The White House released its fiscal 2027 budget request Friday morning, unveiling plans to continue waging its longstanding war against renewable energy and climate initiatives while boosting support for artificial intelligence and fossil fuels.
The spending blueprint also includes a proposed reorganization for core Interior Department energy offices — the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.
President Donald Trump’s budget would take a sledgehammer to Biden-era energy and environment programs that the administration has not already decimated, proposing tens of billions of dollars in cuts to everything from electric vehicle chargers to efforts to prosecute certain environmental crimes.
At the same time, the administration is supporting efforts to boost funding for oil and gas production, mining, manufacturing and AI development — often at the expense of other energy and natural resources programs.
“President Trump is committed to eliminating funding for the globalist climate agenda while unleashing American energy production,” reads a White House fact sheet titled “Ending the Green New Scam.”
White House budget director Russ Vought said in a statement attached to the budget document that “a historic paradigm shift in the budget process is occurring and is producing real results for the American public.” He added, “Fiscal futility is ending.”
The budget proposal, which comes almost nine weeks behind schedule, is not binding. But it will serve as a starting point for congressional Republicans as they begin the long process of drafting and then negotiating fiscal 2027 spending bills that will ultimately have to be bipartisan to become law. Appropriators ignored or adjusted many of the president’s demands last year.
In all, the administration is proposing to cut the government’s nondefense spending by $73 billion, or 10 percent. In terms of total dollars, that is less than half of the proposed cuts the administration requested for fiscal 2026.
The preliminary budget documents released Friday make no mention of the supplemental funding request the administration is expected to send to Congress in the coming weeks.
That could include more than $200 billion for the Department of Defense, as well as additional funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and farmer aid.
Congress is still working on finalizing a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security, including FEMA, for fiscal 2026.
Infrastructure dollars targeted
A chunk of the proposed reduction to nondefense spending would come from the cancellation of funds from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. The administration wants to cancel $15.2 billion that was meant for the Department of Energy to implement projects focused on renewable energy, carbon capture “and other costly technologies that burden ratepayers and consumers,” according to the White House fact sheet.
About $3.5 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would be repurposed from renewable energy and climate priorities to DOE programs that “make energy more abundant and affordable” under the banner of “Bolstering Energy Dominance.”
That would include an effort to deploy more baseload power, as well as $1.2 billion to support seven artificial intelligence supercomputers at national laboratories, according to another fact sheet.
The administration is also proposing to end “taxpayer handouts” to electric vehicle battery manufacturers while canceling $4 billion in infrastructure law funding for “wasteful and ineffective” EV charging initiatives.
The most likely target of that cut is the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which appropriators already slashed in their fiscal 2026 Transportation-HUD spending bill.
So far, states have used NEVI funds to open several hundred charging ports — a small fraction of the sum the program was meant to support.
Interior reorganization
At the Interior Department, the Trump administration is proposing a top line of $15.9 billion in discretionary funding, a 12.9 percent decrease from current levels.
The White House is especially targeting offshore wind projects because of their impacts on coastal communities, wildlife and military readiness. The administration has long used each of those reasons to stymie wind projects and has faced pushback from Democrats and the courts.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement would be combined “to better align with the Department’s mission, streamline governance of offshore energy and mineral resources, and deliver greater value to the American public.”
The administration is reaffirming support for a unified wildland firefighting agency, which Interior has already created despite trepidation from Congress. It is proposing new aspects for that unification.
EPA, DOE
The White House is asking Congress to fund EPA at $4.2 billion — a 52 percent cut relative to the currently enacted level. Last year, the budget called for a 55 percent reduction, but Congress only cut EPA by 4 percent.
Trump is proposing to realign DOE away from certain priorities — namely energy efficiency and renewables — toward full-throated support of artificial intelligence, which is driving up energy demand.
“The era of wasting taxpayer dollars on unreliable, expensive energy that is dependent on foreign supply chains is over,” the budget document states.
“Underlying virtually all of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) efforts is a $1.2 billion commitment to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the ways it can improve energy systems and outcomes across the DOE enterprise,” the budget states.
DOE would get $53.9 billion in discretionary funding, an increase of more than $4 billion relative the fiscal 2026 level. As usual, most of the total would go toward the National Nuclear Security Administration, which itself is getting an increase.
Nondefense funding at DOE would face an 11 percent cut from the current level as a result of reductions to energy efficiency and renewable energy programs.
The budget proposes $1.1 billion for DOE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation, which houses what DOE previously called the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Other agencies
Trump’s budget would provide $1.5 trillion for the Department of Defense — a 42 percent increase relative to the current level, which was already record-high. The administration wants most of it enacted through the regular appropriations process, but $350 billion of the sum would be enacted through Republicans’ forthcoming party-line tax and spending bill.
The Army Corps of Engineers would get $4.9 billion in discretionary funding, a 28 percent cut relative to the current level. Lawmakers usually ignore requests to cut the Army Corps.
FEMA would be streamlined somewhat under Trump’s proposal but not reorganized or eliminated as the Trump administration has previously proposed. Nondisaster grant programs would be cut by $1.3 billion.
The disaster relief fund would get $28.5 billion, an increase of roughly $2 billion relative to the fiscal 2026 ceiling the administration is expecting to be approved by Congress.
At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Trump is requesting that Congress terminate $1.6 billion for “climate-dominated research programs.” A fact sheet calls out NOAA-funded projects on environmental literacy, equity-focused engagement and “gender-responsive agricultural adaptation.” Lawmakers have pushed back against NOAA cuts.
The budget would increase by $135 million funding for NOAA’s unmanned systems programs that support fisheries management and ocean exploration.
NASA would see its science budget cut by $3.4 billion, including the termination of a partnership with the State Department that “imposed climate extremism on developing countries,” per the budget document.
The White House intends to double down on the hundreds of millions of dollars that Congress rescinded last year for international conservation and clean energy financing projects. The administration wants to cut $150 million for the Global Environment Facility, the total sum Congress provided for fiscal 2026.
