WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump submitted a proposed budget for the next fiscal year to Congress, requesting $1.5 trillion for defense while seeking to slash $73 billion from domestic programs. The proposal asks Congress to eliminate the Continuum of Care program, which funds housing and services for homeless Americans.

Trump said states should raise taxes to fund social services if they choose to provide them. "We can't take care of day care," he said. "We are a big country."

"Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, they can do it on a state basis," he said. "We have to take care of one thing: military protection."

The proposed budget cited concerns about fraud and corruption among local agencies administering the Continuum of Care program. The president pointed to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which manages many homeless services for Los Angeles city and county, as an example of mismanagement of publicly funded programs to justify the proposed cuts to homeless assistance services nationwide. The budget stated that LAHSA failed to reduce the number of street homeless individuals, which it described as the highest in the United States. It also stated that an independent audit issued in March 2025 found LAHSA failed to accurately track billions of federal and local dollars.

LAHSA said the proposal would worsen the impact of budget constraints on homeless services. Gita O'Neill, LAHSA's interim chief executive, said that under the agency's leadership, unsheltered homelessness in Los Angeles had fallen 15 percent and that 90 percent of the Continuum of Care program's funding goes directly to rental assistance. "Cutting this funding or destabilizing the Continuum of Care program would directly result in more tents on our streets, not fewer," O'Neill said.

Local officials at the state and county level are grappling with cuts to homeless services due to budget constraints. If enacted, the budget would leave states, including California, to absorb the costs of cuts to domestic programs.

The proposal also asks Congress to eliminate millions in funding from state initiatives characterized by the White House as wasteful, ineffective or "woke." Among the targeted California programs, the budget would cancel $4 billion in unspent funding for the state's high-speed rail project, which the document labeled a "boondoggle." The proposed cuts would also strip grants from the Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, which the budget criticized for "actively working to dismantle systems of power and privilege that favor whiteness."

Additional California-specific cuts targeted funding for a Los Angeles gelato festival, a dance building in Santa Cruz — which the budget described as "one of the richest cities in the nation" — and a $3 million grant for a playground tied to an unspecified performing arts center in the state.

The budget also included requests for new spending in California. It asked Congress for $152 million to convert Alcatraz into a maximum-security prison, an idea the president has discussed for several years. The proposal also asked Congress to establish a National Center for Warrior Independence at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center.