Trump’s budget request for 2026, a breakdown
Polygraph | Newsletter n°301 | 6 May 2025
IN THIS NEWSLETTER: A top-level analysis of the Trump administration’s FY2026 budget request.
Situation
On Friday, Trump released his long-awaited budget request for next year — sort of. The full proposal for FY2026 is expected later this month. What we got a couple days ago was a preview — a “skinny” budget, as some call it. These previews provide topline budgetary figures, but not much else. Still, there’s enough information to decipher political intent.
Topline analysis of the FY2026 budget request
Total discretionary funding requested: $1.69 trillion
Military spending: $1.01 trillion
Military spending as a share of the total: 60%
Military spending as a share of the FY2025 total (for comparison): 49%
Non-military spending: $679 billion
Non-military spending as a share of total: 40%
Share of “non-military” spending for the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and Veterans Affairs: 40%
Funding for departments whose primary purpose isn’t military, military-adjacent, or policing: $409 billion
Share of total requested funding for those departments: 24%
My mood: Irritable
^Alt text for screen readers: Over 75% of Trump’s budget is for military, police. This donut chart shows a breakdown of the $1.69 trillion budget request. Pentagon, $1.01 trillion; DHS, DOJ, VA, $265.2 billion; other, $404 billion. Data: OMB, fiscal year 2026 discretionary funding request. Pentagon amount refers to budget function 050.
*My methodology for this calculation is typically more nuanced (see examples here and here). This is due to the data limitations of the FY2026 budget request preview.
*Figures do not factor in military aid funded through the State Department’s budget.
*I double-counted the FBI’s counterterrorism budget, which is funded by DOJ but falls under budget function 050. This accounts for about half of the FBI’s discretionary funding, which should amount to about $5 billion based on the FBI’s FY2026 request (specific numbers are not available in the budget preview). Therefore, I updated the DHS, DOJ, VA portion of the chart from $275.2B to $270.2B, and the Other portion from $404B to $409B. These changes are reflected in the text, too. The share of budget function 050 funding plus non-050 funding in the DHS, DOJ, and VA budgets is still 76%.
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