The U.S. national debt is on track to reach $64 trillion within a decade as the federal government continues its trend of red-ink balances under President Donald Trump and Republican control of Congress.

The Congressional Budget Office released its marquee report Wednesday on the U.S. fiscal outlook, estimating that the tax and spending package Republicans enacted last summer — along with Trump’s immigration policies — will increase deficits by trillions of dollars over the next decade. That budget gap would essentially cancel out the roughly $3 trillion in deficit reduction Trump’s tariffs are expected to produce.

Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper predicts that the U.S. will run a $1.9 trillion deficit during the current fiscal year as the national debt currently exceeds $38 trillion. The annual deficit is then forecast to grow to $3.1 trillion by 2036.

Growing interest costs and spending on safety-net programs drives the expanding gap between how much money flows into federal coffers each year and how much is doled out.

Debt compared to economic output is also on track to soar in the coming years. CBO predicts that federal debt held by the public will rise from 101 percent of gross domestic product this year to 120 percent in a decade, exceeding the previous high of 106 percent of GDP in 1946.

As the CBO predicted last summer, the Republican megabill Trump signed into law in July will help boost economic growth this year. But that will be partially offset by the economic effects of Trump’s tariffs and increased immigration enforcement.

Donald Trump still raises far more money online than any other GOP figure.

Democrats get major fundraising boosts when they clash with him.

And the Democratic money machine continues to churn — a sign of hope for a party seeking to regroup from brutal losses the year prior.

Those are among the key patterns that appeared in a Blue Light News analysis of online fundraising across 2025, as both parties began to gear up for highly competitive midterms.

The sweeping Blue Light News analysis of data from ActBlue and WinRed — the primary fundraising platforms for each party — revealed how Trump, who is constitutionally barred from seeking reelection, is still at the center of the GOP’s digital and financial universe. And while Democrats continue to debate how much they should focus on opposing Trump in their broader campaign messaging, the data shows just how strongly the GOP president motivates liberal donors.

Major surges in online Democratic fundraising were fueled by members of the party standing up to — or being attacked by — the president. Democratic candidates’ biggest fundraising days on ActBlue were all driven by conflict with Trump, with those days accounting for millions of dollars raised from tens of thousands of donors giving online for the first time this cycle.

Among Republicans, Trump’s own joint fundraising committee, Trump National Committee, continued to raise the most money out of anyone on WinRed in 2025, bringing more over the course of the year than the next two biggest GOP groups combined. Trump’s political operation accounted for more than 1 in 5 total dollars raised federally through WinRed last year.

ActBlue and WinRed report all donations made to federal campaigns and committees through their platforms, providing a detailed picture of small-dollar giving. The platforms are so dominant that they include the vast majority, though not all, of online donations for both parties.

The data provides insight not only into who raised the most but the specific moments that drove donors to give.

Leading the way was Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who saw a massive surge in donations when he broke records with a 25-hour quasi-filibuster speech protesting the Trump administration’s policies.

Booker’s campaign committee received nearly 92,000 donations totaling $2.5 million on ActBlue on April 2, the day after his speech finished. It was the highest single-day total for any federal committee on the platform in 2025. For roughly a third of those donors, it was their first donation of the year on ActBlue.

The New Jersey senator was not the only Democrat to get a donation boost off of standing up to Trump. California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s joint fundraising committee saw a massive surge in donations in early June after he sued the Trump administration to block the deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles and Trump suggested arresting the governor. The group, Campaign for Democracy, recorded more than 47,000 donations on June 11, for a total of $1.3 million.

That was the start of a three-day surge that accounted for nearly one-third of all online donations to the Newsom joint fundraising committee in 2025.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) saw nearly 43,000 donations for a total of nearly $1.3 million to his campaign committee Nov. 25 after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the Pentagon to investigate whether a video that featured Kelly and others advising troops not to follow illegal orders was itself unlawful. Roughly 1 in 5 donations on the platform that day went to Kelly’s campaign.

Kelly then remained the top fundraiser nearly every day for three weeks after that, bringing in donations from about 278,000 unique donors in November and December. That surge set Kelly apart from other Democratic figures last year for both its intensity and duration. The Blue Light News analysis found that more than three-quarters of donors in that time period had not given to Kelly previously in the year. For 1 in 5 of his donors, it was the first time they’d given to any Democrat through ActBlue in the entire year.

Kelly’s strong preexisting brand helped him leverage the attack from Trump into a fundraising bonanza, said Mike Nellis, a democratic digital strategist and founder of the firm Authentic.

“You can raise a ton of money by just opposing Trump,” Nellis said. “But if you want to elevate yourself into that stratosphere of becoming a household name that people believe in, with Democratic donors who are going to give you $5, $10, $25, over and over and over, you’ve got to go a little bit deeper.”

Democrats’ dream of flipping the Senate also fueled massive contributions. A handful of Senate candidates — Roy Cooper in North Carolina, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Janet Mills in Maine and both James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett in Texas — were the top Democratic online fundraisers when they launched their respective campaigns.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), the only incumbent Democratic senator seeking reelection in a state Trump won in 2024, brought in $32.5 million through ActBlue in 2025, more than any other candidate on the platform. Democrats running in competitive Senate races this year were consistently among the top overall fundraisers on ActBlue, as was the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee itself.

The online fundraising landscape for Democrats looking to take back the House was more muddled, with the top fundraising numbers coming more often from progressive stars than candidates in competitive races.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), long a fundraising powerhouse, raised $22.8 million on ActBlue in 2025, the most of any House Democrat, followed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who raised just shy of $11 million through his campaign and joint fundraising committee, then Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-Va.) and Eileen Laubacher, one of the Democrats seeking to challenge Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) in a heavily Republican district.

Those House candidates reflect a few of the different ways that virality can help online fundraising. More than 400,000 donors gave to Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign more than once in 2025, reflecting her strength with returning donors. Laubacher’s numbers reflect how running in a district represented by a high-profile Republican can attract Democratic donors — even as she still has to get through a primary to face Boebert.

But vulnerable Democratic House incumbents and candidates running in some of the most competitive battlegrounds were not represented among those with the best online fundraising numbers — a challenge for party strategists as they fight for the resources to flip the House.

“The things that work to raise money from small donors are the opposite of the things that work to beat MAGA,” said Liam Kerr, co-founder of the centrist Democratic group WelcomePAC.

At the same time, Kerr said that there was enough variety in the candidates who put up strong online fundraising numbers to suggest that more moderate candidates can make inroads.

Donors give, Kerr said, because they want to “feel like they’re part of something.” If candidates in key races can start to capture the attention of donors across the country, then, he said, “the base of the raged donor class would start to shift to what they thought could beat Trump.”

Methodology: Donations and monetary totals are based on ActBlue and WinRed receipts, not reports from campaigns. Donations that were later refunded are still included in the totals.

There’s nothing like the ire of constituents to motivate lawmakers to end a government shutdown. But it could take weeks for the public to start noticing the funding lapse set to hit DHS on Saturday if Congress doesn’t act.

TSA airport screeners, for instance, wouldn’t miss full paychecks until March, and billions of dollars remain in the FEMA coffers used for immediate response to disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes and floods.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem could find creative ways to lessen the pain of a shutdown. That could include bankrolling paychecks for DHS law enforcement personnel and active-duty members of the Coast Guard by tapping money from the tax and spending package Republicans enacted last summer, as the agency did during the shutdown last fall.

This could decrease pressure on lawmakers to fund DHS amid negotiations over a crackdown on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics. Congress doesn’t have forever, though, before the pain starts to kick in across the department.

Immigration and border security 

The Trump administration’s immigration and border security operations are at the heart of the partisan dispute that could spark a shutdown. Compared to other parts of the agency, though, the federal government’s three immigration-focused agencies aren’t as affected by funding lapses.

About 40 percent of funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is untouched by a lapse. That’s because the agencies receive a combination of mandatory funds, revenue from fees and billions of dollars from the GOP megabill Trump signed into law in 2025.

Of the three, CBP relies most on the cash Congress provides each year in the regular government funding bills. But the agency received $65 billion from the party-line legislation Republicans cleared last summer, in addition to the $75 billion the law included for ICE.

TSA

When airport security screeners start missing pay, many stop showing up to work, causing TSA lines to grow at hubs throughout the country. In prior shutdowns, that started happening about a month in.

This time, screeners would begin missing full paychecks in mid-March, likely spurring longer waits during the peak of spring break travel.

While DHS paid air marshals during the historic government shutdown last fall, that didn’t cover checks for the TSA screeners who keep people and their baggage moving through U.S. airports.

One factor that could motivate TSA agents to show up to work anyway is the $10,000 bonuses DHS officials gave to screeners who demonstrated “exemplary service” after the funding lapse that ran through October and into November.

FEMA 

FEMA has about $7 billion left in its disaster relief fund, a sum likely to buoy the agency for at least a month or two. While most of the agency’s disaster aid work continues during a government shutdown, though, FEMA would have to start restricting its reimbursements to states.

During past funding lapses, FEMA deemed roughly 85 percent of its 25,000 employees “essential,” meaning they had to continue coming to work without pay, and it continued processing disaster aid applications from individuals.

Coast Guard

The Coast Guard’s work alongside the military in missions abroad would continue during a funding lapse. But the service could have to halt some work including family support services and efforts to buy new cutters.

During the record-setting shutdown late last year, DHS dipped into a $10 billion pot of money from the GOP megabill to pay about 68,000 workers, including some law enforcement personnel and active duty members of the Coast Guard, to the tune of about $1 billion each pay period.

If DHS shuts down again, department officials could do the same for several months before exhausting the account, which was replenished after the government reopened in mid-November.

Coast Guard contractors and employees who are not active duty were not paid during the fall shutdown, however. And contractors are not guaranteed back pay, even though all federal employees, whether furloughed or not, are eligible for back pay after a shutdown under a law enacted in the wake of the funding lapse that ended in 2019.

Cybersecurity 

The Trump administration has previously designated only about a third of federal workers as essential at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during a government shutdown.

That limits the workforce that scans and protects U.S. networks from cyber incursions. It also hinders CISA’s ability to help state and local officials defend against cyber threats and assist other agencies with security patches.

Even before Congress let any federal funding lapse in recent months, the Trump administration had already considerably downsized the agency. Around a third of its employees were eitherlaid offor quitover the last year, then dozens were permanently shifted to other DHS agencies during the shutdown that ended in November.

Secret Service 

Most of the Secret Service’s workforce is kept on during a shutdown, sometimes including employees in charge of recruitment, training and communications. But personnel who do jobs in offices like human resources and finance are typically furloughed.

After Trump was shot at a campaign rally in 2024, the Secret Service significantly elevated the level of security it provides to the more than 40 people the agency is tasked with protecting, among them former presidents. During a government shutdown, the agency is more selective about how it spends money to safeguard those people.

Like other DHS agencies, the Secret Service also got money from the GOP’s 2025 tax and spending package that can be used during a funding lapse. That included almost $1.2 billion to cover a wide range of expenses such as training facility costs, technology and bonuses.

Thomas Frank, Paroma Soni, Leo Shane and Andres Picon contributed to this report.