., William H.,* William P.

* = founding member

-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)

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*This note is for Polygraph VIPs only. Read on if you are one, or support my work to become one.

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*See how your senators voted on the $901 billion military bill and how much they accepted from military contractors beforehand in this newsletter for Polygraph VIPs. (House version here.)

*Why I promote paid newsletters here instead of sending them to everybody directly: Paywalled emails bother me and I can’t bring myself to send them. (NB: This is admittedly a moronic business decision on my part.)

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Situation

On Tuesday, Trump announced that he had ordered a naval blockade on Venezuela, an act of war, that will continue until the country gives the US “all of the oil, land, and other assets that they previously stole from us.”1 Trump is presumably alluding to the nationalization of Venezuela’s oil industry in 1976 or its renegotiation of foreign oil contracts in 2007. If so, he’s framing a loss of oil company revenue as theft and using oil companies and “us” as synonyms.

The US orchestrated regime change in Iran in 1953 in response to its oil nationalization, and toppled the government of Iraq as part of an oil-related war in 2003.2 There are no good outcomes to US regime change in Venezuela.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and Trump’s announcement made clear that the war is squarely about that. Drugs, formerly the pretext for war, were relegated to a secondary issue, a mere byproduct of the country’s oil. What had been the glaring subtext for Trump’s escalation (oil) is now the stated justification. I’m grateful for the transparency.

As of yesterday, net support for an invasion of Venezuela among US voters stands at –36% (22% support to 58% oppose, including “strongly support” at 10% and “strongly oppose” at 44%). But Trump doesn’t need public opinion on his side to wage a major war. What he really needs is reassurance that Congress is willing to fund one.

Senate approves $901 billion military bill

On Wednesday, the Senate passed the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), authorizing $901 billion in military spending, after the House approved it a week earlier. Because the Trump administration plans to use $119 billion of the Big Beautiful Bill’s extra $156 billion military spending next year, the NDAA’s passage signals congressional support for a $1.020 trillion military budget in 2026.3 Adjusted for inflation, the only years with larger military budgets were 2010 — when nearly 200,000 US troops, excluding contractors, were in Iraq and Afghanistan — and 1944 and 1945, during World War II.

The bill passed by a 77–20 margin. Only 10% of voters want a larger military budget, but nearly 80% of the Senate just voted for one. That’s even more out of step with public opinion than House votes on the same bill. If there were a contest over which chamber can distance itself further from voter attitudes on military spending, the Senate would be winning, albeit not by much.

As I did with the 424 House votes, I looked at the money behind the 97 Senate votes, comparing how senators voted with how much each accepted from arms industry donors last election cycle. Paid subscribers already saw the full data in an interactive table (senators are ranked by political contributions received by default, but if you sort that column from lowest to highest, you’ll suddenly see a lot more no/nay votes at the top of the table.)

The chart below compares yes/yea votes and no/nay votes on the NDAA, showing the median amount each group received from military contractors before voting on the $901 billion military bill. I’m now about to state the obvious, but in a very specific way. Money in politics matters: senators who voted to increase military spending received 3.5 times as much arms industry cash as senators opposed.

This money doesn’t predict votes, but it makes aligning congressional votes with public opinion much more difficult.

In many cases, the massive cash incentive effectively rules out the possibility of simply talking a lawmaker into supporting a lower military budget using facts and reason alone. It quite literally makes them unreasonable. Public opinion isn’t enough either — public pressure is needed, and at an amount lawmakers could reasonably describe as fearful. Enough to make the money from military contractors seem trivial.4

^Senators who voted to increase military spending received 3.5 times the arms industry cash of those opposed. Median amount received (2024 election cycle), by vote. Voted YES on $901 billion military bill: $224,028. Voted NO on $901 billion military bill: $63,956. Votes: Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Political contributions (2019 to 2024): OpenSecrets.

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Alissa Q., Amin, Andrew R., AT., B. Kelly, Bart B., BeepBoop, Ben, Ben C.,* Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Carol V., Chris, Chris G., Cole H., Coleman J., D. Kepler, Daniel M., Dave, David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Elizabeth R., Emily H.,* Errol S., Foundart, Francis M., Frank R., Fred R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Hunter S., IBL, Irene B., Isaac, Isaac L., Jacob, James G., James H., James N., Jamie LR., Jcowens, Jeff, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jessica S., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Joshua R., Julia G., Julian L., Katrina H., Keith B., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Lenore B., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mark G., Marvin B., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Ron C., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Scott H., Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, Stan C., TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tony L., Tony T., Tyler M., Victor S., Wayne H., William H.,* William P.

* = founding member

-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)

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To see the money behind the House votes on the same bill, see this newsletter for Polygraph VIPs.

*This note is for Polygraph VIPs only. Read on if you are one, or support my work to become one.

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