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.
Construction on the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve building in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (Pete Kiehart/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Prosecutors from the U.S. attorneys office in Washington were turned away Tuesday after they made an unannounced visit to the Federal Reserve, where they allegedly requested a tour of renovations that have attracted scrutiny from the Trump administration, sources familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.
The unusual visit prompted immediate backlash from an attorney for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who wrote a letter to D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office, citing the recent ruling from a federal judge that blocked subpoenas to the bank after determining DOJ’s criminal probe was driven by President Donald Trump’s political animus towards Powell.
Robert Hur, who formerly served as special counsel who investigated former President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents and now represents Powell, warned DOJ in the letter reviewed by ABC News that future efforts to initiate contact with Fed representatives should be negotiated through legal counsel.
“As you know, Chief Judge [James] Boasberg has concluded that your interest in the Federal Reserve’s renovation project was pretextual. Should you wish to challenge that finding, the courts provide an avenue for you; it is not appropriate for you to try to circumvent it,” Hur said. “I ask that you commit not to seek to communicate with my client outside the presence of counsel.”
According to Hur’s letter, attorneys from Pirro’s office, Carlton Davis and Steven Vandervelden, and a case agent showed up at the Fed’s headquarters, stating they wished to “check on progress” and that they asked for a “tour.”
A source said they were then told they could not access the site without preauthorized clearance from Fed management and were given the contact information for the Fed’s legal counsel, after which the three left the area.
“Any construction project that has cost overruns of almost 80% over the original construction budget deserves some serious review,” Pirro said in a statement on X after the prosecutors were turned away. “And these people are in charge of monetary policy in the United States?”
Pirro publicly vented her frustrations about Boasberg’s ruling that effectively blocked her office from investigating Powell, which she has vowed to continue appealing despite threats from Republican Sen. Thom Tillis to block any confirmation of Powell’s replacement until the criminal probe is resolved.
The probe centered on Powell’s testimony to Congress last year about cost overruns in a multibillion-dollar office renovation project.
Trump on Wednesday again threatened to fire Powell if he does not step down when his term as chair ends May 15.
“I’ll have to fire him, OK, if he’s not leaving on time — I’ve held back firing him. I’ve wanted to fire him, but I hate to be controversial, you know, I want to be uncontroversial,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo.
Legal experts have questioned if Trump has the authority to fire Powell. His attempt to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook last year is currently awaiting a decision at the Supreme Court.
The confrontational visit also comes as Pirro’s name has repeatedly been floated as a potential permanent replacement for Pam Bondi as the next attorney general.
Powell rebuked the investigation in a video message in January as a politically motivated effort to influence the Fed’s interest rate policy.
Pirro, at a press conference in March, denied that politics played any role in her probe of Powell and the focus was whether public money has been wasted as a result of the Fed’s renovations, and potential false statements to Congress by Powell about the operations.
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon on March 2, 2026 in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth heads to Capitol Hill Wednesday for what is formally billed as a routine hearing on the Pentagon’s budget request.
But the appearance — the first before Congress for Hegseth since the war in Iran began in February — lands just two days before a 60-day deadline to wind down hostilities.
It also comes amid intensifying questions on the Hill about how quickly the Pentagon is depleting weapons stockpiles, and as lawmakers continue to scrutinize Hegseth’s unusual spate of firings of senior defense officials without a public explanation.
Questions over civilian casualties in the Iran war, as well as whether the U.S. was properly prepared for retaliatory strikes, and broader questions over the strategic rationale for the conflict, are likely to be a key part of committee members on both sides of the aisle questioning of Hegseth, multiple congressional aides explained.
This week marks Hegseth’s first return to Capitol Hill in nearly a year — with testimony Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee and Thursday on the Senate side — and his first exposure to sustained scrutiny since the war with Iran began. He’ll be joined by Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at both hearings.
While Hegseth has appeared before the press since the conflict began in late February, he has largely limited engagement to reporters viewed as sympathetic to the administration.
At the center of this week’s hearings is the administration’s request for $1.5 trillion in defense spending, the largest amount in the Pentagon’s history and a jump of 50% over current levels, which would mark the largest single-year increase in a generation.
The proposal would triple spending on drones and related technologies to more than $74 billion, while directing over $30 billion toward munitions procurement. But that budget request was developed months ago: not account for spending in the war with Iran.
“The overlap, you’ll see, is the request for munitions, which is something we always need,” Jules Hurst III, acting undersecretary of defense and the Pentagon’s comptroller, told reporters last week. “We always need to increase our magazine depth. But outside of that, there aren’t any operational costs in here from Iran.” Hurst is set to join Hegseth and Caine at the Senate hearing on Thursday.
That means the Pentagon may require additional funding to cover the cost of the vast quantities of munitions being expended as U.S. forces have struck more than 13,000 targets in Iran since February, along with other significant war-related expenses.
Defense experts have long raised concerns about stockpile constraints even before the war with Iran, with some estimates of a potential conflict with China suggesting the United States could exhaust long-range missile inventories within the first few weeks of fighting.
In less than two months of exchanging fire with Iran, the U.S. has used roughly half of certain missiles and other munitions, according to an analysis published last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Retired Col. Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at CSIS and an author of the report, said Operation Epic Fury “does create a window of vulnerability” for a period of as many as four years – the time it would take to replenish stocks.
“The United States has enough munitions to fight this war if it stubs up again,” Cancian said. “But the risk is in a future war with China, where inventory levels are far below where war planners would like them to be.”
Pentagon officials have maintained the U.S. has enough ammo to fight Iran. Though rearming the force with new munitions can take years, with some missiles requiring one to two years to build, reflecting an inherent limit on how many complex munitions the defense industry can produce each year, spurring much of the interest in huge investments in relatively cheap, easier-to-produce drones, which the Pentagon continues to surge into the Middle East.
Hegseth is also likely to face questions on his unprecedented firing or sidelining of two dozen senior military officials, particularly during a time of war, where he recently fired Gen. Randy George, who was the Army’s top officer and John Phelan, the Navy secretary.
Hegseth has also fired numerous lower-profile generals, without explanation, including Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., who was the chief of the Army Chaplain Corps, a collection of clergy from different faiths within the service. He has also blocked the promotion of four colonels to brigadier general, two of whom are women and two are Black, according to two U.S. officials, who both described a secretary of defense intervening in promotions as unprecedented.
Meanwhile, Democrats have failed in their multiple attempts to rein in President Donald Trump’s authority to wage war in Iran without Capitol Hill’s approval.
The 1973 War Powers Resolution gives the president latitude to conduct military strikes for a 60-day window, which closes Friday. The law allows for a one-time 30-day extension for the president to act without the consent of lawmakers, though it is unclear whether Trump intends to do so or whether Republicans will take into account the ceasefire in a way that relieves any deadline pressure.
A view of the Wisconsin State Capitol at sunset on February 3, 2026 in Madison, Wisconsin. (Photo by Joe Timmerman/Catchlight/Wisconsin Watch via Getty Images)
(MADISON, Wis) — Wisconsinites will vote for a new state Supreme Court justice on Tuesday in a race that could maintain or widen the court’s liberal majority for years.
In a state home to some of the country’s tightest races, Democrats have won four of the last five Supreme Court elections by large margins. President Donald Trump carried Wisconsin by less than a percentage point in 2024.
Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judges Chris Taylor and Maria Lazar are competing for an open seat to replace retiring conservative-aligned Justice Rebecca Bradley. Unlike last year’s race, the ideological balance of the court is not in play. Yet the seven-member body has resolved disputes between the GOP-controlled state legislature and the Democratic governor.
In 2020, the court narrowly rejected a Trump lawsuit that would have tossed out more than 220,000 absentee ballots. And with the governor’s seat and control of the statehouse up for grabs, this year could prove no different. Justices are elected to 10-year terms and could potentially hear election or redistricting-related litigation in the future.
Taylor is a former Dane County Circuit Court judge and former Democratic lawmaker representing deep-blue Madison in the state assembly. Lazar is a former Waukesha County Circuit Court judge and assistant attorney general during former Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s tenure.
Though the race is nominally nonpartisan, the candidates have received endorsements from political figures. Former President Barack Obama endorsed Taylor, while Republican congressmen, including GOP gubernatorial candidate Rep. Tom Tiffany, endorsed Lazar.
In 2023, liberals flipped the majority to 4-3 for the first time in 15 years. In 2025, another liberal victory preserved their control of the court until at least 2028.
Lazar is a self-described constitutional conservative who has focused her messaging on restoring impartiality to the court. She called Taylor “a radical, extreme legislator” while her opponent labeled Lazar as an extremist with a “right-wing political agenda” in a debate aired Thursday by ABC affiliate WISN.
The shadow of Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban, struck down by the court in 2025, also loomed large this year.
Asked how she would have ruled on that case, Lazar declined to answer. But she reiterated that she will honor the ruling, which reinstated what she called the “20-week compromise” in place before the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
Though this race is attracting less national attention than in years prior, Taylor campaigned on similar issues that have worked in Democrats’ favor. A former policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, her messaging has focused on protecting abortion and democracy.
She also hasn’t shied away from addressing bread-and-butter issues. In one ad, she warned of rising costs and “extremists” stripping Wisconsinites of food assistance.
Taylor entered the race in May 2025. She significantly outraised and outspent Lazar, who launched her campaign five months later. Taylor raised nearly $2.1 million between Feb. 3 and March 23, while Lazar raised about $474,000 in the same period.
Compared to the record-setting levels of spending in the 2025 race, it’s a drop in the bucket. That race saw total spending surpass $100 million, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk barnstormed Wisconsin that year, handing out controversial million-dollar checks and warning “Western civilization” was at stake.
There are roughly 3.6 million active registered voters in the state as of this month, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The latest tally shows that 324,396 people voted early.
Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Central time. The new term will take effect on Aug. 1.
