Catching Our Eye News Roundup, April 6, 2026

Every morning in the Ohio Capital Journal’s free newsletter, The Eye-Opener, we round up the news and commentary from across Ohio and around the country and world that is catching our attention. We call this feature Catching Our Eye, republished here.

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Catching Our Eye

• Cutting health care, funding war. The New York Times reports, “White House Seeks $1.5 Trillion for Defense in New Budget Request.”

The huge proposed increase would be partly offset by steep cuts to domestic programs, some of which the Trump administration describes as wasteful.

• The debt. Fortune reports, “Trump wants to add nearly $7 trillion to the $39 trillion national debt with his new military budget, watchdog warns.”

Budget hawks in Washington have their eyes trained on April 3, when the White House is scheduled to release its fiscal year 2027 budget request, centering on a significant “historic” defense spending increase to $1.5 trillion. The national debt crossed $39 trillion just weeks ago.

• This should do wonders for recruitment. NBC News reports, “Hegseth has intervened in military promotions for more than a dozen senior officers.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has taken steps to block or delay promotions for more than a dozen Black and female senior officers across all four branches of the military, some of whom are seen as having been targeted because of their race, gender or perceived affiliation with Biden administration policies or officials, according to nine U.S. officials familiar with the process.

• War On the Military. Tom Nichols writes in The Atlantic, “Hegseth’s War on America’s Military: Someone needs to explain the Pentagon purges to the American people.”

Trump and Hegseth have been on a clear mission to politicize the U.S. military, and to turn it into an armed extension of the MAGA movement. Hegseth regularly proselytizes, both for Trump and for his right-wing evangelical beliefs, from the Pentagon podium. He has intervened in Army promotions, recently culling four colonels—two Black men and two women—from the list for advancement to brigadier general. (This may be the tip of the iceberg: NBC is now reporting that Hegseth has also canceled the promotions, across multiple services, of at least a dozen minority and female officers.) When two Army helicopters buzzed a political rally and then flew to MAGA favorite Kid Rock’s house, Hegseth short-circuited the Army’s suspension of the pilots and squashed an investigation into their actions. Following the best American civil-military traditions, George and other senior military leaders have been remarkably disciplined in keeping their thoughts out of the public eye…

Even in less dangerous times, the public would still have a right to answers about such an unprecedented purge of the senior U.S. military ranks. These officers are all people with long and distinguished records of service; none of them has been charged with any wrongdoing, and none of them has been accused of any kind of incompetence or disloyalty. They all seem to have committed only the offense of being part of a military institution that Hegseth—who still harbors obvious bitterness about his undistinguished and ultimately shortened military career—wants to restock with MAGA loyalists.