Trump Orders 'Iron Dome' for U.S., but Freezes Funds for Nuclear Protection
Star Wars is back, with an executive order from President Trump that the White House said “directs the building of the Iron Dome missile defense shield for America.”
The order, issued on Monday night, didn’t quite do that. It was more a vaguely worded set of instructions to accelerate current programs or explore new approaches to defending the continental United States than a blueprint for arming the heavens with thousands of antimissile weapons, sensors and tracking devices.
But two blocks away, on the same evening, the Office of Management and Budget issued a 56-page spreadsheet that detailed the suspension of funding for thousands of programs. They included most of the major U.S. efforts to reduce the amount of nuclear fuel that terrorists might seize, to guard against biological weapon attacks and to manage initiatives around the globe to curb the spread of nuclear arms.
The two announcements seemed to encapsulate the administration’s conflicting instincts in its opening weeks. Mr. Trump wants to build big and take the Space Force he created to new heights, even at the risk of new arms races. That effort has been underway since Ronald Reagan’s day, with only mixed results.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/us/politics/trump-iron-dome.html
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