Last night, Donald Trump gave a meandering, contradictory address to the nation about his war in Iran. He offered no timeline or clear path forward for how the war will end — instead, he repeated his recent talking points and threatened further war crimes. Stocks tanked and oil prices surged in response, as Americans continue to feel the squeeze at the pump.

But the single most consequential thing Trump said yesterday didn’t come from his primetime address. Instead it came during a White House Easter lunch, where Trump made his priorities clear in an offhanded, unintentional, rare moment of brutal honesty: “The United States can’t take care of day care.”

“We’re fighting wars,” Trump added. “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”

The math behind the military budget is brutal and deliberate. Billions in new defense spending has to come from somewhere, and Republicans in Congress are eyeing the programs that working families depend on most. Cuts to health care and food programs are on the table as the costs of a protracted conflict continue to spiral.

This is the story HuffPost is chasing: not just the dollars being spent, but who’s being asked to pay them and the real impact on Americans. From the Wall Street fallout to the closed-door budget fights on the Hill, our reporters are following the money. The work is far from over, and in a moment when the truth is harder to find than ever, your support is what makes it possible. Become a member today.