On Friday, the Trump Administration began revealing its historically profligate Fiscal Year 2027 budget request to Congress. This is a summary of the “Top Line” numbers for “Defense,” which includes the Pentagon along with weapons programs in the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Some detailed parts of the President’s budget have yet to be released. Expect our deep dives into specific NNSA nuclear weapons programs, nuclear testing questions, and the Livermore Lab’s budget to follow in the coming days.
Fundamentally, if you want to know what a nation values, don’t listen to its rhetoric, follow how it spends its money (aka your money as a taxpayer). A country’s budget shows you what is a priority, and what is not.
In the lead-up to the President’s budget release, Donald Trump made the trade-offs painfully clear. In a speech offered at a pre-Easter luncheon, Trump said, “We’re fighting wars… It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal.” Keep this in mind as you consider the budget numbers the President delivered just days later to Congress and the American people.
The President is calling for $1.5 trillion in military spending during a single year, FY 2027, which begins on October 1, 2026. According to the Office of Management and Budget, this represents an increase of $45 billion, or 42% over the current year’s historically high budget of $1 trillion. The 1.5 trillion includes $350 billion in supplemental funding, which the Republican-controlled Congress can pass on a party-line vote.
At the Department of Energy, the FY 2027 budget request equals approximately $54 billion for six major program areas, including DOE’s Environmental Management of the biggest cleanup program in the world, according to the agency. Yet 61% of the total funding goes to one single program area, the National Nuclear Security Administration. (See graph below from the DOE/NNSA Budget in Brief.)
The NNSA is slated to receive an increase of 29% in FY 2027 over the current year’s already high number. And, within NNSA, the budget for its core nuclear weapons activities will jump a full 35%. Specifically, the core nuclear weapons activities funding will rise more than $7 billion, from the current year’s nearly $20.4 billion to $27.5 billion. Notable, too, is the footnote stating that the so-called “Working Families Tax Cut Act” is providing nearly $3.9 billion in funds for NNSA nuclear weapons activities. This is money taken from clean energy and people oriented programs that now goes to nuclear weapons.
While the nuclear numbers at NNSA are smaller than the Pentagon’s overall costs for the weapons’ delivery systems, namely submarines, missiles and planes, it is solely the work at NNSA and its nuclear weapons complex sites, like Livermore Lab, that create and build nuclear bombs and warheads capable of inflicting mass nuclear death and destruction at a moment’s notice.
According to the DOE/NNSA Budget in Brief posted on Friday, the NNSA budget increase will support “seven simultaneous warhead modification programs” [read as new nuclear weapons] as well as upgrading and building new nuclear warhead “production facilities, including the capability to produce 80 pits [plutonium bomb cores] per year as close to 2030 as possible.”
Trump’s budget plans include escalation of nuclear threats and the money to support them. The section on “Major Out-year Priorities and Assumptions says, “NNSA’s Future Years Nuclear Security Program (FYNSP) topline for FY 2028 to 2031 is $137.9 billion…. The FYNSP is aligned with the Department of War (DOW) requirements to ensure that the U.S. has the world’s most robust, credible and modern nuclear deterrent.”
If these historic highs are sustained at NNSA and the Pentagon alike, the Defense Budget will add about $6 trillion to the federal deficit over the coming decade. It’s all about our government’s priorities, not the necessities of our people.
Tri-Valley CAREs will shortly produce and send you our deep dives into individual nuclear weapons activities, test site activities, and the Livermore Lab’s FY 2027 budget, as more documents are made available.
Further, we encourage our members to use the numbers in this and future blogs to communicate with your members of Congress. Remember, the Constitution gives the power of the purse to the legislative branch, and the President’s request can be changed by Congress. Let them hear from you!
Also stay tuned for more news about Tri-Valley CAREs’ participation in DC Days 2026, wherein your TVC team will go to our nation’s capital and, with our Alliance for Nuclear Accountability partner groups from around the country, we will conduct upwards of 80 meetings in early June to speak truth to power and advocate for people-centered priorities rather than ones centered on mass death and destruction.
Together we can make a difference!