Happy birthday, Mr. President—it looks like Donald Trump may be getting his wish of a massive parade in his honor.

The Associated Press reported late Thursday that the Army’s most recent plans to celebrate its 250th anniversary include a large military parade scheduled to take place on June 14, which just happens to be the day Trump will turn 79 years old.

They say age is just a number, but the plan’s hefty price tag is very, very real.

The Army’s blueprints call for a whopping 6,600 soldiers, several Army bands, 50 helicopters, and at least 150 vehicles, which could include historic Army vehicles and even tanks that could significantly damage the streets of Washington, D.C.

When Trump first pitched having a military parade in the nation’s capital in 2018, plans were abandoned due to the exorbitant cost: roughly $92 million. Imagining that these plans include many of the same features as the ones from seven years ago, inflation would put the price tag closer to $117 million. Not to mention the cost of the Army festival already planned for the National Mall.

Plans for an expensive and frivolous military parade obviously fly in the face of the Trump administration’s supposedly necessary cost-cutting measures. In reality, the cuts are more punitive than actually thrifty. Trump signed an executive order Friday directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop allocating funds to PBS and NPR. The CPB disperses $535 million in taxpayer funds to public stations for educational and cultural programming. That amount is apportioned by Congress, placing the funding outside of Trump’s realm of control.

With the massive cuts to educational public programming, the president can almost afford to throw his lavish birthday party. But he’d still need to scrape together several additional millions.

President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that ends public government funding of NPR and PBS in yet another culturally polarized attack on anything deemed “woke.”

“Unlike in 1967, when the CPB was established, today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options,” the executive order reads. “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”

This order is more symbolic than anything, as both NPR and PBS receive most of their funding from independent sponsors. And yet the order would limit funding to rural areas in particular, as those stations receive the most of the sliver of government funding that NPR and PBS receive.

“This order defies the will of the American people and would devastate the public safety, educational and local service missions of public media—services that the American public values, trusts and relies on every day,” said America’s Public Television Stations CEO Kate Riley. She went on to note that those rural stations provide a “lifeline in hundreds of communities where there is no other source of local media.”

Donald Trump is trying to force Harvard University into subservience, and on Friday he announced that the institution will lose its tax-exempt status.

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The move comes after weeks of threats following Harvard President Alan Garber’s announcement last month that the university would not give in to the Trump administration’s demands, outlined in a letter from the Department of Education. These included discontinuing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, reforming Harvard’s admissions process for international students, and dismantling programs with “egregious records of antisemitism.”

Following Harvard’s reply, Trump cut $2.2 billion in grants to the school along with a $60 million contract. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem also demanded records on the “illegal and violent” activities of the institution’s international students, threatening to end Harvard’s ability to enroll any future international students if it didn’t comply.

Trump followed up with plans to pull $1 billion in medical grants to the university, accusing Harvard of “grandstanding” by publicly refusing to defy the White House. But the university isn’t backing down, and has the support of its staff: Over 80 faculty members have pledged to donate 10 percent of their salaries for up to a year to support the university’s cause, with the list growing.

It’s all part of conservatives’ war on higher education, which they see as a liberal bastion in American life. Many on the right were also incensed at university protests across the country against Israel’s war in Gaza over the past year. Now, it seems that Trump is threatening the existence of America’s oldest university as a show of force.

This story has been updated.

The Trump administration has shut down a Biden-era program to end sewage backups into central Alabama homes, labeling the whole thing “illegal DEI.”

NBC News reports that Trump ended the $26 million effort to rebuild water infrastructure in Lowndes County earlier........

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