WSJ What’s News - DOGE Sets Its Sights on the Military

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

P.M. Edition for Feb. 14. The Department of Government Efficiency has taken on a number of government agencies recently, but none with a budget as vast and complex as the Defense Department. WSJ national security correspondent Nancy Youssef joins us to talk about how the Pentagon is preparing for a visit from DOGE. Plus, another star prosecutor steps down over the Justice Department’s directive to drop the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. And WSJ travel reporter Jacob Passy tells us about a quaint state that’s surprisingly becoming one of the hottest aviation markets in the U.S. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Elon Musk's Doge sets its sights on a big item in the government's budget, the Department of Defense. What's interesting is even what are smaller cuts relative to the military could have huge consequences. USAID budget was 40 billion.

The army budget alone is $190 billion almost. Plus another star prosecutor steps down over the directive to drop the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. And why are airlines flocking to one of the country's smallest states? It's Friday, February 14th. I'm Alex Osala for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. This just in, the board of OpenAI has turned down Elon Musk's $97 billion offer to buy

the company's assets. The rejection, which was delivered in a letter to the billionaire's lawyer, stated that the board decided that the bid was, which was delivered in a letter to the billionaire's lawyer, stated that the board decided that the bid was, quote, not in the best interests, end quote, of the company's mission. In New York City, another star prosecutor has resigned over the Justice Department's directive to drop the case against Mayor Eric Adams. Hagen-Scotten said in his resignation letter that it was illegitimate for the Justice Department to order the dismissal of bribery charges against Adams as a means for inducing the mayor to

support Trump administration efforts to fight illegal immigration and violent crime. In yesterday's show, we reported that Danielle Sassoon, who had served as acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, had stepped down. Since then, at least five career Justice Department prosecutors have also resigned after it became clear that they were next in line to handle the request to dismiss the case. In international news, Ukrainian officials say that a Russian drone struck the Chernobyl nuclear power plant early today and set fire to the shelter that contains radiation from the site.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the fire had been extinguished and no increase in radiation levels had been recorded. Photos and videos showed a hole in the outer layer of the structure, though nuclear safety experts said there's no indication that the inner containment shell had been breached. Zelensky was at the Munich Security Conference today, where he discussed the state of negotiations to end the war between Ukraine and Russia. First of all, I don't want to meet just with Russia, just to meet for what? No, we see the order of meetings, as I said.

The order is United States, Europe, then Russia. Zelensky also met with US Vice President JD Vance and had a private meeting with US lawmakers. The lawmakers told the Journal that Zelensky said Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, who visited Kiev earlier this week, tried to convince him to sign a piece of paper giving the U.S. rights to 50% of its rare earth minerals. And in its planned hostage release tomorrow, Hamas said it would free the last living American-Israeli civilian held hostage in Gaza, along with two other men.

The announcement comes after a dispute this week over the delivery of humanitarian aid that threatened to derail the shaky ceasefire. INTRO In the weeks since President Trump took office, the Department of Government Efficiency has set its sights on cutting costs at a number of government agencies. But it has yet to tackle a budget as large and complex as that of the Department of Defense, where DOJ members are expected as soon as today. Defense Secretary Pete Hagseth has said that DOJ is welcome at the Pentagon.

WSJ National Security correspondent Nancy Youssef joins me now to talk about how the military is preparing for a visit from DOJ. So Nancy, just how big is the military's budget and what are the kinds of things that it's used for? So, it's 800 billion plus and that's just at the Pentagon. If you count things like our nuclear program and things under the Department of Energy, it goes over one trillion out of a $6.7 trillion budget. So the largest portion of any other agency.

About half of that is for personnel and then there are healthcare costs and then the rest are for weapons, equipment. Those are sort of the big bucket items. It's an agency that employs three million people, two million of them being troops with such an awesome responsibility, the defense of the country. I would imagine that makes it a really big target for Doge as well. So how are military services preparing for a visit from Doge? So in the past, every service has sort of had a list of weapons systems or ships or equipment

that they wanted to cut, usually to fund something else. So many of these systems, they'll be developed years before those who are actually using them are in place. So you'll have a general from a decade ago come up with an idea for a threat as he sees it and try to develop a weapon system to address it. And by the time it sort of reaches the Pentagon or is close to it, defense officials will say, maybe this isn't the best system. Maybe we should buy less of it. Maybe we should put our money towards something else. You hear that particularly in the army when it comes to drones because that technology

is changing so rapidly. And so some of the services, I should say, are looking at those lists that they had of things they wanted to cut and saying, why don't we come to DOGE in a forward-leaning way to try to help them make the decision rather than letting people who probably aren't as familiar with the military make decisions on how to find cost savings. So military services have proposed cuts in the past. What is potentially different this time? This time, ultimately, is that you

have a Congress that is not likely to push back as much as it once did in the past. Many of these systems are developed in states where the industry is sort of the cornerstone of a local economy. A number of our larger systems are developed over multiple states by design to make it harder to cut.

So something like the F-35 stealth jet fighter is produced over 48 states, some component of it. And the idea was that if you had it touching so many parts of the country, it would be harder to cut. You mentioned a couple of great specifics. But is there anything else that's likely to be on the chopping block?

I think one is contractors. The post-Cold War military is much smaller than it used to be in the 1990s. And one way that the military did that is they contracted out things that used to happen within the ranks. And so you could see a threat to contracts happening. You could see cuts to the number of general officers. Secretary of Defense Pete Hexseth at a town hall made reference to the fact that maybe we have too many generals and admirals. What's interesting is even what are smaller cuts relative to the military could have huge consequences. USAID budget was $40 billion. The Army budget alone is $190 billion almost. The cuts at DOD could directly affect a particular district, a particular senator's voting constituency. And then that's on top of the fact that you're talking about

five services, millions of people employed, and a much more complex budget relative to other government agencies. That was WSJ National Security correspondent, Nancy Youssef. Thank you, Nancy. Thank you. Coming up, why airlines are racing to expand operations in a state often thought of as a suburb? That's after the break. US markets were mixed today.

Notable midday market movers included Airbnb and Roku, which both surged on the back of strong earnings reports. Coinbase shares fell even after it reported a surge in revenue and profit. The Dow slipped about 0.4 percent, and the Nasdaq gained about 0.4 percent. The S&P 500 traded near the record closing high that it set last month, closing down less than a tenth of a percent. If you had to guess, what do you think is one of the hottest aviation markets in the US?

Maybe a big city like Atlanta or Los Angeles? Actually, it's somewhere a little more quaint. Connecticut. That's right, small airlines like Breeze Airways and Avello Airlines, as well as larger carriers, are building up their presence at regional airports like those in the Nutmeg State. What's News producer Anthony Banty sat down with WSJ Travel reporter Jacob Passi to chat about what makes Connecticut so attractive for airlines. Connecticut is kind of historically underserved market. There are millions of people who live in the state.

It's a fairly affluent state, so a lot of those folks have disposable income to spend on leisure travel. But there's no real major airport that serves the state. They're situated in between two big markets, Boston and New York. And for folks who live in Connecticut, it's about a two-hour, three-hour drive, depending on traffic, to either of those cities and their respective airports. So there's been

this niche that airlines are looking to seize upon. Are there any other markets like this? Yeah. So Connecticut is one of the prime examples, but there's similar stuff going on in North Carolina. Both airlines are expanding their operations in the Charlotte area. Lakeland, Florida, which is situated in between Tampa and Orlando is another market they both have been identifying a similar vibe.

It seems like Breeze and Avello have somehow tapped into this desire for more flights and routes through these regional airports. Does this signal a shift in thinking in the industry? Yeah, we have been seeing this trend in terms of certain airports losing air service. And that is still happening to some extent. The airports that are losing service

tend to be in very rural areas. So New Haven, Hartford, those are still cities, but they're smaller cities. And those are the sorts of markets that carriers are paying attention to. For newer airlines like Breeze and Avelo, it makes sense to tap into these markets because usually the fees associated with flying into those airports are lower. There's not the same competition for gates as you would have in a more major airport.

So for them, it is a way to kind of build their business in a lower cost manner. JetBlue, American, etc. They are also looking at these airports. That was WSJ Travel reporter Jacob Passe speaking with producer Anthony Bansi. And finally, today is Valentine's Day, a time to show your love. For me, I'm happy with the classic flowers and chocolate, but some people require something a little more… personal. Sharing their phone's location with the person they love.

This can be via apps like Life360 or features like Snapchat's SnapMap or Apple's FindMy. And things can get messy if that medium for affection is one-sided. WSJ family and tech columnist Julie Jargon tells us who is into this particular love language and why. A lot of the younger people that are starting out dating feel like they've grown up being tracked. Their parents had them on an app, their friends all follow each other on SnapMap, and so it seems like a natural progression when dating someone to start sharing locations. When I spoke to a number of people who are in relationships or were in relationships,

and this became a constant source of arguing to the point where after a little while, one person called it off because they felt like their partner maybe was hiding something. It's yet another one of those decisions to make in relationships such as commingling finances, moving in together. How much do you share? How much do you become one with another person? And how much space do you keep for yourself? And definitely the people who don't want to share their location, sometimes it's because

they just feel there's no need to and that the ultimate sign of trust is to not have to know where your partner is at all times. And that's What's News for this week. Additional audio in this episode from Reuters. Tomorrow we'll have our weekly What's News in Markets wrap up. Then on What's News Sunday, we'll be looking at President Trump's goal of dismantling the Education Department, how it could happen and the legal and political challenges he could face. On Monday, we'll be taking the day off for President's Day in the U.S., and we'll be back in your feed with a new episode Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bienamé and Anthony Bansi, with supervising producer

Emily Martosi. Michael Laval wrote our theme music, Aisha El-Muslim is our development producer, Scott Saloway and Chris Zinsley are our deputy editors, and Philana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. I'm Alex Osela, thanks for listening.