Trump’s Birthday Parade to Cost Eyewatering Amount—and Could Get Worse

Donald Trump is planning to pay $45 million to roll tanks down the streets of Washington, D.C., on his birthday.

It was only a few months ago that the president signed an executive order creating a program to “beautify Washington D.C.” Now he’s plotting to transform his expensive birthday parade into a demolition derby that will cause serious damage to the roads that line the nation’s capital.

Jennifer Griffin, Fox News’s chief national security correspondent, wrote on X Wednesday that the newest batch of plans for a military parade to mark the Army’s 250th anniversary—which also happens to fall on Flag Day, Trump’s birthday—will feature 90 heavy vehicles.

This would include tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and heavy artillery weaponry. Griffin reported there would be 10 tanks and 10 Howitzers.

The first time Trump pitched the idea of throwing a massive military parade in his honor was in 2018. At the time, plans to include tanks were ultimately scrapped over concerns they would damage the roads. A Pentagon planning memo said that the procession would “include wheeled vehicles only, no tanks” because “consideration must be given to minimize damage to local infrastructure.”

This time around, it seems similar considerations to preserve local infrastructure have been skipped.

During an interview on NBC News’s Meet the Press Sunday, Trump said the hefty $45 million price tag was “peanuts compared to the value of doing it.” U.S. defense planners said that the price would fall somewhere between $25 million and $45 million, according to Griffin.

Those numbers should be questionable, however. In 2018, the estimated price tag of Trump’s parade was roughly $92 million. Imagining that these plans include many of the same features as the ones from seven years ago, inflation would put the price tag closer to $117 million.

Whatever the price may be, it will fall squarely on the Army, with the cost being divided between units. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has ordered major cost-cutting measures in the military. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called Monday for a 20 percent reduction in the number of four-star generals and general officers in the National Guard and a 10 percent reduction in general and flag officers.

“Through these measures, we will uphold our position as the most lethal fighting force in the world, achieving peace through strength and ensuring greater efficiency, innovation, and preparedness for any challenge that lies ahead,” Hegseth stated in a memo.

It’s no secret that Trump has hated Washington for years—but that doesn’t mean he should be allowed to destroy it for a vanity project. A “No Kings Day” protest is already being planned to combat the parade.

The numbers are in, and they don’t look good for the president.

The Cook Political Report observed Wednesday that Donald Trump’s  poll numbers are in a slump with key groups that helped him win in November, including young voters, Latinos, and independents.

Cook’s newly launched poll tracker found that Trump’s net job-approval rating had plummeted just since April 15, dropping by seven points from -3.9 percent to -10.7 percent. The most dramatic shifts were witnessed in the aforementioned groups: For 18- to 29-year-old voters, Trump’s approval dropped by -11.8 points. The president lost Latinos by 10.4 points, and independents soured on Trump by 7.9 points.

“It’s worth noting that even significant slumps in the president’s popularity don’t directly translate into shifts in downballot vote choice, particularly in a deeply polarized climate,” the report read. “It’s no guarantee that most—or even many—Americans who ultimately sour on the current occupant of the White House will be driven into the arms of the Democratic Party come next November.”

Instead, those voters may be more likely to stay home—though that wouldn’t bode well for Republicans jockeying for other political positions downballot.

It’s just the latest in a string of sinking reactions to the president’s performance. An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll published last month found that Trump’s approval rating had plummeted to 39 percent—a 6 percent drop from February—marking the lowest first-100-day rating of a president since modern polling began roughly 80 years ago.

And an April report by the Conference Board found that its consumer confidence index had fallen by 7.9 points, bringing overall U.S. consumer confidence to 86 points. Consumer futures were brought to a 13-year low, with outlooks on the economy dropping by 12.5 points to 54.5 points—well below the threshold of 80 that “usually signals a recession ahead,” according to the Conference Board.

The root cause of the instability was “high financial market volatility in April,” which hit American consumers’ stock portfolios and retirement savings hard and fast, per the Conference Board’s report. That was almost singularly due to Trump’s machinations in the White House, which included releasing (and stalling) a sweeping and vindictive tariff proposal plan that economists observed (and the White House eventually confirmed) was founded on bad math.

Three federal agencies on Donald Trump’s chopping block have been saved by a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. sided with a 21-state coalition Tuesday, issuing a preliminary injunction to halt one of Trump’s executive orders dismantling federal agencies that support libraries, museums, minority businesses, and mediation services. They included the Institute of Museum and Library Services, or IMLS; the Minority Business Development Agency, MBDA; and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, FMCS.

The March order also marked the end of four other agencies, including the United States Agency for Global Media, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.

In a 49-page memorandum, McConnell wrote that Trump’s order blatantly ignored the separation of powers and violated the Administrative Procedure Act “in the arbitrary and capricious way it was carried out.”

“It also disregards the fundamental constitutional role of each of the branches of our federal government; specifically, it ignores the unshakable principles that Congress makes the law and appropriates funds, and the Executive implements the law Congress enacted and spends the funds Congress appropriated,” McConnell wrote.

The sweeping order translated to mass layoffs, grant freezes, and whopping reductions. Last week, another federal judge paused planned layoffs at the IMLS, responding to a related lawsuit brought by the American Library Association.

“The States have presented compelling evidence illustrating that the harms stemming from the dismantling of IMLS, MBDA, and FMCS are already unfolding or are certain to occur, in of light the significant reduction in personnel available and competent to administer these agencies’ funds and services and the elimination of certain programs that served the States,” McConnell noted.

A 25-year old DOGE bro oversaw the termination of lawyers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last month, just days after they warned him certain stocks he owned were prohibited by employees, according to a Wednesday report by ProPublica.  

Gavin Kliger had been detailed to the CFPB in early March as part of DOGE’s efforts to take over and ultimately dismantle the ethics watchdog that oversees banks and manages vast troves of consumer data. 

But Kliger had committed a big no-no at the CFPB. His financial records indicated that he owned up to $365,000 in stock in companies that the CFPB was charged with regulating, including Tesla, which has been the subject of hundreds of consumer complaints. Kliger also owned stock in Apple and two cryptocurrencies, as well as additional companies on a “Prohibited Holdings” list, including Alphabet, Alibaba, and Berkshire Hathaway. In total, Kliger had made up to $715,000 in investments in seven barred companies. 

Kliger received an ethics notice on April 10, ProPublica reported. Shortly afterward, OMB Director Russell Vought moved forward with sweeping layoffs of federal employees, and sent Kliger and other DOGE officials an email with the subject line “CFPB RIF Work.” Another note sent to Kliger told him he’d been given access to the agency’s computer systems that “should allow you to do what you need to do.”

Kliger spent the next few days “screaming at people he did not believe were working fast enough” to disseminate termination notices, said one federal employee who used the pseudonym Alex Doe, in a sworn statement about the layoffs. On April 17, the termination notices went out, including to the ethics team, which had alerted Kliger to his prohibited investments. 

A White House spokesperson told ProPublica that Kliger “did not even manage” the layoffs, “making this entire narrative an outright lie.”

In April, the CFPB fired nearly 1,500 employees at DOGE’s direction, leaving only about 200 people employed there. The remaining workers have been forced to work around the clock to manage the transition, and they’ve begun including themselves in the layoffs. 

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has a plan to protect autism-related data from RFK Jr.’s absurd plans to create a disease registry tracking autistic people. 

Pritzker plans to sign an executive order Wednesday that will prevent state agencies from obtaining or disclosing data that personally identifies people with autism, unless it’s required for medical care or legal matters, according to a copy of the order obtained by the Chicago-Sun Times. 

“Every Illinoisan deserves dignity, privacy, and the freedom to live without fear of surveillance or discrimination,” Pritzker said in a statement. “As Donald Trump and DOGE threaten these freedoms, we are taking steps to ensure that our state remains a leader in protecting the rights of individuals with autism and all people with disabilities.”

Pritzker’s order comes as RFK Jr. announced the National Institutes of Health is collecting private medical data from government and commercial databases to create a registry of people with autism in the United States. The data will be collected from prescription records, lab testing, and private insurance claims. While the NIH denies it’s a “registry,” RFK Jr. used the word again just this week. 

The announcement sparked widespread outrage among autism advocacy groups across the country. A petition against the registry garnered thousands of signatures within 24 hours. 

“They are building a list. A list of people like my children. A list of autistic individuals— tracked, labeled, and filed under the guise of public health,” Ryan Smith, the petition starter, wrote in the petition’s description. “This is not support. It is surveillance.”

RFK Jr. has long dehumanized people with autism and spread unbacked claims about the disorder. “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use the toilet unassisted,” Kennedy said at a press conference in April.

The lifelong vaccine skeptic has compared the rising rates of autism diagnoses in the U.S. to a preventable epidemic. Autism is not an infectious diseas; it is a lifelong developmental disorder.

With Pritzker’s executive order, Illinois will become the first state to legally restrict the sharing of autism-related data—a clear message to RFK Jr. that every American, even those he looks down upon, has the right to privacy.