MAGA Defense Cuts?
On this episode of American Prestige, William Hartung on the Trump administration’s planned budget cuts for the Pentagon.

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On this episode of American Prestige, William Hartung — senior research fellow focusing on the arms industry and US military budget at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft — joins the program to discuss reports that the Trump administration is planning “sweeping budget cuts” for the Pentagon. We talk about these “cuts” being more accurately termed “reinvestments” into other areas, the enormous amount of defense spending and the culture that engendered this, how the defense industry has changed in the past 20 years, actual moves that could meaningfully reduce the military budget like reducing bloated systems (F-35s, aircraft carriers) and overseas bases, whether there exists an influential constituency to support military budget cuts, and more.
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US Pentagon in Washington DC building looking down aerial view from above
(Ivan Cholakov / Shutterstock)On this episode of American Prestige, William Hartung—senior research fellow focusing on the arms industry and US military budget at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft—joins the program to discuss reports that the Trump administration is planning “sweeping budget cuts” for the Pentagon. We talk about these “cuts” being more accurately termed “reinvestments” into other areas, the enormous amount of defense spending and the culture that engendered this, how the defense industry has changed in the past 20 years, actual moves that could meaningfully reduce the military budget like reducing bloated systems (F-35s, aircraft carriers) and overseas bases, whether there exists an influential constituency to support military budget cuts, and more.
Read William’s recent piece on this, “Hegseth orders 8% cut to Pentagon budget. Not so fast.”
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Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Hugh Wilford, professor of history at California State University, Long Beach, is on the program for the first of two episodes on his book The CIA: An Imperial History. In this episode, we explore the historiography of intelligence today, how the CIA fits into an imperial lens of US history, whether the CIA is a liberal way of managing the world, the agency’s origins and shift from intelligence gathering to covert actions, gender relations among officers, their families, and agency partners, individuals like Kim Roosevelt, and whether CIA personnel truly believed in the threat of communism.
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