Trump's Toxic Budget Will Cause The Congressional Republicans To Lose Dozens Of Seats In 2026

Millions Of MAGAt Families Will Feel A Deadly Squeeze

Trump takes aim at American families... first

In yet another grotesque display of contempt for human life, the Trump regime has decided that 125,000 salmonella infections and hundreds of avoidable deaths a year are a small price to pay for corporate profit. Friday’s withdrawal of the Biden-era USDA rule to regulate salmonella levels in poultry isn’t just regulatory rollback; it’s state-sanctioned food poisoning. It’s a declaration that the well-being of ordinary Americans means less than nothing to this administration when stacked against the bottom lines of Big Chicken. Under Trump, the U.S. isn’t just deregulating— it’s rotting from the inside out, one tainted drumstick at a time.

This wasn’t just some bureaucratic tweak. The proposed rule was a hard-won public health measure backed by years of scientific research and modeled after the 1994 ban on deadly E. coli strains in beef— one of the landmark food safety successes in modern U.S. history. But Trump and his death cult enablers have decided that ensuring our kids don’t end up in the ER after a barbecue is just too much government overreach. This isn’t deregulation— it’s deliberate sabotage. It's the triumph of salmonella over science, and of corporate lobbying over human life.

And what’s next? Will they be lifting restrictions on rat droppings in cereal? Declaring lead a “natural additive” in baby food? There is no bottom to this administration’s moral decay. These people won’t rest until every agency meant to protect us is hollowed out and every safeguard torn down in the name of “freedom”— freedom, that is, for corporations to poison the public and walk away richer for it. If you ever doubted that Trumpism is an authoritarian death cult, consider this: they just made your dinner more dangerous on purpose. [NOTE: I stopped eating poultry decades ago at the urging of my doctor who said it is a filthy and unhealthy food source.]

Back to what’s next… Will they bring asbestos back into baby powder? Re-legalize lead paint for toys? Maybe scrap seatbelts too, just to keep their libertarian donors happy? This isn’t conservatism; it’s carnage in a business suit. It’s Trumpism at its rawest: dismantle protections, gaslight the public, and hand over the spoils to whichever oligarchs grease the right palms. The poultry rule wasn’t burdensome— it was basic public hygiene. But even that is too much for an administration that views regulation as tyranny and corporate accountability as treason. The cruelty isn’t a side effect— it’s the operating principle. If your grandma dies from a tainted turkey sandwich, don’t expect a press release. Just know that somewhere in Mar-a-Lago, someone’s toasting with Dom Pérignon because the “free market” won again.

This is what late-stage authoritarian capitalism looks like: the deliberate erasure of the boundary between public policy and private greed. Trump’s America is not a democracy in any meaningful sense— it’s a biohazard masquerading as a government, a pay-to-play killing machine where even the right to safe food is up for auction. History will not look kindly on this era. Just as we recoil at the callousness of 19th-century factories or the snake-oil peddlers of the Gilded Age, future generations will ask how we let a deranged, narcissistic demagogue sacrifice lives so poultry CEOs could pocket a few extra bucks. And our answer— unless we fight back with everything we've got— will be shameful silence. This isn’t just about salmonella. It’s about whether we, as a people, will accept a government that sees our health as expendable and our suffering as someone else’s revenue stream. On Friday, Alan Rappeport and Tony Romm reported the regime, “which has made clear that it aims to slash government spending, is preparing to unveil a budget proposal as soon as next week that includes draconian cuts that would entirely eliminate some federal programs and fray the nation’s social safety net.”

Anyone surprised? I hope not. There are Republicans in Congress— the ones in swing districts— who are scared shitless. Don Bacon (Omaha) has started talking about retiring. He just can’t cope with what Trump is doing any longer. “The proposed budget,” wrote Rappeport and Romm, “would cut billions of dollars from programs that support child care, health research, education, housing assistance, community development and the elderly… The proposal, which is being finalized by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, also targets longstanding initiatives that have been prized by Democrats and that Republicans view as ‘woke’ or wasteful spending.”

The early blueprint reflects Trump’s long-held belief that some federal antipoverty programs are unnecessary or rife with waste, fraud and abuse. And it echoes many of the ideas espoused by his budget director, Russell Vought, a key architect of Project 2025 who subscribes to the view that the president has expansive powers to ignore Congress and cancel spending viewed as “woke and weaponized.” He previously endorsed some of the cuts to housing, education and other programs that Trump is expected to unveil in the coming days.

The White House is expected to release the budget as soon as next week… The president is expected to couple his blueprint for 2026 with a second measure— also set for release next week— that would slash more than $9 billion in previously approved spending for the current fiscal year, including money that funds PBS and NPR.

In total, the proposed cuts are likely to inform Republican lawmakers as they look for ways to fund their economic agenda, including a package that would extend and expand a set of tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first term. Their ambitions are projected to cost trillions of dollars, though Republican leaders have explored whether to invoke a budget accounting trick to make it seem as though their tax package does not add considerably to the federal debt.

…Some of the cuts the administration is envisioning could exacerbate the federal deficit. The White House is looking to reduce about $2.5 billion from the budget of the Internal Revenue Service with the goal of ending the Biden administration’s “weaponization of I.R.S. enforcement,” which it said targeted conservatives and small businesses. Budget scorekeepers have previously said that cuts to the I.R.S. would reduce the amount of revenue coming into the government, since it would make it harder for the tax collector to go after businesses and people who owe money but do not pay.

In many cases, the draft budget slashes many federal antipoverty programs, generally by cutting their funds and consolidating them into grants sent to the states to manage. The full extent of those changes is not clear, but the result could be fewer programs and dollars serving low-income Americans, who may be at risk of losing some benefits.

Among the most prominent programs that could be eliminated is Head Start, which provides early education and child care for some of the nation’s poorest children.

Documents reviewed by The Times show the White House is considering a $12.2 billion cut, which would wipe out the program. The budget document says Head Start uses a “radical” curriculum and gives preference to illegal immigrants. A description of the program also criticizes it for diversity, equity and inclusion programming and the use of resources that encourage toddlers to welcome children and families with different sexual orientations.

Despite the Trump administration’s pledge to make housing more affordable, the budget draft would reduce funding for several programs that support housing developments or provide rental assistance. The budget proposes saving $22 billion by replacing the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rental assistance programs with a state-based initiative that would have a two-year cap on rent subsidies for healthy adults.

The draft budget also eliminates the Home Investment Partnerships Program, cutting the $1.25 billion fund that provides grants to states and cities for urban development projects on the basis that it is “duplicative” of other federal housing programs. It also cuts the $644 million housing block grant programs for Native Americans and Native Hawaiians, saying that these would be unnecessary because of new, unspecified initiatives such as enhanced “opportunity zones” that would give states greater incentives to provide affordable housing.

The overhaul of the nation’s health research apparatus, a few years after the coronavirus pandemic killed millions of people around the world, could also be drastic, with about $40 billion in proposed cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services.

The draft budget recommends cutting $8.8 billion from the National Institutes of Health, which it declared 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.”

The proposal would consolidate and shrink some of the agency’s core functions that focus on chronic diseases and epidemics. It would entirely eliminate funding for some divisions, such as the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, which would lose the $534 million that it currently receives.

The budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be almost halved, to $5.2 billion from $9.2 billion. Associated programs such as the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response would be eliminated. A note in the preliminary document refers to overdose prevention funding by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration as the “Biden crack pipe.”

Although Trump has said he prioritizes “law and order” in his presidency, his budget proposes about $2 billion of combined cuts to the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The D.E.A. cuts would scale back international counternarcotics efforts in European countries that are equipped to crack down on drug trafficking. The A.T.F. cuts would eliminate offices at the agency that the Trump administration says have “criminalized law-abiding gun ownership through regulatory fiat.”

The proposal said the goal was to invest in getting F.B.I. agents into the field and to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the bureau that were “pet projects” of the Biden administration.