President Donald Trump has released his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2027, which outlines sweeping cuts to essentially everything that is not War on Somebody. Its defunding of “woke programs” primarily targets infrastructure supporting racial and gender equity, and access to affordable housing.
Customs and Border Protection would receive an increase of $18.5 billion compared to the budget enacted for 2026. The Department of Justice would receive an increase of $4.7 billion. The Drug Enforcement Administration specifically would receive $362 million to “supercharge” operations by adding 300 agents and equipping them “with advanced drug trafficking network intelligence systems.”
The Department of Defense budget for FY 2026 totaled around $1 trillion. For FY 2027, the administration is requesting $1.5 trillion.
“Under the previous administration, substance abuse grants were used to fund dangerous activities billed as ‘harm reduction,’ which included funding ‘safe smoking kits and supplies’ and ‘syringes’ for drug users,” the proposal states. “The Budget reduces waste by eliminating inefficient funding.”
This is the only explicit mention of harm reduction. Most federal grants for syringe service programs and other supports for people who use drugs have previously come through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, although the awkward choice to put the word “syringes” in quotations is notable because the agency’s grants are restricted from funding syringes, specifically.
SAMHSA has been progressively, chaotically downsized over the course of Trump’s first year back in office. After initially proposing to dissolve the agency, Trump and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have realigned its priorities and laid off more than half the employees. In January the administration abruptly cut nearly $2 billion representing thousands of SAMHSA’s public health and social services grants, then reinstated them the following day.
An accompanying White House fact sheet claims that the budget proposal would “refocus” SAMHSA’s work “by eliminating funding for programs that duplicate block grant funding, or are too small to have a national impact.”
The budget would cut most of HUD’s marquee grant programs.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) budget would decrease by $10.7 billion, or 13 percent. In service of the 2025 executive order targeting street-homelessness under the guise of public safety, the proposed budget would eliminate HUD’s Continuum of Care Program (CoC), which connects people to different forms of public housing. The administration argues that the CoC principle of “Housing First”—the evidence-based and common-sense practice of connecting people to housing without imposing preconditions like abstinence or employment, both of which become significantly more feasible once people have housing—has failed, since it was supposed to end homelessness and yet homelessness still exists.
“Housing First” is extremely successful when it can be implemented, but has been limited by the physical availability of affordable housing units. Adding affordable housing is the purview of other programs, which the budget proposes to eliminate also.
As expected, the budget would cut most of HUD’s marquee grant programs. The largest of these would be the $3.3 billion Community Development Block Grant, which provides flexible funding for local governments to allocate as needed.
The other programs on the chopping block are the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which funds new affordable housing; Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA), which the administration claims is outdated because the medical prognosis for HIV has improved since the 1990s; the Native American and Native Hawaiian housing block grants, justifying the latter by using federally recognized tribal status to claim that “Native Hawaiians are not a tribal nation”; Pathways to Removing Obstacles (PRO) Housing, which tackles local-level policy barriers like zoning and permit restrictions; Fair Housing Activities, which investigates identity-based housing discrimination; and Housing Counseling, which focuses on financial literacy.
The Department of Veterans Affairs, on the other hand, would receive $644 million “to expedite access to lifesaving residential rehabilitation treatment programs for eligible veterans experiencing mental health issues, substance use disorders, or homelessness.” There is always funding for housing people involuntarily.
Among the proposed increases is $1.7 billion for the federal Bureau of Prisons “to ensure competitive pay, safe working conditions, and an end to longstanding correctional officer shortages.” Of that sum, $152 million would be allocated for first-year costs of a project that Trump announced in 2025, but remains in limbo in terms of whether it’ll actually happen: reopening Alcatraz.
BOP began exploring the feasibility and cost of reopening Alcatraz in May 2025.
Currently a tourist attraction, the maximum-security Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary has been shuttered since 1963. Though the facility’s striking appearance—a decaying military fortress on a rock in San Francisco Bay—fueled its notoriety as an escape-proof hell-hole for the BOP’s “worst of the worst,” the location is an expensive and logistically absurd place for a corrections department to operate, which is why it was shut down in the first place. In addition to the considerable maintenance associated with saltwater corrosion, Alcatraz Island has no potable water.
BOP began exploring the feasibility and cost of reopening the prison in May 2025. To date there’s been no formal confirmation that the project will move forward, and it could still be cut from the final version of the budget. But despite the immense resources that would be required to rebuild and modernize the physical structure, the intention is obviously for the optics to not change at all.
“Can we generate power? Move water? Secure the perimeter? Ensure sustainability? The assessment is ongoing—but momentum is real,” the agency wrote in July 2025. “Reopening Alcatraz isn’t just about a building, it’s about sending a message: crime doesn’t pay, and justice will be served. If feasible, Alcatraz will stand as a beacon of American resolve, where the most dangerous offenders face accountability. For the public, it’s a promise fulfilled—a stronger, safer America. And for President Trump, it’s a project that will make our nation proud.”
Image via Bureau of Prisons