White House asks for record-breaking $1.5 trillion for defense in 2027 budget request
President Donald Trump pauses as he finishes speaking about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The White House, in their budget request for the 2027 fiscal year, is asking Congress to approve roughly $1.5 trillion for defense — a record-breaking military spending request as the U.S. remains in its fifth week of war with Iran.
That is a $445 billion, or a 42% increase from the 2026 total level, according to the White House. Non-defense spending is reduced by $73 billion, or 10%, according to the budget released by the White House on Friday.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
The Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, Va., Jan. 17, 2026. (Kendall Warner/The Virginian-Pilot/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(RICHMOND, Va.) — Early voting begins Friday in an unusual off-cycle election in Virginia that could have major implications for control of the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections.
Voters in Virginia are heading to the polls for a statewide election, set for April 21, on a constitutional amendment that would allow their legislature to redraw the state’s congressional map.
This would let the Democratic-controlled legislature implement a new proposed map that would make four GOP-held congressional districts favor Democrats. Given the razor-thin margins of the House — where Democrats only need to net three seats in November to regain control — even flipping that many seats in Virginia could be decisive for control of the chamber.
It’s a gambit that Democrats both in Virginia and nationally say is necessary after Republican-led redistricting in 2025 gave the GOP nine redrawn seats that now favor Republicans across four states.
Former President Barack Obama, in a video released Thursday to promote a yes vote on the amendment, claimed that Republicans pursued mid-decade redistricting “for a simple reason: to give themselves an unfair advantage in the midterms this fall … This amendment gives you the power to level the playing field in the midterms this fall.”
Republicans have called the plan to redraw seats a political power grab, decrying the move as going against the will of voters in Virginia who previously voted in favor of a redistricting commission.
Rep. Ben Cline, one of the Virginia Republicans whose seat is among those targeted, wrote on X on Wednesday, that “The Democrats’ plan to steal Congressional seats and disenfranchise Virginians is unconstitutional, but we’re going to have to defeat it at the ballot box on April 21.”
Democrats in Virginia’s legislature have already passed their proposed congressional map through the legislature and it has been signed by the governor; it gets implemented if voters approve the amendment. While the map is technically not on the ballot, Democrats have argued that it’s important that voters see the new lines that they are essentially voting on.
Virginia’s Supreme Court ordered twice to let the election proceed in the face of legal challenges to how Democrats passed the amendment through the legislature, although litigation continues to play out.
Gavin Newsom, governor of California, at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. Nuclear deterrence is set to be a hot topic at the conference. (Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — While it’s not Des Moines or Manchester, Munich may be on some Democrats’ path to a White House run or higher office.
Several Democrats thought to be considering 2028 presidential runs are attending the Munich Security Conference in Germany this weekend to boost their profiles and strengthen bonds with European allies strained in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term.
From Gov. Gavin Newsom of California to Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the Democrats plan to push an alternative to Trump’s aggressive and transactional foreign policy agenda, lawmakers, aides and analysts told ABC News.
Newsom is expected to address the conference, meet with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and formalize a new partnership between California and Ukraine.
In a post on X, Gallego previewed his visit, writing: “I’m headed to the Munich Security Conference this weekend to talk about rebuilding alliances and restoring steady American leadership. To meet the threat of China, the world needs a partner it can count on again, not chaos.”
At last year’s gathering, Vice President JD Vance criticized European allies, accusing them of censoring right-wing political parties and not doing more to stop illegal migration.
Since then, Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs, repeated threats to seize Greenland and calls for NATO allies to spend more on security have forced longtime U.S. allies to question American commitments.
“We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a speech in Davos, Switzerland, last month. “Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”
Democrats will have to reaffirm their support for strong transatlantic ties while navigating European skepticism after Trump’s 2024 victory, Damian Murphy, a former Democratic foreign policy staffer and senior vice president of National Security at the Center for American Progress, told ABC News.
“They have to be careful not to overpromise and send too much of a message of reassurance, because at the end of the day, Trump is still in the White House and still directs foreign policy,” he said. “But it’s important for a European audience to understand that that’s not a monolithic view.”
The conference is also an opportunity for Democrats to bring new perspectives to the world stage and give them an opportunity to “establish relationships” with world leaders, Murphy added.
Ocasio-Cortez, who is one of the most prominent progressive voices in the party, is running for reelection in 2026 and has not said whether she plans to run for Senate or the White House in 2028, though supporters have encouraged her to do so.
The New York Democrat, who does not serve on any national security committees in Congress like most lawmakers traveling to Munich, will participate in two panels on Friday, as she takes a bigger step onto the foreign policy stage.
Matt Duss, a former adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has advised Ocasio-Cortez on foreign policy, told ABC News he expects her to share a progressive perspective on foreign policy, one intertwined with her domestic politics aimed at combating economic inequality and improving the conditions for working people.
“I think it’s safe to say that the American electorate has some very serious questions and different ideas about how the U.S. should act in the world than it has previously,” Duss told ABC News.
Ocasio-Cortez has also been a critic of Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas and accused Israel of genocide against the Palestinian people. She also voted against an amendment that would have stripped U.S. funding for Israel’s missile defense systems, but has pushed back against U.S. offensive military aid to Israel.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is leading the Trump administration’s delegation to Munich, called the summit “an important conference” and that other delegations “want honesty” and “want to know where we’re going, where we’d like to go with them.”
“We live in a new era in geopolitics, and it’s going to require all of us to sort of reexamine what that looks like and what our role is going to be,” he said.
ABC News’ Isabella Murray contributed to this report
Donald Trump Jr., co-founder of World Liberty Financial, during the Token2049 conference in Singapore, on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. The crypto conference runs through Oct. 2. (Photographer: Suhaimi Abdullah/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency firm, World Liberty Financial, sold a $500 million stake to a member of the Emirati royal family shortly before his inauguration last January, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, sparking concerns over a potential conflict of interest.
According to the Journal, which reviewed undisclosed corporate documents, a firm associated with Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi royal who operates an enormous state investment fund, purchased a 49% stake in World Liberty, which is co-owned by Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and his family, just four days before the Trump administration swept into office.
Months later, the Trump administration agreed to supply the UAE with highly coveted American-made AI chips despite the prior administration’s concern that they may fall into the hands of the Chinese.
David Wachsman, a spokesperson for World Liberty Financial, acknowledged the existence of the deal in a statement to ABC News, but insisted that “neither President Trump nor Steve Witkoff had any involvement whatsoever in this transaction” and that “any claim that this deal had anything to do with the Administration’s actions on chips is 100% false.”
“We made the deal in question because we strongly believe that it was what was best for our company as we continue to grow. The idea that, when raising capital, a privately-held American company should be held to some unique standard that no other similar company would be held is both ridiculous and un-American,” the statement continued.
David Warrington, the White House counsel, told ABC News in a statement that “the President has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities,” and that “President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner and to suggest so otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious.”
But the Journal’s report adds yet another wrinkle to the U.S. decision to sell highly coveted advanced chips to the Emiratis.
As ABC News previously reported, shortly before the chips deal was announced, a UAE-backed investment firm called MGX announced last May that it would use a digital token minted by World Liberty Financial to finance a $2 billion investment in a crypto exchange Binance, a major boon for the firm.
Shiekh Tahnoon, who is the brother of the UAE’s president, also serves as MGX’s chairman.
The Biden administration declined to provide the UAE with the chips, which power some of the most sophisticated weapons on the planet, for fear they might be redirected into China.
Peter Wildeford, the head of policy at the AI Policy Network, a nonpartisan advocacy group, warned that could close the U.S.’s advantage in the AI race and compromise American security.
“If China gets their hands on these chips at scale, they would be able to launch cyberattacks against the U.S., they could build autonomous weapons that could find and sink our Navy ships — they could close the military technology gap that’s currently keeping us safe,” he said.
World Liberty has emerged as perhaps the most lucrative of the Trump family’s various business ventures, either in cryptocurrency or real estate. ABC News reported last year that the Trump family secured a roughly $5 billion windfall when trading of World Liberty’s digital token opened.
According to the Journal, Shiekh Tahnoon agreed to pay half of his investment in World Liberty up front. Based on the ownership structure of the company at the time, that meant a payment of as much as $187 million into the Trump family’s coffers on the eve of his return to office.
Ethics experts said the concept of a foreign government official secretly directing hundreds of millions of dollars to a company owned in part by the president has no known precedent — and raises a host of ethical and national security concerns.
“Maybe the President would have reached the same decision over the transfer of high techn [chips] to UAE if he wasn’t also getting money from them,” said Robert Weissman, the co-president of the advocacy group Public Citizen. “But we’ve got no way to know that, and we do know there was a lot of opposition inside the government to do exactly what he has OK’d.”
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly maintained that the president “only acts in the best interests of the American public,” and said that no conflict of interest exists in part because the president’s assets are held in a blind trust managed by his children. Typically, a blind trust would operate with an independent trustee.
“President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children,” Kelly added. “There are no conflicts of interest.”
The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Congressional Democrats leapt at new details in the report, characterizing the transaction as further evidence of alleged pay-for-play. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., alleged “mind blowing corruption,” in a post to X.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., issued a statement calling the deal “corruption, plain and simple.”
“Foreign countries are bribing our president to sell out the American people,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., claimed in a post to X.
Shortly before the chips deal was announced last May, a UAE-backed investment firm called MGX said it would use a digital token minted by World Liberty Financial to finance a $2 billion investment in a crypto exchange Binance. Tahnoon also serves as MGX’s chairman.
MGX is also one of the few companies with a major ownership stake in the new TikTok U.S. joint venture, with a 15% stake in the new entity.
