Uprooting The Compulsory Taxpayer Funding Of The Radical Left

President Donald Trump won the 2024 election with a promise to end divisive, taxpayer-funded programs, and his proposed budget for the next fiscal year proves he is willing to save your money where his mouth is. The president's budget specifically asks Congress to cut billions of dollars from government programs promoting "radical transgender ideology," "LGBTQIA+" programs, and government "targeting of peaceful pro-life protesters" while transferring power back to the states and increasing federal funding for national defense, border security, and public safety.

President Trump detailed his proposed FY 2026 budget in a 46-page overview of major discretionary funding changes, revealing a fiscal and ideological break with his Democratic predecessors. In all, Trump would spend $1.69 trillion, including requesting more than $1 trillion in defense spending for the first time in U.S. history to assist in "repelling the invasion of our border" and "to clean up the mess President Trump inherited from the prior administration."

Yet the White House refers to the spending guidelines as the "skinny budget," since it offsets significant spending hikes with $136 billion in reductions that slash 22.6% from non-defense discretionary spending. "Savings come from eliminating radical diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and critical race theory programs, Green New Scam funding, large swaths of the Federal Government weaponized against the American people, and moving programs that are better suited for States and localities to provide," according to a White House fact sheet that accompanied the budget release.

If the Biden-Harris administration's proposed FY 2025 budget sought to insert equity into every program through a whole-of-government approach, the second Trump administration has set out to uproot every vestige of compulsory taxpayer funding of the radical Left. "Over the last four years, Government spending aggressively turned against the American people and trillions of our dollars were used to fund cultural Marxism ... and even our own invasion" by illegal immigrants, said Russ Vought, director of the Office and Management and Budget (OMB). "No agency was spared in the Left's taxpayer-funded cultural revolution." 

The administration cited $315 million the Biden administration spent on grant programs "to push 'intersectionality,' 'racial equity,' and LGBTQIA+ programming for preschoolers," adding that the FY 2026 budget "ends all of that."

The budget also promises to advance "the Administration's goal of restoring federalism," tying the well-being of families to the U.S. government's respect for states' rights and constitutional order. "Just as the Federal Government has intruded on matters best left to American families, it has intruded on matters best left to the levels of government closest to the people," writes Vought in a letter transmitting the budget.

Here are the specific cuts and dollar amounts removed from the federal budget.

President Trump's proposed FY 2026 budget slashes or eliminates abortion funding while protecting pro-life advocates' constitutional rights. Specifically, the budget would cut $6.2 billion from Global Health Programs and Family Planning initiatives. "The United States is the largest global contributor to programs that provide so-called family planning services through liberal NGOs, and have funded abortions. This stands in direct conflict with the President's action reinstating the 'Mexico City Policy.' 

The Budget protects life and prevents a pro-abortion agenda from being promoted abroad with taxpayer dollars." The president reinstated his 2017 Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance (PLGHA) policy, which bars any group that receives taxpayer funding from carrying out or advocating for abortion overseas. But the budget maintains funding for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) for current recipients. 

The proposed budget also safeguards pro-life advocates' rights by eliminating $545 million from Biden-Harris administration policies that charged the FBI with "targeting peaceful pro-life protesters, concerned parents at school board meetings, and citizens opposed to radical transgender ideology," as well as erasing "DEI programs." 

The budget also reestablishes fairness by cutting $193 million from General Legal Activities at the Justice Department, prioritizing criminal prosecutions but reducing the budget of the Civil Rights Division, "which the previous administration weaponized against States implementing election integrity measures, local police departments, and pro-life Americans."

President Trump made eliminating DEI, critical race theory, and government-sponsored racism and sexism a focus of his successful 2024 campaign, cementing the approach through a series of executive actions that prosecute race-based discrimination. Similarly, the Republican Party spent $65 million on ads highlighting the Democratic Party's extremism on transgender ideology, making it the top reason swing voters decided not to vote for Kamala Harris, according to the Democratic polling firm Blueprint. The proposed FY 2026 budget cuts tens of billions of dollars in DEI and LGBTQIA+ funding, as well as climate change ideology.

The proposed budget cuts $18 billion from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to restore "accountability, public trust, and transparency at the NIH. NIH has broken the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health" by denying the likely lab leak origin of COVID-19 and promoting gain-of-function research, which the president recently banned by executive order. 

Yet "NIH has also promoted radical gender ideology to the detriment of America's youth. For example, the NIH funded a study titled 'Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones,' in which two participants tragically committed suicide," the budget notes. The president also cuts $3.6 billion from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a blueprint that "eliminates duplicative, DEI, or simply unnecessary programs."

The president would cut $8.3 billion from Economic Support Fund, Development Assistance for Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia, as part of a broader foreign policy to place American interests first and save Europe from itself, but also because "U.S. economic and development aid has been funneled to radical, leftist priorities, including climate change, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and LGBTQ activities around the world."

The budget cuts $3.5 billion from the National Science Foundation's grants and research on "climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences." That comes in addition to another $1.1 billion cut to NSF's Broadening Participation activities, which have underwritten such programs as "Reimagining Educator Learning Pathways Through Storywork for Racial Equity in STEM"; "addressing White Supremacy in the STEM profession"; and preparing "the next generation of DEI leaders to promote long-term, sustainable racial equity initiatives."

The president moved dramatically against the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) after taking office: exposing their radical grants before firing most of their staff and placing the agency under the authority of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The FY 2026 budget cuts $2.5 billion from USAID and "eliminates non-essential staff that were hired based on DEI and preferencing practices" while implementing executive orders 14169 to realign foreign aid and 14151 to eliminate DEI programs.

The budget cuts more than $1 billion in grants nestled under the Department of Justice, such as "$1 million to the National Opinion Research Center to 'investigate the social ecological context of anti-LGBTQ+ hate crime reporting.' Further, the Budget realigns Violence Against Women Act funding with its original core mission to combat violence against women and directly serve victims -- eliminating extraneous programs that divert resources from these core functions. 

For example, grant funding from the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) had been offered for biological men. In addition, OVW's Rural Program grants were sent to train community-based Fa'afafine advocates -- an organization of biological men that describes themselves as a 'third-gender.'"

Pro-family experts singled out the VAWA proposal as a welcome gesture. "VAWA programs are intended to help women who are the victims of abuse and in recent years it has been invaded by gender ideology. Currently, women who escape abuse in a VAWA funded shelter could be forced to share private spaces with a man," Mary Beth Waddell, director of Federal Affairs for Family and Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. "We are grateful that the president is calling out this injustice."

The budget cuts $4.5 billion from the Department of Education while maintaining full federal funding for K-12 schools, consolidating 18 programs into one formula grant that allows the DOE to do as much work with fewer employees. "The new approach allows States and districts to focus on the core subjects -- math, reading, science, and history -- without the distractions of DEI and weaponization from the previous administration," notes the budget. It also saves $127 million in administrative costs.

At the college level, the budget cuts $195 million from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Ed (FIPSE), noting that Congress has "abused FIPSE by using it to fund initiatives unrelated to students or institutional reforms, including earmarking $1.2 million for San Diego Community College's LGBTQIA+ PRIDE Center staffing." It also cuts $1.6 billion from TRIO and GEAR UP, two programs that incentivized colleges to engage low-income students. 

The administration argues that economic incentives have eliminated the need for the federal government to continue underwriting colleges and universities' outreach. "A renewed focus on academics and scholastic accomplishment by [Institutions of Higher Education], rather than engaging in woke ideology with Federal taxpayer subsidies, would be a welcome change for students and the future of the Nation." The budget also removes $691 million in cultural exchanges for foreign exchange students that prevent American students from acquiring high-demand skills, which the foreign students then take back to their home countries.

The budget cuts $1.6 billion by consolidating the Labor Department's Make America Skilled Again (MASA) grants, defunding nonprofits promoting DEI, and "the hiring of illegal aliens and migrants; sometimes providing them subsidized housing in addition to a job."

It cuts $1.3 billion from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), scrutinizing NOAA grants for "George Mason University's 'Policy Experience in Equity Climate and Health' fellowship, a workshop for 'transgender women, and those who identify as nonbinary.'"

Trump's budget cuts $646 million from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)'s non-disaster grant programs, seeking to curtail such FEMA activities as "webinars promoting the distribution of disaster aid based on 'intersectional' factors like sexual orientation and prioritizing 'investment in diversity and inclusion efforts ... and multicultural training' over disaster prevention and response." 

Under the Trump administration, "FEMA will no longer 'instill equity as a foundation of emergency management.'" The document rightly notes that "FEMA discriminated against Americans who voted for the President in the wake of recent hurricanes, skipping over their homes when providing aid. This activity will no longer be tolerated."

The budget cuts $624 million from the Economic Development Administration (EDA) and Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), specifically citing an EDA grant "constructing a 'Pride Plaza' in Portland, Oregon."

It cuts $602 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), effectively eliminating "wasteful, woke programming in NIFA, such as activities related to climate change, renewable energy, and promoting DEI in education that were prioritized under the Biden Administration."

The Trump administration aims to gut federally funded woke programs aimed at Americans at both ends of life. The proposed FY 2026 budget eliminates $405 million from the Labor Department's Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP), which is supposed to subsidize jobs and employment for poor senior citizens but "is effectively an earmark to leftist, DEI-promoting entities like the National Urban League, the Center for Workforce Inclusion, and Easter Seals." 

At the same time, it cuts $315 million from Preschool Development Grants (PDG), which was "weaponized by the Biden-Harris Administration to extend the Federal reach and push DEI policies on to toddlers." For instance, the "guiding principles" implemented by the Minnesota Department of Education for its PDG program include "intersectionality" and "racial equity."

The budget cuts roughly $19 billion from programs promoting what the White House calls the "Green New Scam."

The government's proposed budget generally reins in government grants flowing to radical causes:

It cuts $167 million by consolidating the Small Business Administration's Entrepreneurial Development Programs (EDP), deleting such programs as SCORE, "which in 2023 posted 'Six Ways to Support LGBTQIA-Owned Businesses.'"

It cuts $129 million from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which "pushed radical gender ideology onto children, funding a project at the Seattle Children's Hospital titled, 'Using Telehealth to Improve Access to Gender-Affirming Care for BIPOC and Rural Gender-Diverse Youth.'"

It cuts $112 million from programs aimed at "Strengthening Institutions," noting, "It is not the responsibility of Federal taxpayers to support a new 'Guided Pathways Village, expanding the current Learning Communities and creating a new Ethnic and Pride Inclusion Center for historically underserved students, including LGBTQ+ students.'"

It cuts $100 million in "divisive racial discrimination and environmental justice grants that were destined to go to organizations that advance radical ideologies."

It cuts $70 million from Teacher Quality Partnerships, which field grants indoctrinating teachers to begin "acknowledging and responding to systemic forms of oppression and inequity, including racism, ableism, 'gender-based' discrimination, homophobia, and ageism."

It cuts $55 million from Complex Crisis Fund, "a catch-all slush fund for nation-building projects and political interference" which "has been weaponized to mandate DEI and LGBTQ policies be implemented in recipient countries as a condition of aid to small businesses."

It cuts $49 million from the DOE's Office of Civil Rights, a 35% strategic reduction to "refocus away from DEI and Title IX transgender cases ... while removing their ability to push DEI programs and promote radical transgender ideology."

The proposed FY 2026 budget also cuts a total of $19.2 billion from Energy Department initiatives it describes as part of the "Green New Scam."

The proposed FY 2026 budget cuts $491 million from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) as part of its efforts to eliminate "weaponization and waste." The budget "eliminates programs focused on so-called misinformation and propaganda as well as external engagement offices such as international affairs. These programs and offices were used as a hub in the Censorship Industrial Complex to violate the First Amendment."

It also cuts $315 million for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which supported Ukrainian government efforts to brand critics as exponents of Russian disinformation and "funded the now-infamous Disinformation Index Foundation that targeted and blacklisted conservative media outlets like Federalist, Newsmax, TAC, the Blaze," and others.

President Trump has identified himself with the words "America First," and his budget stakes out similar priorities. It cuts $1.7 billion from the United Nations, UNESCO, and World Health Organization dues, implementing executive order 14199. However, the president may fund these organizations out of a separate funding source "to preserve maximum negotiating leverage." It also eliminates $1.6 billion from United Nations "peacekeeping" missions that wage war under the U.N.'s blue-helmeted auspices. And it cuts $1.5 billion from Food for Peace, recognizing the waste and abuse of foreign aid transfers from U.S. taxpayers to foreign oligarchs.

The budget also acknowledges that the free market and local business development create sustainable prosperity, not foreign aid. "The program also distorts and undermines local and regional markets where the aid often could be purchased for less and with less waste," says the budget. Similarly, it cuts $75 million from Transition Initiatives, a program that leads to "further destabilization" around the world and "funds a wasteful tangle of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and partisan cutouts pushing a leftist agenda around the world."

The budget increases funding for the Department of Homeland Security -- which oversees many border enforcement and deportation efforts -- by a whopping 65%, or $43.8 billion in additional funds. It cuts nearly $2 billion from programs for refugees and Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs), funds which "were weaponized by the Biden-Harris Administration to give cash handouts, medical services, and job training to illegal immigrants" and to release children in the custody of "insufficiently vetted sponsors," effectively making the government complicit in child trafficking.

It cuts $650 million from the Shelter and Services Program earmarked for "non-citizen migrants," tax payments which "funded radical leftist NGOs, who spent funding to facilitate mass illegal migration into the interior of the Nation ... weakening the United States from within, taking resources away from American citizens, and promoting crime and decay in America's cities." And it cuts $247 million from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which the Biden administration used "to facilitate mass illegal migration by allowing illegal migrants to fly into the interior without proper documentation."

Yet the budget radically increases funding for the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to hire more air traffic controllers; for Rail Safety and Infrastructure grants to prevent tragedies such as the train derailment and intentional detonation of a train in East Palestine, Ohio; for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to intercept fentanyl; and for stronger trade enforcement against technological and competitiveness threats from the People's Republic of China.

"Linking proposed decreases in funding to areas of egregious mismanagement of taxpayer dollars and reorienting these dollars to their intended purpose, as opposed to ideological ones, sends a strong message that taxpayers deserve respect, and the use of their hard-earned money should be stewarded well," Waddell told TWS.

Originally published at The Washington Stand