WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday proposed setting U.S. military spending at $1.5 trillion in 2027, citing “troubled and dangerous times.”

Trump called for the massive surge in spending days after he ordered a U.S. military operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and spirit him out of the country to face drug trafficking charges in the United States. U.S. forces continue to mass in the Caribbean Sea.

The 2026 military budget is set at $901 billion.

Trump in recent days has also called for taking over the Danish territory of Greenland for national security reasons and has suggested he’s open to carrying out military operations in Colombia. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ominously warned that longtime adversary Cuba “is in trouble.”

“This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe,” Trump said in a posting on Truth Social announcing his proposal.

The military just received a large boost of some $175 billion in the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill” of tax breaks and spending reductions that Trump signed into law last year.

Insisting on more funding for the Pentagon is almost certain to run into resistance from Democrats who work to maintain parity between changes in defense and non-defense spending. But it’s also sure to draw objections from the GOP’s deficit hawks who have pushed back against larger military spending.

But Trump said he feels comfortable surging spending on the military because of increased revenue created by his administration through tariffs imposed on friends and foes around the globe since his return to office.

The U.S. government collected gross revenues of $288.5 billion last year from tariffs and other excise taxes, up from $98.3 billion in 2024, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. That’s a meaningful increase in revenues from taxing imports. But it’s not enough to cover the various promises made by Trump, who has said the tariffs can also cover dividends to taxpayers, pay down the national debt and, now, cover increased spending on the military.

Meanwhile, Trump on Wednesday also threatened to cut off Pentagon purchases from Raytheon, one of the biggest U.S. defense contractors, if the company did not end the practice of stock buybacks and invest more profits into building out its weapons manufacturing capacity.

“Either Raytheon steps up, and starts investing in more upfront Investment like Plants and Equipment, or they will no longer be doing business with Department of War,” Trump said on social media. “Also, if Raytheon wants further business with the United States Government, under no circumstances will they be allowed to do any additional Stock Buybacks, where they have spent Tens of Billions of Dollars, until they are able to get their act together.”

The threat came as the president issued an executive order calling on the Pentagon to begin a review to spot defense contractors who are underperforming on fulfilling contracts and insufficiently investing in building manufacturing but are still engaging in stock buybacks or distributing dividends to shareholders.

The order also calls for the Pentagon to take steps to ensure future contracts with any new or existing defense contractor contain a provision prohibiting stock buybacks during a period of underperformance on U.S. government contracts. The order also calls for the Pentagon to stipulate in future contracts that executive incentive compensation is not tied to short-term financial metrics.

Trump in recent months has repeatedly complained broadly that defense companies have been woefully behind on deliveries of critical weaponry, yet continue to mete out dividends and stock buybacks to investors and offering eye-popping salaries to top executives.

The criticism of Raytheon, however, was the most pointed to date of a particular contractor.

The company is responsible for making some of the military’s most widely used and notable missiles, including the Tomahawk cruise missile, the shoulder-launched Javelin and Stinger missiles, and the Sidewinder air-to-air missile.

Raytheon also owns Pratt and Whitney, a company that is responsible for manufacturing a host of jet engines that power aircraft for all the military branches, including the newest F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

On Wall Street, shares of defense contractors fell, with Northrop Grumman dropping 5.5%, Lockheed Martin declining 4.8% and RTX Corp., the parent company of Raytheon, slipping 2.5%.

Raytheon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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AP writers Josh Boak, Stephen Groves, Paul Harloff and Lisa Mascaro contributed reporting.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he wants to block large institutional investors from buying houses, saying that a ban would make it easier for younger families to buy their first homes.

Trump — who has been under pressure to address voters’ concerns about affordability ahead of November midterm elections — is tapping into long-standing fears that corporate ownership of homes has pushed out traditional buyers, forcing more people to rent. But his plan does little to address the overarching challenges for the housing market: a national shortage of home construction and prices that have climbed faster than incomes.

“People live in homes, not corporations,” Trump said in a social media post as he called on Congress to codify his ban.

Last month, Trump pledged in a prime-time address that he would roll out “some of the most aggressive housing reform plans in American history” this year. The president said he would discuss housing and affordability in more detail in two weeks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, an event known for attracting CEOs, wealthy financiers and academics with a global focus who often run contrary to Trump’s populist rhetoric.

The president has in the past floated extending the 30-year mortgage to 50 years in order to lower monthly payments, an idea that has been criticized because it would reduce people’s ability to create housing equity and increase their own wealth.

With Trump’s proposed ban, the challenge is that institutional investors are only a tiny sliver of homebuyers, accounting for just 1% of total single-family housing stock, according to an August analysis by researchers at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank based in Washington. The analysis defined these investors as owning 100 or more properties.

The analysis notes that institutional ownership varies nationwide, reaching 4.2% in Atlanta, 2.6% in Dallas and 2.2% in Houston. But these investors tend not to dominate neighborhoods, even if they’re generally more concentrated in lower- and middle-income communities.

Some Democrats have called for crackdowns on corporate ownership of homes, but Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told reporters Wednesday that the Trump administration could cause housing prices to rise by allowing the real estate companies Compass and Anywhere to merge.

“But he’s feeling the heat because the American people want to see us lower the cost of housing and it is Democrats who are committed to getting that done,” Warren said.

The Senate in October passed a bipartisan bill sponsored by Warren that would create incentives for local governments to streamline zoning regulations, among other policies, to increase the supply of housing, but the measure has been held up in the Republican-majority House.

The larger challenge has been a shortage of new construction, such that Goldman Sachs in October estimated in October that 3 million to 4 million additional homes beyond the normal construction levels would need to be built to relieve cost pressures. Mortgage rates also climbed in the inflation that followed the coronavirus pandemic, causing monthly payments on home loans to increase dramatically faster than incomes.

Still, Trump said last month that an increase in new construction would create a dilemma as it could cause existing home values to drop and that would come at the expense of many existing homeowners’ net worth.

“I don’t want to knock those numbers down because I want them to continue to have a big value for their house,” Trump said. “At the same time, I want to make it possible for young people out there and other people to buy housing. In a way, they’re at conflict.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has finalized a plan to roll back regulations implementing a landmark environmental law that the White House says needlessly delays federal approvals for energy and infrastructure projects.

The action Wednesday by the White House Council on Environmental Quality rescinds regulations related to the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to consider a project’s possible environmental impacts before it is approved.

Katherine Scarlett, who leads the council, said in a statement that the directive will “slash needless layering of bureaucratic burden and restore common sense to the environmental review and permitting process.”

Under Trump, she added, “NEPA’s regulatory reign of terror has ended.”

The action comes as Congress considers legislation intended to speed up permitting reviews for new energy and infrastructure projects and limit judicial review under that law.

Republicans and many Democrats believe the 56-year-old law has become mired in red tape that routinely results in yearslong delays for major projects. The law requires detailed analysis for such projects and allows for public comments before approvals are issued.

A bill approved by the Republican-controlled House would place statutory limits on environmental reviewsbroaden the scope of actions that do not require review and set clear deadlines. It also would limit who can bring legal challenges and legal remedies that courts can impose.

Democrats agree the permitting process has become unwieldy, but say the House bill undercuts public input and participation while overly restricting judicial review.

Efforts to approve permitting changes were set back last month after the administration suspended five major offshore wind projects on the East Coast because of unspecified national security concerns.

Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said the administration’s “reckless and vindictive assault on wind energy” destroyed the trust needed to enact a bipartisan overhaul of the law.