US defense budget speeds toward $1T, with China in mind
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon intends to load up on advanced missiles, space defense and modern jets in its largest defense request in decades in order to meet the threat it perceives from China. The spending path would put the military’s annual budget over the $1 trillion threshold in just a matter of years, its chief financial officer said Monday.
The administration is asking Congress for $842 billion for the Pentagon in the 2024 budget year. It’s the largest request since the peak of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the mid-2000s, when the weight of hundreds of thousands of troops deployed in those overseas conflicts ballooned overseas war spending.
Now, the budget could surge again. That’s in part to meet the higher cost of weapons and parts, but also to answer the vulnerabilities that the Ukraine war has exposed in the U.S. defense industrial base, and the strategic threat the U.S. sees from China’s rapidly growing nuclear arsenal, its hypersonic capabilities and its gains in space.
Even if it only grows to account for inflation, “the budget will hit a trillion dollars,” probably before the next five years, Pentagon comptroller Michael Mccord told a news briefing. “Maybe that’s going to be a psychological, big watershed moment for many of us, or some of us, but it is inevitable.”
While the number seems astronomically high, it is only about 3% of the country’s gross domestic product. For comparison, during World War II the country was spending about one-third of its GDP on defense, Mccord said.
The budget request is part of an overall $6.8 trillion spending proposal rolled out by Biden last week, which Republicans say they’ll reject. But it’s not clear how they’ll act on the Pentagon proposal.
Some Republicans want to go beyond the military spending request. But some have also demanded sharp reductions in federal spending — something that would be difficult to accomplish without touching the defense budget.
‘Cop City’ protest: An environmental activist who was fatally shot in a confrontation with Georgia law enforcement in January was sitting cross-legged with their hands in the air at the time, the protester’s family said Monday as family members released results of an autopsy they commissioned.
Family members of Manuel Paez Terán held a news conference in Decatur to announce the findings and said they are filing an open-records lawsuit seeking to force Atlanta police to release more evidence about the Jan. 18 killing of Paez Terán, who went by the name Tortuguita and used the pronoun they.
The family’s attorneys said the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which has been probing the shooting for nearly two months, has prevented Atlanta police from releasing additional evidence to the family. The wooded area where Paez Terán was killed has long been dubbed “Cop City” by opponents who occupied the forest there to protest the 85-acre tract being developed as a massive police and firefighter training facility.
“Manuel was looking death in the face, hands raised when killed,” civil rights attorney Brian Spears said, citing the autopy’s conclusions.
In a statement, the bureau said it’s preventing “inappropriate release of evidence” to preserve the investigation’s integrity.
Dallas shooting: A man and woman have been arrested and charged after four people were found fatally shot in a Dallas apartment where an infant was found unharmed, police said Monday.
Artemio Maldonado, 18, and Azucena Sanchez, 20, have been charged with capital murder, police said. Jail records did not list an attorney for either suspect.
Police responded to the apartment around 7:10 p.m. Sunday and found two men and two women who had been shot. They all died at the scene. Authorities have not released the names of the victims.
Officers were called to the scene after a person checked on the occupants after not hearing from them, police spokeswoman Kristin Lowman said. She said police later learned that popping sounds had been heard around 1 a.m. but that no one had called police.
Lowman said there was a dispute between one of the suspects and one of the victims, but that she could not go into detail.
Lowman said the infant wasn’t injured but was taken to the hospital as a precaution. She said the infant is in the care of Child Protective Services.
Harris to visit Africa: Vice President Kamala Harris will spend a week in Africa at the end of March as the United States deepens its outreach to the continent amid global competition, notably with China.
“The trip will strengthen the United States’ partnerships throughout Africa and advance our shared efforts on security and economic prosperity,” said a statement from the vice president’s spokesperson, Kirsten Allen.
Harris’ plans follow visits by first lady Jill Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is going this week, and President Joe Biden is expected to travel to Africa later this year.
NY bike path trial: A split among jurors means there will be no death penalty for an Islamic extremist who maniacally raced a truck along a popular New York City bike path, killing eight people and maiming others.
The decision means Sayfullo Saipov, 35, an Uzbekistan citizen who lived in New Jersey, gets an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole in the October 2017 attack. Jurors told the judge Monday that they were unable to reach the unanimous verdict required for a death sentence.
The sentencing was the culmination of a trial that featured emotional testimony from survivors of the attack and relatives of the five tourists from Argentina, two Americans and a Belgian woman who were killed.
Traveling to Mexico: Mexico’s president claimed Monday that his country is safer than the United States, a week after two U.S. citizens were killed and two kidnapped and later rescued in the border city of Matamoros.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said U.S. travel warnings and reports of violence in Mexico were the result of a conspiracy by conservative politicians and U.S. media outlets to smear his administration.
Despite López Obrador’s assurances that Mexico was safe for travel, the FBI confirmed last week that three other women from the Texas town of Peñitas have been missing in Mexico since late February.
“Mexico is safer than the United States,” López Obrador said at a news briefing.