President Donald Trump called Friday for Congress to back a $1.5 trillion defense budget alongside yawning reductions to domestic programs — making official the ambitious military increase he’s been teasing for months.

In a slate of budget fact sheets ahead of an expected broader rollout of the president’s fiscal blueprint, the White House detailed a military budget hike of more than 40 percent for the fiscal year that begins in October. The Trump administration is formally proposing Republicans in Congress enact a large chunk of that defense cash — some $350 billion — using the party-line reconciliation process to skirt the Senate filibuster and forgo bipartisan negotiations.

Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are starting to embrace the concept of sidelining Democrats to boost Pentagon dollars and immigration enforcement accounts currently unfunded amid the broader Department of Homeland Security shutdown. But Trump will struggle to build enough political will on his own side of the aisle to fulfill his defense goals as fiscal conservatives demand commensurate spending cuts after grudgingly backing the multi-trillion-dollar tax and spending package Republicans enacted along party lines last summer.

While calling for a historic increase in the military’s budget, the White House is also seeking a 10 percent cut to nondefense spending, with a proposed reduction of $73 billion from federal programs outside the military. Major targets of the administration’s proposed spending reductions are environmental programs across many federal agencies, including nixing $15 billion in grants for efforts such as renewable energy technology and $4 billion in transportation funds for programs supporting infrastructure to charge electric vehicles.

The administration is recommending that Congress eliminate $1.6 billion in research programs run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and asking lawmakers to find $45 million in savings by slashing the Interior Department’s renewable energy programs. The White House wants another $642 million in cuts to “woke and wasteful international financial institutions” within the Treasury Department budget.

The blueprint, prepared by White House budget chief Russ Vought, proposes the elimination of current fair housing initiatives at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund that awards funding to community banks and other financial institutions that lend to communities traditionally underserved by the banking industry.

It also calls for Congress to zero out funding for the Commerce Department agency that promotes minority-owned businesses and the National Endowment for Democracy, which promotes freedom in countries with authoritarian regimes that threaten U.S. interests.

For the second year in a row, Trump’s fiscal framework arrives months late and is not expected to include all of the data lawmakers rely on to write funding bills for the upcoming fiscal year. Last year, Republican lawmakers were still pressing Vought for those details well into the summer.

If last year’s Republican megabill served as Congress’ gateway drug to party-line government funding, the GOP’s latest spending plan makes clear it was habit-forming.

Nine months ago, Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to skirt a Democratic filibuster and enact more than $280 billion for the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. It shattered conventional wisdom on Capitol Hill that reconciliation’s special power couldn’t — and shouldn’t — be used to circumvent the across-the-aisle work Congress does each year to fund federal agencies.

Now President Donald Trump has given congressional Republicans until June 1 to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement — an entire government agency — through a partisan process that won’t require a single Democratic vote. Republicans are also mulling whether to fund a war in the Middle East that same way, with the White House considering a $200 billion request for supplemental funding for the Pentagon.

Republicans say this is happening because Democrats refuse to back a full Department of Homeland Security funding measure without adding guardrails on immigration enforcement activities the GOP finds intolerable, leading to the current record-breaking shutdown. Democrats also are unlikely to support giving the Trump administration additional dollars to bolster its military presence in Iran.

“Democrats have put us where we are, and we have to deal with it,” Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota, a senior Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters Monday. “We don’t have a choice.”

But Hoeven also acknowledged it could be a slippery slope. Asked whether he was worried about setting a new precedent, he conceded, “Me, as an appropriator? Yeah.”

Democrats previously used their own party-line bills during the Biden administration to fund programs opposed by Republicans, such as an $80 billion infusion for IRS tax enforcement. But that was in addition to the funding agencies received through regular appropriations, not as a substitute for it.

Democrats are pushing back on the idea they are responsible for the GOP’s go-it-alone approach — and they are warning about dire consequences.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a senior appropriator, said it would be “a tragic mistake” for Republicans to bankroll a war while sidelining their minority party colleagues.

Enacting funding through reconciliation, Coons said, “requires no compromise with the other party. And if that becomes the sole way we fund the core functions of government, that is a bad idea.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune suggested Thursday that the fallout from the current funding fight could have long-term implications, warning that it’s “not good for the country or for the future of the appropriations process or, for that matter, the future of the Senate.”

It’s just the latest blow to bipartisan norms of the congressional appropriations process during Trump’s second term. White House budget director Russ Vought has executed a playbook for undercutting cross-party funding negotiations, and Republican leaders have gone along with those tactics, including the stopgap funding patch that riled Democrats last spring and the enactment of a clawbacks package last summer that canceled billions of dollars Congress previously cleared with bipartisan support.

Many Republicans aren’t happy with how the latest step is unfolding, with top GOP appropriators especially concerned about funding a war effort without Democratic buy-in.

“I would prefer not to,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said late last month about clearing an emergency military package through the party-line process. But, he added, “we’ll wait and see. A lot of that depends on what the Democrats want to do.”

Three Hill Republican aides, granted anonymity to speak candidly, privately forecasted that the current funding breakdown will fuel a tit-for-tat future for the appropriations process. The worry is that Republican presidents will routinely be forced to use reconciliation to clear immigration enforcement funding through Congress, and Democratic presidents will have to use it to fund nondefense efforts GOP leaders are less keen on boosting.

Republicans are now exploring enacting immigration enforcement funding for the remainder of Trump’s presidency — not just the current fiscal year.

Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security funding panel, said a future Congress under Democratic control could follow the GOP’s example and use reconciliation to fund agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Health and Human Services.

“So I certainly have concerns with a bad precedent that they will be setting,” Cuellar said in an interview Thursday.

Matt Glassman, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, said “the big deal here” is “shoving the dysfunctional discretionary stuff into reconciliation.”

“Because of the ability to do party-line legislating in the reconciliation bills, it allows a back door to party-line discretionary appropriating,” he said in an interview.

Glassman also sees the creeping use of reconciliation as a way to sidestep mutually negotiated guardrails on spending. Limitations on use of money, and how much time agencies have to spend it, are longtime hallmarks of bipartisan funding negotiations.

“If you throw money into these bills, then you lose sort of the control aspect that they love to put into the appropriations with the limitation provisions,” Glassman said.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said last week that Democrats’ refusal to fund the Border Patrol or ICE without major policy changes “sets a precedent that they may one day come to regret.”

Other senior congressional appropriators contend that the bipartisan agreements Collins helped broker in recent months are proof that the annual funding process is working and that reconciliation is not a workable alternative. Despite the DHS drama, Congress managed to approve more than $1.6 trillion for every other federal department following a 43-day government shutdown last fall.

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s leading Democratic appropriator, said in a statement this week that “reconciliation will never be a substitute for the appropriations process.”

“Republicans must realize our country is safer and stronger when government funding decisions are made by both Democrats and Republicans in the House and in the Senate,” she added.

Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.

Pam Bondi is out as attorney general, but she might still be in the hot seat with Congress.

House Oversight and Government Reform Chair James Comer issued a subpoena for Bondi’s testimony last month following a bipartisan vote to compel her deposition for the panel’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Immediately following her firing Thursday by President Donald Trump, members of the committee said they still wanted to hear from her, and Comer did not rule it out.

“Since Pam Bondi is no longer Attorney General, Chairman Comer will speak with Republican members and the Department of Justice about the status of the deposition subpoena and confer on next steps,” a committee spokesperson said in a statement.

The pressure could keep building on Comer to force Bondi’s testimony or hold her in contempt of Congress if she refuses to comply — and it isn’t coming only from Democrats. The vote to subpoena Bondi was shepherded by GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who was joined by four other Republican lawmakers and all Oversight Democrats present. After news of the attorney general’s firing, Mace posted a dramatic image of Bondi’s face superimposed on the word “FIRED.”

“Bondi handled the Epstein Files in a terrible manner and seriously undermined President Trump,” Mace said in her social media post. “She has stonewalled every effort to hold the guilty accountable.”

Trump in a Truth Social post Thursday called Bondi a “Great American Patriot and a loyal friend” but did not give a reason for her departure.

The ongoing calls for Bondi’s sworn testimony underscores the extent to which she has become the administration’s fall person for the seemingly endless Epstein saga.

Trump’s own relationship with the financier has prompted a host of questions about whether he knew of Epstein’s illegal conduct. And while the president has maintained the two had a falling out years ago and he hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing, Democrats allege that his administration is engaging in a cover-up — with Bondi central to that effort.

“She has weaponized the Department of Justice to protect Donald Trump and put survivors in harm’s way by exposing their identities,” said ranking member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) in a statement Thursday. “She will not escape accountability and remains legally obligated to appear before our Committee under oath.”

Blue Light News reported nearly a month ago that Bondi was in trouble with congressional Republicans over her handling of the federal Epstein inquiry. The Oversight Committee vote to subpoena the attorney general followed a shaky appearance before the House Judiciary Committee. That same week, Trump fired then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after her fraught back-to-back performances in front of key House and Senate panels.

“I just think it’s time to get some answers,” said Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who was among the Republicans who voted with Mace to approve a subpoena for Bondi. “She’s in the batter’s box. I’d say … let her hit.”

The exact timing of Bondi’s departure from government service is unclear. In a statement on social media Thursday afternoon, she said she would be working to hand over her duties to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche over the next month. Blanche has been tapped to serve as acting attorney general until a full-time replacement is confirmed.

In the event that Bondi does appear before the committee in her capacity as a private individual, she would likely have to foot her own legal bills. Those who testify on Blue Light News about previous government service generally have to pay for their representation — including, for example, some of the former federal officials who testified in front of the Democratic-led select committee to investigate the Capitol attacks on Jan. 6, 2021.

A DOJ spokesperson did not respond to an immediate request for comment Thursday afternoon.

Democrats on the Oversight Committee aren’t likely to be sympathetic to Bondi’s plight.

Rep. Dave Min (D-Calif.) said in a statement that Bondi had “repeatedly and flagrantly violated the law and abused her position” and “must comply with the subpoena we issued and appear before our committee.”

Among some in the GOP, Bondi bears the blame for the fallout of the Epstein drama that has consumed Washington for over a year now.

In February 2025, Bondi promised to usher in a new era of transparency in the Epstein matter, but unveiled no new information. Five months later, the Justice Department in an unsigned memo announced it would not be releasing any further materials in the federal government’s investigation into the convicted sex offender. That decision drew outrage from Trump’s base, which has for years been clamoring for an Epstein “client list” that could include a vast web of powerful, wealthy men.

It launched a lengthy campaign to force the DOJ to fully release materials in the Epstein case, culminating in passage of a bill led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to make materials in the department’s possession publicly available.

As Republicans were locked in an impasse over whether to advance the bill, House Oversight absorbed the desire from members in both parties to keep demanding accountability over the stalled federal Epstein case. An Oversight subcommittee voted during an unrelated hearing to subpoena the DOJ’s Epstein files, which opened the floodgates for even more subpoenas — of everyone from the executors of Epstein’s estate to individuals in Epstein’s or his associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s orbit.

This has continued even after Congress finally passed the Massie-Khanna legislation which, in turn, led to the committee’s direct targeting of Bondi. She has been scrutinized anew in recent months for overseeing a delayed and haphazard release of the Epstein files, with critics saying the DOJ has been in flagrant noncompliance with that very bill.

In an apparent effort to neutralize the bipartisan push to compel her sworn testimony, Bondi voluntarily came to Capitol Hill last month to brief Oversight Committee members on her Department’s work around the Epstein case. She did not indicate during that closed-door meeting whether she would cooperate with the subpoena, according to Democrats in attendance.

Democrats at one point stormed out of the private briefing, saying it appeared to be an effort by Bondi to avoid testifying under oath. In wake of her termination, Khanna said in a statement she still had to answer for the lack of additional prosecutions in the Epstein case.

Only one person has been convicted on federal charges so far as part of Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme: Maxwell, his former girlfriend and associate. Under Bondi’s leadership, Maxwell was moved to a lower security prison camp in Texas after she sat for an interview with Blanche — a decision that drew questions around why she was moved to a facility perceived as less harsh. Maxwell has said she would cooperate in the congressional Epstein probes if she is granted clemency by Trump.

Lawmakers will almost certainly ask Bondi about this dynamic, if given the chance.

“Firing her does not end this,” said Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.), a member of Oversight, in a statement. “Her removal only increases the urgency for the Oversight Committee to fulfill its oversight obligations.”