Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer used a floor speech Thursday to blast President Trump’s planned fleet of nuclear-powered “Trump-class” battleships as an expensive vanity project the Navy never requested. “While American families can’t even keep their heads above water, Donald Trump is spending his time building himself a ‘golden fleet’ of battleships the Navy doesn’t want,” Schumer said, according to the transcript of his remarks posted by Senate Democratic Leadership. He cited a New York Times report headlined “Cost of Trump’s Namesake Warships Likely to Rise by 50 Percent or More,” which found the fleet’s total projected cost had climbed to $275 billion. “The only person who wants these ‘golden’ ships is Donald Trump so he can slap his name on them,” Schumer said.
What the CBO Report Actually Found
Schumer’s remarks centered on a Congressional Budget Office report published Wednesday, which estimated the Navy’s planned 15-ship Trump-class battleship program would cost approximately $275 billion in 2026 dollars through 2056. The first ship, according to the CBO, would cost roughly $23.4 billion, with each of the subsequent 14 ships averaging around $18 billion. At 35,000 tons and equipped with anti-air, land-attack, and anti-ship missiles, hypersonic weapons, nuclear cruise missiles, large lasers, and a rail gun, the report described the vessel as poised to be “the largest surface combatant in the world and larger than any surface combatant built for the Navy since World War II” if built to its current specifications.
How the Cost Compares to Existing Navy Vessels
The CBO’s per-ship cost estimate puts the Trump-class battleships in the same range as the Navy’s most expensive vessels to date. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy’s premier nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, cost approximately $13.3 billion — meaning even the cheapest projected Trump-class battleship, at roughly $18 billion, would cost more than the current most expensive ship in the fleet, with the lead ship’s $23.4 billion price tag exceeding it by nearly $10 billion.
Why Costs Could Climb Even Higher
The CBO’s own report flagged significant uncertainty in its projections. Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, who had requested the report, noted that the CBO’s estimates assumed each ship would displace 35,000 tons, but warned that if displacement increased to 41,000 tons — a plausible design change — the cost per hull would rise by 16 percent, pushing the total program cost to as much as $528 billion. “While we continue to see too many Pentagon programs burdened by cost overruns, delays, and unrealistic promises that fail to meet reality, Congress cannot afford to commit to another massive military boondoggle that will only succeed in filling the coffers of the military-industrial complex,” Merkley said in a statement.
How Trump Has Described the Program
Trump unveiled the battleship program in December at Mar-a-Lago, framing it in explicitly grand terms. “They’ll be the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Trump said at the announcement, alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, presenting the ships as the anchor of a new Navy “Golden Fleet” of surface combatants, auxiliary ships, and unmanned vessels. Trump has said the Navy’s ultimate ambition is a fleet of 20 to 25 such ships, beyond the 15 the CBO’s cost estimate covers.
Schumer’s Broader Argument About Priorities
Schumer tied the battleship spending directly to cuts elsewhere in the federal budget. “Trump could use the money for these battleships to offset the entire nearly two-hundred-billion-dollar cut he made to SNAP,” he said. “Feeding hungry kids or creating an unnecessary class of battleships to put your name on them, which is more important to America? The answer is a lot different than what Trump thinks.” He framed the program as part of a pattern that includes the White House ballroom construction, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation, and a planned commemorative arch, saying these projects are “the reasons why more than seven in ten Americans think Trump is not focusing on the top issues facing the country.”
Whether the Navy Actually Wants These Ships
Schumer’s claim that “the Navy never wanted these ships” reflects a program that originated as a presidential initiative rather than a Navy-generated requirement — the CBO report itself was commissioned at Merkley’s request specifically to assess costs and industrial-base implications of a shipbuilding plan set by the administration, and the report separately noted that meeting the plan’s production pace would require the Navy to build a battleship roughly every other year from 2028 to 2056 while simultaneously maintaining production of two DDG-51 destroyers annually — a pace the report suggested could strain the shipbuilding industrial base.
The Capacity Question
Beyond cost, the CBO raised direct doubts about whether American shipyards can physically build the fleet as envisioned. The report found that under the Navy’s 2027 shipbuilding plan, yards would need to produce roughly 12 percent greater tonnage by 2035 than under the prior 2025 version, and that by 2058 the total tonnage of large surface combatants under construction would need to increase by 60 percent — a demand the report explicitly said “could be a challenge for the shipbuilding industry.”
Schumer’s Wider Criticism of Trump’s Economic Messaging
Schumer paired the battleship criticism with a broader attack on Trump’s economic rhetoric, pointing to remarks Trump made in Nevada the day before. “Trump said yesterday that Americans are living, quote, ‘in the greatest economy we’ve ever had by far,'” Schumer said. “In practically the same breath, Trump said, ‘We may have to send oil prices up.'” Schumer connected this to mortgage rates reaching their highest level in a year, which he attributed to “Trump’s disastrous war and failed economic agenda,” and to Trump’s earlier refusal to sign a bipartisan bill aimed at lowering housing costs, which Schumer said Trump had “called a joke.”
A Pattern of Costly Personal Projects
Schumer explicitly grouped the battleships with other Trump-era construction initiatives he has criticized as vanity spending. “Trump couldn’t handle renovating a reflecting pool or building a ballroom,” he said. “Now he thinks he’s ready to design and construct 15 Trump-class battleships… He’s had a lot of vanity projects. They’ve been very expensive. This is the most costly vanity project yet.” That framing ties the battleship program to the same broader critique Democrats have leveled at the privately-and-partially-publicly-funded White House ballroom construction and other Trump-branded infrastructure projects over the preceding year.
Schumer’s Additional Floor Remarks on Nominations
The same floor speech also addressed an unrelated matter: Senate Republicans’ handling of a batch of Trump administration nominees. Schumer said Senate Republicans were “ramming through a nominations package that’ll put a grab bag of charlatans and MAGA foot soldiers into the highest positions of power,” arguing the bundled approach was designed to avoid individual scrutiny. “They couldn’t withstand sunlight,” Schumer said. “They couldn’t withstand spotlight. They couldn’t withstand the scrutiny that individual nominations process would have done to them.”
Where This Leaves Things
As of Schumer’s Thursday remarks, the battleship program remained in its early planning phase, with the Pentagon requesting $1 billion in advanced procurement funding for fiscal year 2027 and an anticipated first order date in 2028 — meaning the $275 billion total projected cost remains a preliminary CBO estimate rather than a finalized appropriation, and the program’s ultimate scale, cost, and congressional support remain unresolved heading into upcoming budget negotiations.