By Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior military and Defense Department officials to draw up plans to cut 8 percent from the defense budget over each of the next five years, officials said on Wednesday.
Mr. Hegseth said in a memo issued on Tuesday that a number of branches within the military and the Pentagon should turn in budget-cutting proposals by next Monday, two officials said. The memo listed some 17 exceptions to the proposed cuts, including military operations at the southern border.
One senior official said the cuts appeared likely to be part of an effort to focus Pentagon money on programs that the Trump administration favors, instead of actually cutting the Defense Department’s $850 billion annual budget.
For example, the Pentagon is already spending more money on the Trump administration’s efforts at the southern border, including on military flights that have taken migrants in the United States to countries as far away as India.
Mr. Hegseth has vowed to use thousands of active-duty U.S. troops to help stem the flow of migrants across the border, a top priority for President Trump. But illegal crossings, which reached record levels during the Biden administration, slowed significantly before Mr. Trump took office last month.
In a statement on Wednesday, Robert G. Salesses, the acting deputy defense secretary, said the president’s “charge to the department is clear: to achieve peace through strength.”
He added that the Pentagon was undertaking the budget cuts with an aim of bolstering other priorities. “To achieve our mandate from President Trump,” he said, “we are guided by his priorities, including securing our borders, building the Iron Dome for America and ending radical and wasteful government D.E.I. programs and preferencing.”
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