This afternoon, President Donald J. Trump posted on social media a video of the theme song of the Davy Crockett TV series from 1954–1955 starring Fess Parker. It feels frighteningly appropriate for a 1950s television western to seem more important to Trump right now than the real world of April 2026 does. Davy Crockett was only one of the many westerns on television in the 1950s and 1960s as those eager to dismantle the New Deal government championed the idea of the western hero as the true American. Like Trump’s budget requests for 2026, it calls for an enormous boost to the nation’s military spending, $1.5 trillion, to be paid for with cuts to domestic programs. But members of Congress recognized that domestic spending is popular, and their 2026 appropriations bills kept domestic spending relatively flat.

Source: New York Times April 03, 2026 06:38 UTC