President Trump announced plans to cut American troop levels in Germany beyond the Pentagon's previously stated withdrawal of roughly 5,000 soldiers. Speaking to reporters in Florida, Trump said: "We're going to cut way down. And we're cutting a lot further than 5,000" — offering no timeline or final number.

The announcement sharpens an ongoing dispute with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over who bears the cost of European security. Germany, the continent's largest economy, has spent decades sheltering behind American soldiers and American taxpayers.

Eisenhower warned in his farewell address that permanent overseas commitments — built to serve contractor balance sheets as much as national defense — would hollow out the republic from within. The question worth asking is not how many troops we pull back, but whether Congress, under its Article I war powers, has ever formally authorized this posture — or whether the boardroom and the bureaucracy simply kept renewing it without asking the American people.