The GOP Congress Delivers on Trump's Priorities

Joe Gould:
We are even beyond where we were in Trump 1.0. We've seen the president threaten a primary back candidates who are primary sitting lawmakers, and he'll do it. A handful of Republicans who don't feel like they're subject to that pressure, but for the most part, Republicans are buckling.
Roman Schweizer:
From DOD to Congress, and from the White House to Wall Street, the NatSec Need-To-Know Podcast, an unrehearsed podcast presenting insightful discussion and forecasts of the major national security and defense issues of the day. Welcome to the NatSec Need-To-Know. We're leading off with our reporters' roundtable to discuss top national security issues in Washington. Joining me is a murderer's row of experienced Washington editors and reporters, Tony Bertuca from Inside Defense, Joe Gould from POLITICO, and Aaron Mehta from Breaking Defense. They've each covered Washington and the Pentagon for decades, and are as well sourced as anyone in town. Thank you all for joining. Let's get after it. All right gentlemen, it is great to be with you all again. It's been a little bit of a delay, and there's been a lot going on. We have a lot of ground to cover, and I guess the one thing I did want to rehash because we're still playing it out in real time, we had President Trump go to NATO.
The red carpet was rolled out, perhaps maybe the gold carpet, we could call it. Donald Trump is pro-NATO. Secretary General Rutte called him daddy and made him happy, and the Europeans agreed to up their spending target to 5% of GDP, three and a half percent on hardware, one and a half percent on sort of infrastructure and other things. Of course, except the Spanish did not. Perhaps, that is due to their geographic proximity from Russia, right? You'd have to go through a lot of Poles, Germans, and Frenchmen before you got to the Spaniards' doorstep. We do have a potential Ukraine package in the works. Just some thoughts on what we've seen in terms of how that may take shape, increase US foreign military sales, and how DOD is going to reprioritize some of that stuff. Who'd like to lead off?
Aaron Mehta:
It's been an interesting couple of weeks. Obviously if you're a supporter of NATO, you have to be pretty happy with how the Senate went. Because going in, even at the first day or two, even when Trump was flying over to NATO, he made those comments about Article 5 and how it's not really binding, that kind of thing. So everyone was pretty nervous. I mean, the idea that Trump could walk out of there and say, "I'm done with NATO, NATO is stupid, we're out," was entirely on the table. Instead, he left saying, "The Europeans have taken me seriously and I'm the daddy." And look, Rutte did what he had to do. We saw with Stoltenberg in Trump 1.0, you have to flatter the and make sure he likes you, and that'll keep NATO around and Rutte has taken that to a different level, I think, than Stoltenberg maybe was comfortable going to, but got the job done.
NATO still exists and not only that, now the president seems to be pretty ticked off at Putin by the fact that Putin isn't listening to him and doing what he says, and is now talking about sending more weapons. There's been reporting that Trump is supportive of allowing weapons to hit Moscow, and according to, I believe, the FT reported that he even encouraged Zelenskyy to hit Moscow directly, although there's been some walking back of that. If you're pro-European, the last couple of weeks have gone about as well as they possibly could, and everyone hates the Spanish. So that's going back to historical notes too, so there's something comforting in that.
Joe Gould:
If I could chime in on that. Trump approved the transfer of missile defense systems, missiles for Ukraine, so that was a step as well, but it's under a model where only the European allies pay for the weapons and replenish US stockpiles. So we believe there's going to be some patriots that were intended for Switzerland. They're now going to be diverted to Ukraine. Allies are going to cover the cost of the backfill. I agree that this is driven by Trump's frustration with Putin. Trump feels like he's driven by optics, likes the Oval Office announcement, wants to be able to claim credit for ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which he campaigned on, and that hasn't happened. And so I think folks have been working on him to show him that, "Actually, Putin is the guy who is frustrating you, not coming to the table." I think reportedly, Trump was moved by the Russians bombing a Ukrainian hospital, a maternity hospital.
It's a win for Europe like Aaron said, but it's also a win for Trump because he successfully threaded the needle where he gets to claim credit for helping Ukraine being a transatlanticist, but he hasn't run afoul of his base by putting up taxpayer dollars. So there could have been some speculation that maybe we'd see is Trump going to ask for a supplemental in the way that Biden had? Well, that's probably pretty unlikely according to folks we talked to on both sides of the aisle. Interesting where we're at. And then just finally I would say Mark Rutte was up at the capitol. Me and some other reporters asked him to flesh out what is going to actually be on the table in terms of Ukraine and weapons, and it sounds like they're still working it out. The Patriots I think is the one named system that we know about, unclear what else we're going to see.
Tony Bertuca:
And just speaking of things that still need to be worked out to bring it back to the halls of the Pentagon, we have a national defense strategy that's supposed to come out next month. I'll be interested to see how USD for Policy Bridge Colby, one, if it's late or how late it's going to be, but how they try to characterize the United States' relationship with Europe, Russia as an adversary, Ukraine, because obviously if you go back a couple of weeks, there's a version of the NDS that's probably would've been a lot different than the one we're going to end up with when it's finally done. So if we see something in term in August, just wondering how that might impact the stuff that Bridge Colby and his team are working on.
Roman Schweizer:
Great. I'm going to just close it out with two observations. By my count, there are 46 days left in Trump's clock on Russia sanctions, to which he has announced secondary sanctions. The Senate has put a hold on the Graham-Blumentha sanctions package, which may or may not come back depending on that. So obviously Trump is famous for setting clocks and deadlines, and two weeks, 60 days or whatever. I note, I think there is a invisible 60-day clock on Iran. We maybe want to walk that back to the ceasefire, but that's a sidebar discussion for another time. And then I'd also like to say that this administration has a lot of folks doing many jobs. Sean Duffy, the Transportation secretary and also the NASA administrator, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is Army secretary, and then also running the ATF. But of course, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the Secretary of State and National Security adviser.
Given the most recent change on Ukraine, I would like to, perhaps, or maybe I'm hopeful that the president will select Melania Trump as his national security adviser if she was truly responsible for the flip on Putin, and saying that all Putin does is talk, but another Ukraine city has been bombed. So maybe someone will put Melania up for a Nobel and she can be the first Trump to win one. A lot has also gone on. We did not cover the budget release, so we've had budget release, we've had markups, we've had appropriations bills passed. So I think maybe if we just want to go with a rapid fire about where we are in terms of the sausage making process that is the DOD budget, the appropriations process, the authorization process, I guess by virtue of job title, maybe Joe wants to lead off with that.
Joe Gould:
Yeah, sure. We've now seen that SASC has passed its NDAA. HASC has passed its NDAA, and last night the house passed its Defense Appropriations Bill. We're chugging along, although maybe on the NDAA is in a different year. We would've been here in early June instead of mid-July, and I think we're unlikely to see either chamber bring its NDAA to the floor until after the August recess. But the house NDAA was fairly low drama. Same with the Senate. I imagine that this is all going to bubble up in the fall.
Tony Bertuca:
Yeah. And the most obvious place it'll bubble up is one of the NDAAs is $32 billion higher than the other. Trying to figure out where that's going to go or how many cards Senator Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker thinks he's got left to play as they head into what many people think is going to be another year-long. Continuing resolution is going to be interesting to see because there's totally a scenario where we don't get an omnibus appropriations package at the end of the year because it's different from reconciliation. You need Democrats to help you pass that bill if you're a Republican. So if you don't have spending, there's a lot of people who might just be like, "Well, we got 113 billion for DOD in FY26 because of the Reconciliation Bill." So all right, I guess we're good with another year-long CR similar to last year and similar to FY25 that gave DOD plenty of flexibility.
They didn't have to justify most of the reprogramming actions, that kind of thing. So that's just, I think, one of the things we're seeing set up now, right? The house isn't really going to, is not at the moment with the legislation looking to change what the flat FY26 request that came out of OMB is, the Senate authorizers are. It'll be interested to see what the appropriators do, still one bill left that we normally check. We did get a lot of news that came out of the unfunded priorities lists, so you still have tens of billions of dollars being requested by all these co-COMs and all these services. It's not urgent, it was what they say when you read their letter, but they go, "This is still a priority, and we don't have any money for it. And if you'd like to cut us a check Chairman Wicker, and anybody else who Chairman Wicker can convince, please do so." So that's just something else that's complicating the budget picture.
Aaron Mehta:
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the unfunded list there, Tony. That's, by our count, a little over $50 billion. Most of that is Indopacom at $12 billion because they tend to be the biggest one. What really stood out to me about the unfunded lists is the F/A-XX where the Navy requested a lot more money for its sixth generation fighter than the Pentagon had. Pentagon basically put enough money in to kill it. And then since then, the house appropriators have said they want to back F/A-XX with more money, and then the White House issued its official response, which said "Not only do we think that's a bad idea, we think if you give more money to F/A-XX, it's going to kill F-47, and that's more of our priority." So the fact that you have the White House coming out and saying, "We don't think F/A-XX is possible basically without totally messing up production on other priorities," it sets up this interesting situation where the Navy's saying, "We need more money."
Members of Congress are saying, "We want to give you more money." The White House and OSD is saying, "Don't give money to this program." And that's one that obviously industry is watching pre am closely. It's a huge potential program for Boeing or Northrop, the two competitors. And certainly it matters directly to the Navy's future in terms of not just its own air power but how the carriers operate. So there's a lot going on around F/A-XX, and to me, that's the single biggest back and forth we're going to see as this shakes out over the next couple of months.
Roman Schweizer:
Great. Well, there are a ton of details that we can get into in terms of authorization and appropriations. I mean, the thing that I would just say, we are going to start the year with a continuing resolution for sure, or the fiscal year for all those who celebrate October 1. Really I think the big question is, will there be a full year CR or will they do a CR early for the full year, or will there be a series of rolling CRs that drag us out all the way to March? Or does Congress just throw in the towel early and say, "Guess what, let's just do a full..." I mean, I would submit DOD would probably be better off if they just got a full year CR on October 1, and of course, they're going to get a hybrid CR. It's really more along the lines of a full appropriations bill.
I would note there's a famous, I don't want to get in trouble. I'm sure I'm going to insult some of my good friends who are authorizers if they do happen to tune into this. Of course, that's being presumptuous suggesting they do tune into this. But there's an old saying that amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics. I would submit in DC that sometimes amateurs talk authorizations and professionals talk appropriations, but I don't want to... From a money perspective, I think that's where some of the case may be. I do note interestingly that I guess, Congressman Tom Cole of the Appropriations Committee released the 302(b) allocations, kept defense flat, but increased the non-defense, some of the non-defense agency stuff. I would be surprised if that flies at all with the rest of the members of his caucus, particularly the Freedom Caucus members. So we'll have to see how that plays out.
Just two quick things. I agree with Aaron. I'm, of course, a little curious about F/A-XX, and I would even maybe jump to two further conclusions. One, Boeing has said they intend to shut down the Super Hornet in 2027 based on current production. I don't think the Super Hornet is going to go out of production, hot take. So maybe all this F/A-XX delay gets us to an answer of continuing to build Super Hornets. But also if you don't know what F/A-XX is and the future of the carrier air wing, what is the future of the aircraft carrier? And I think that is a potentially nettlesome question for the Navy as it works its way through its aircraft carrier buying, considers buying two new carriers later on in the future.
So I mean, I think this may be somewhat of a threat driven question as well, particularly as you have the Air Force considering things like retiring the AWACS and not doing the E-7 Wedgetail. So I do think there are a lot of interesting programmatic decisions that we've seen including the Army's transformation initiative, which has been somewhat roundly rejected by Congress, but we'll see how that all plays out in the cycle. So before we close it out on approvals and authorization, any closing thoughts or shots, guys?
Tony Bertuca:
Only just that I don't think we really went over the DOD budget rollout or lack of rollout from this year, just pointing out that we still don't have all the data that they normally provide in a regular budget rollout. There's still things on the Comptroller website that are tagged, coming soon, that I wonder if we're ever going to see. You wonder how relevant a lot of the request really was when it went over to the hill. Appropriators didn't really seem too thrilled when they talked to the secretary last month when they were, I think, it was Congressman DeLauro was demanding to see a plan, and then what showed up was not really a very fulsome budget picture or lots of justifications. So it's just a very unorthodox year for budget watchers who were trying to get a handle on what DOD is actually asking for, what Congress is actually going to try to mark bills toward. Just an unusual year, I guess, is the comment.
Joe Gould:
Another thing we didn't touch on is the bifurcation of the budget. That the funding request was flat, but they get to a trillion through reconciliation, and how tricky that is. I mean, [inaudible 00:17:30], I guess is based on what you guys were saying, what Tony was just saying, it feels very fluid, it's maybe a reflection of this administration not really feeling like it's obligated to fulfill its obligation to the oversight in Congress, especially after Congress is more or less abdicated its responsibilities. One note on the point you made, Roman, about Cole bumping up the non-defense side of the budget. I wonder if maybe that's a way to try to soothe Democrats or make it look like they're soothing Democrats or leaning towards them in some way because the defense budget is actually a trillion dollars in their strategy. So what they're asking you to do is not to compare the sort of on the parity principle. Maybe they're not asking you to compare the top line for the DOD budget request, but the top line plus the reconciliation request or which is now law.
Roman Schweizer:
That's fair. That may be Tom Cole extending an olive branch, but then at the same time in which I think we'll discuss here in a second, the Republicans just passed a rescissions package that basically says the bipartisan appropriations process doesn't mean anything. Actually, Tony brought up a great point. Well, all you guys have. I would just say that this is a very unusual budget rollout budget season. Even going back to, let's talk about 25 because I think this could happen again. We had an FY25 CR that did not have spending tables. You had the chairs of the Defense Appropriations Committee send spending tables to DOD that they expected them to adhere to. DOD sent back a spend plan showing that, "Yes, we are going to largely spend the money as Congress had intended." Then you have a reconciliation bill, which as I understand it as I've simple it down for my lizard brain, the reconciliation bill is a $150 billion gift card that DOD may or may not spend it how the Congress wants.
We might get into another sort of appropriations process where the appropriators need to get their spending tables done for direction to DOD for 26, and then to top it off, we've got the potential, which I would just pay attention to out there. There's probably going to be a mid-year major DOD omnibus reprogramming where it moves money around, that maybe has some doze related savings, program changes and things like that. Because that's one of the things that I haven't quite understood as well is that if you're proposing to cancel programs like Wedgetail or JLTV, or maybe the frigate, maybe not, we haven't heard what the Navy's plan is with the frigate. If you're going to do that in the 26 request, why do you need money from 25, 24 that you got laying around that you haven't spent yet? So I do think this is a very unusual time for both oversight and appropriations.
I have made the remark, I think this is true, other peoples have made this observation. I make it specifically that the Republican, the only thing the Republican Congress has not given Donald Trump is Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. You can take that for whatever it is. All right, just briefly to touch on, I mean, do you guys have any take on, I mean rescissions? The rescission process has not been really used since the Clinton administration, and certainly not to this effect, not this certain dollar value even though $9 billion is a rounding error in the total federal discretionary spending. I think President Reagan had the most 14 billion since the law went into effect the Empowerment Control Act. Any thoughts on rescissions or how that may play out, or is that... I don't think it's going to touch defense, but it probably is certainly not making Democrats happy, and some Republicans.
Aaron Mehta:
To me, a lot of this comes down to something we've talked about in the past, which is the Russ Vought and OMB's plan to basically take control of appropriations writ large. I think he had a quote. It was something along the lines of the appropriations process has become too bipartisan. And what just strikes me about this, and Tony and Joe are much more of the congressional reporters than I've ever been, but what is the actual name of the appropriations committees? It's the Powerful Appropriations Committee, right? I guess, I just thought there would be more pushback from appropriators simply from a self-interest level towards a lot of these movements. And I thought this is something where they would say, "Just on principle, we don't want to give up any of our power because again, we are the Powerful Appropriations Committee." So I guess, I was surprised by how easy this rescissionist thing went, and it does seem like it's potentially a canary in the Cole mind here, but I'd certainly defer to Joe and Tony on that.
Joe Gould:
I think it's another data point in Roman's list of the uneven budget process, the regular rhythms of the budget process are totally broken. There were some Republicans who pushed back but few, and I think that's a measure of Donald Trump's grip on the Republican Party. We're even beyond where we were in Trump 1.0. We've seen the president threaten a primary back candidates who were primary sitting lawmakers, and he'll do it. We've seen some Republicans buckle under that pressure, and I think that's where we are, and maybe there are a handful of Republicans who don't feel like they're subject to that pressure, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, he's in his last YOLO year as SASD chair, but for the most part Republicans are buckling.
Tony Bertuca:
Yeah. And I think what I'd say too, just to keep things interesting is on something like this, I think where you sit, it depends where you stand, right? I think Democrats have got huge complaints about this administration and this process. Some Republicans too, but I do think if you ask senior Republicans, they would tell you, "We're as functional as we've ever been. We are passing bills, we're getting the President's agenda passed. We are getting it done. We're getting to consensus. It's been messy, but we're getting Republican consensus on major pieces of legislation." So just one of those things that it could be what goes around comes around moment. I think Democrats who are older are reminding their colleagues, especially in the Senate of this kind of thing, but we've got to wait and see what happens with elections to see how it will eventually, could possibly come back and impact the GOP.
Roman Schweizer:
Tony, thanks for the softball because that is a great segue to my next point. Aaron, you were close. I hate to correct you, but I want to be specific about Russ Vought's quote. He said, "The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan." I think that's what you said, but I want to channel what I think he meant by that. I think that Russ Vought wants the Senate to do away with the cloture rule so that the Republicans can pass appropriations bills with a simple majority. This is what Donald Trump pummeled Mitch McConnell about during Trump 1.0, the thermonuclear option, which many, and I've said this before, as Democrats lament the makeup of the Supreme Court, they have Harry Reid to thank for that because he changed the cloture rule for judge confirmations. But the Senate could change that rule for appropriations and that would allow something like the administration's discretionary request to pass as is with just straight line party Republican votes.
Now, Tony, as you point out, elections happen and then the precedents that you have set or broke can come back to haunt you as is the Supreme Court is probably the example. But I really think Russ Vought wants to go for it all. The guy who's going to be maybe on the hot seat is John Thune when Trump says, "Hey, man, change that rule and let's do some arm twisting." Now again, I think there are too many traditionalists in the Senate, obviously McConnell, Murkowski, Collins, etc, to do that. But we'll see. I mean, that's what I really think he would want in his heart of hearts. In the meantime, he'll just have to work the rescissions process as much as he can.
Tony Bertuca:
And we live in the 50/51 world. Right, so 50/51.
Roman Schweizer:
Exactly. No, no, no. You've got to go back that up. 51/50 in honor of Van Halen. Was it 51/50, the name of... God, he's such an '80s dude. I guess last thing, we had a DOD announcement a week ago, a Pete Hegseth starring rock video to a Metallica soundtrack with drones whizzing around the Pentagon, and a new drone policy by DOD allowing lower mid-grade or command level officers to begin to procure small drones, and also harnessing some of the Made in America or the Blue UAS list. We also had a section, a Commerce 232 study announced for drones, which I suppose would be focused on China and DJI. Any thoughts on that? I guess you guys didn't attend, but I'm sure you had folks there. I think there were 18 different drones showcased this week. Where do we see this headed?
Aaron Mehta:
Yeah, I mean, I think the most important thing, of course, is to note that after the secretary put out that video with the Enter Sandman, they had to take it down and then put up a new one without the music because there was a complaint. They say the Pentagon says it came from Twitter. My request for information to Metallica's publicist was not returned in time for publication. I think the fact they went with Enter Sandman instead of the Master of Puppets is wild for a drone thing, that's separate. So there's a lot of information in that memo and there's a lot of general statements in that memo. So some of it we're still parsing through in terms of what the actual impact is. The thing that stood out to us in that memo was based on some reporting that my colleague Ashley Roque had done over the last year about how members of the military were unwilling to use small notionally intractable drones because they were still qualified as items that were lost in the field if they went down.
So if your quadcopter hit a tree, you had to write up a report, you could potentially lose pay because you lost military equipment. And so people just weren't using these things. There is language in this memo, which as we understand it, and we're still trying to get some clarity out of the military on this, basically makes it so that those level of drones are now able to be lost without being recorded in such a way that it's seen as a negative. It's a basic thing, but it's something that needed to be dealt with.
We heard from, again, military users of these things that, "We're just locking these things in closets. We're not going to use them because it could end up costing me money or get me busted down a rank when they fall out of the sky." So that's real change. Some of this stuff about the industrial base, I'm unclear exactly what role this is going to have in that, or what DOD's visibility or capabilities are there. That's a bigger thing to me, the claim that this memo is going to somehow unleash the industrial base, I think we have to see with that.
Tony Bertuca:
I just think it further socializes at the Pentagon, something that has been clear and made clear by the laboratory that is the battlefield in Ukraine. Just the future as they see it, is small, relatively inexpensive and unmanned. That's what they're trying to get across in terms of from the very highest level now, you've got the SecDef like a very powerful visual hanging out with a small drone and getting the memo, and it's quite literally, "Did industry get the memo moment?" So I think it's definitely just a further kind of foot stomping of something that the DOD acquisition community has been working on. It started in a big way, I think with Kath Hicks, Former Deputy Defense Secretary in the Replicator Program. And now you don't really see, hear that as the focus to do this, now it seems to be everywhere. It seems to be across all the services, not just one program that's trying to get out some prototypes. It seems to have really expanded across the Pentagon budget lines.
Joe Gould:
Yeah, I was just going to add that Ukraine's recent operation in which it used drones to attack Russian targets, drones smuggled inside of shipping containers, I think it really had a huge impact. And folks were describing it as a wake-up call moment, but it just underscores as Tony was saying, that Ukraine's been able to lean on these cheap commercial grade drones for everything from reconnaissance, artillery spotting. And to Aaron's point, one way attack missions, so where losing the drone is the point. And so they've been able to get a lot of effects on the battlefield that way just for a few dollars a piece. And I think that we're seeing the Army attempting to, with Dan Driscoll's transformation initiative and how successful he is in convincing Congress is another matter. But I think they're trying to embrace those lessons, and here we're seeing Hegseth demonstrating that they're trying to embrace those lessons at a higher level at the Pentagon.
Roman Schweizer:
There's so much here. I mean, one, I do think that DOD needs to make some pretty, both common sense and intentional policy changes to promote not only drones, but other kinds of acquisition reform or rapid acquisition. I think one of the reasons why the Ukrainians are doing so well in this area is because they don't have DOD 5000 in federal acquisition regulations governing this stuff. To Aaron's point, there is nothing that a soldier or a Marine, or airman in the field operating wants to do then have to go through the pain and suffering of writing up a lost article or a device, or damaged, or something like that. That is amazing. That is such a great point. I mean, the other issue is if you spend it, they will come. And I think we're starting to see that in terms of some of the spending shifts.
But again, the cost curve is going to continue to be the challenge with a lot of the stuff so far DOD is doing. And again, because it's engineered to some pretty exquisite requirements or specs and standards that the Ukrainians just don't have to meet. And I think we're probably going to see that evolve as we see a lot of low-cost affordable missiles and other kinds of systems as well. And I do also want to just point out, Aaron makes a great point about the fail of someone in the DOD comm shop to actually pick Master of Puppets.
And I would just throw out that because of that copyright violation, Pete Hegseth is probably the unforgiven just to go with another Metallica song. As we are in the July timeframe headed into the August recess, the year-end sprint, any last minute things that we're looking at? I mean, we've got the approps process. We might even have a fiscal 27 budget being built that you guys are probably looking for trying to do some reporting on. How about, DOGE is still kicking around. I hear it's still a thing, but maybe not. Any closing thoughts as we get out of here?
Tony Bertuca:
A closing thought on DOGE. I think it remains, the reason I bring it up is the SecDef just did a video release on X with the secretary of the Air Force talking about $10 billion in savings. The Air Force did release some information about the contracts that were cut, but I think we still don't have, and Congress doesn't have this either, a clear enough picture of what the claimed savings are, right? Sort of when you terminate a contract, did you terminate it after most of the money was spent, right? If it's a billion dollars, did you terminate it with only a few million dollars left to spend in it and then claimed it was a billion dollars in savings? And when you terminate a contract, there's termination fees. What are the fees that are being paid out to contractors once you stop the contract? We have none of that information.
The White House is the gatekeeper of DOGE information. The DOD does not answer press questions about DOGE. They send everything to the White House, and the White House hasn't provided any of that information. And what reporting has shown is that the DOGE wall of receipts is not accurate, and they've got plenty of things they've claimed on there that just are not true. So we still need to figure out more what's going on because clearly the Pentagon is still using the term DOGE. They're still talking about DOGE. Nobody from DOGE was part of this announcement about the Air Force, right? It was the SecDef and the Secretary of the Air Force. But with the departure of Elon Musk, it'll be interesting to see what DOGE becomes and how they're able to try to explain what they're saving, and if it's being saved and all of that. So I still think we need a more clear accounting of DOGE.
Joe Gould:
I've got a point I wanted to shoehorn in here, spotlight some of our reporting. Russ Vought's name came up a couple of times as somebody who's consolidating power under OMB over the budgetary process. One thing that happened in the last couple of weeks is that they've taken the shipbuilding office that Trump announced at his congressional address a few months ago, and it was inside the National Security Council. And the National Security Council has been melting down waves of firings. They went from Mike Waltz, who's a big shipbuilding advocate to Marco Rubio, who is a shipbuilding advocate, but maybe less. And now that office is under OMB and Russ Vought.
Roman Schweizer:
All right, thanks everyone. Well, we're going to have to bring it to a close. Obviously there's a lot that's happened since our last recording, and a lot of stuff going on real time. I just want to say thanks everyone for tuning in. Gentlemen, thanks for your insights. And we will be back with you all shortly. Thanks so much.