Trump and his associates have ripped through the executive branch over the past year, hacking and slashing at government expenditures on the authority of what they claim is a “mandate from the people.” The result has shuttered several core agencies, including the Department of Education, USAID, and Voice of America, while others, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, have been hollowed out through enormous staff reductions.
Following the Project 2025 blueprint, the president and his congressional allies also took aim at Medicaid, cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from the public health insurance program.
The savings, however, will not be felt by voters. Republicans opted to spend that money elsewhere, such as on a massive budget bump for ICE and enormous tax cuts for the ultrawealthy. This will result in a near-identical level of discretionary spending for 2026 compared to the previous fiscal year, according to a preliminary analysis of federal budget records by the Penn Wharton Budget Model, as reported by The New York Times.
