The U.S. national debt stood at roughly $85.06 billion at the turn of the 20th century, adjusted for inflation. At the turn of the 21st century, America's outstanding debt was $5.67 trillion — the equivalent of roughly $10.99 trillion today.
According to the Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service's Fiscal Data dashboard, America's total public debt outstanding as of Tuesday was $40,047,425,768,420.22. That's roughly $116,832 per person.
'The amount is significantly greater than US annual GDP.'
Of the over $40 trillion, $32.26 trillion is Treasury securities held by the public, including the Federal Reserve, state and local governments, domestic private investors, and foreign holders. The other $7.78 trillion is the total of intra-governmental debt holdings.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters on Thursday, "Remember, we did not get here in a day. We were left with a mess. The Biden administration had the highest deficit-to-GDP in history when we weren't at war or weren't in a recession. For 2025, we brought it down by more than a percent."
Former President Barack Obama added $8.44 trillion to the national debt during his two terms. During the Biden presidency, the debt increased by $8.4 trillion. During President Donald Trump's time in office, the debt has risen by $11.6 trillion — including $3.8 trillion in the time since his return to power in January 2025, reported Reuters.
After the debt cracked $40 trillion, Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, noted, "The gross national debt has doubled in the last 10 years; in less than 20 years, it has quadrupled. And today, we have confirmation that the debt has reached a new milestone of $40 trillion. It is staggering how predictable the fiscal decline of a global power can become."
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MacGuineas highlighted that it took two centuries for America's gross debt to reach $1 trillion — a milestone reached in 1981.
At the time, President Ronald Reagan stated, "This is a figure that's literally beyond our comprehension."
Blaze Media contributor Carol Roth told Blaze News, "Instead of celebrating America’s 250th, we are lamenting accumulating $40 trillion in debt. The scope of the debt is shocking, but there are two important related factors."
"One is the rapid growth of the debt. I remember when we crossed $20 trillion in 2017, which was less than 10 years ago. We have doubled that with another $20 trillion in less than 10 years," said Roth. "The second factor is how much it costs us to finance the debt, which I have been warning about for nearly two decades. Right now, we spend more to pay the interest costs of our debt than we do on the defense of the nation. At the rate we are going, it will soon become the U.S.’ largest expenditure category."
"You cannot have a healthy, vibrant nation when you spend more to pay for your debt than anything else," continued Roth. "The blame for this lands squarely at the feet of Congress, where both parties, who take in more than $5 trillion a year now, find a way to spend an incremental $2 trillion. And it is the fault of all in government that won’t address the rampant fraud, waste, and abuse in the system."
The Wall Street Journal suggested that reaching the $40 trillion threshold "carries symbolic weight, but isn’t, by itself, economically significant." It suggested, however, that it is prudent to keep an eye on the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio.
"The amount is significantly greater than U.S. annual GDP. That means even if all U.S. income went toward paying down the debt for a full year — rather than to things like salaries, corporate profits, and investment — the federal government would still owe trillions, by this measure," said the journal.
The Congressional Budget Office projected in a February report that "deficits are large by historical standards. The deficit totals $1.9 trillion in fiscal year 2026 and grows to $3.1 trillion in 2036. Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit is 5.8% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2026 and increases to 6.7% in 2036. Deficits averaged 3.8% of GDP over the last 50 years."
The CBO projected further that debt held by the public will rise from 101% of GDP this year to 120% in 2036.
The CBO noted that its projections changed since January 2025 primarily because of three major policy developments: "The 2025 reconciliation act increased deficits by an estimated $4.7 trillion; higher tariffs reduced deficits by an estimated $3.0 trillion; and administrative actions related to immigration increased deficits by an estimated $0.5 trillion."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!The 2028 presidential race may still be years away, but a Washington Post article reveals that Democrats are already gaming out their next candidate — and BlazeTV host Pat Gray isn’t impressed by much of the field.
Though he does think one of them could pose a problem for Republicans.
“Democrats recommended that South Carolina vote first in the Democrat process. That boosts black voters' representation in picking the nominee and Kamala Harris’ fortunes, given that the former vice president and 2024 nominee is probably the candidate on this list with the most support among black women,” Gray reads.
“She’s been rallying voters for the midterm elections by touting her controversial plan to abolish the Electoral College and add justices to the Supreme Court,” he continues. “Oh, that is — that can’t happen."
Gavin Newsom is also on the list, alongside Josh Shapiro, who Gray notes is “not going to make it because Democrats hate Jews.”
“They’re too anti-Semitic now,” he says.
Unsurprisingly, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made the short list as well.
“Democrat socialists are having their own moment after helping New York City mayor become mayor. They and the broader progressive movement ousted longtime members of Congress in deep-blue cities and won a hard-fought primary in Michigan,” Gray reads from the Post article.
However, he notes that “she won’t say that Israel should be destroyed, so she’s not good enough for the DSA.”
Another potential candidate that Gray says is a “frightening possibility” is Mark Kelly.
“He’s a veteran, former astronaut,” he explains.
“We were told that this was Obama’s guy, that Obama wanted instead of Kamala in the beginning after Joe Biden dropped out,” Jeff Fisher chimes in, adding that he also has a bad case of “Trump derangement syndrome.”
“Then they have to mention, of course, Pete Buttigieg, because, well, you’d be homophobic if you don’t mention him,” Gray says.
“We don’t want to be homophobic, and neither does the Washington Post,” he says.
Also on the list is Gretchen Whitmer, who Gray says “nobody cares about” any more.
“She’s a nightmare,” Fisher says.
“I think she’s out,” Gray adds.
To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
The conga line of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” guest hosts has us thinking the unthinkable: Do we miss the real deal?
Make no mistake, Kimmel’s Trump derangement long ago gave the comic osteoporosis of the funny bone. But a quick sample of this week’s guest host reminds us there are even worse options than the former “Man Show” star.
It appears that the creative team used AI to help design the Lobo character played by Jason Momoa.
Take “Black-ish” alum Anthony Anderson. To the actor’s credit, he hasn’t cried like a widdle baby like Kimmel sometimes does. Still, one of his recent monologues proved painful.
A sample?
Apparently, after the NATO summit last month, Trump hid inside a catering cart to sneak out of Turkey due to security threats. And let’s give it up. Let’s give it up to the Secret Service. Do you know how hard it is to sneak a pig out of Turkey? ... That’s the same way he used to get onto Epstein’s plane.
Comedy needs a kernel of truth to be funny. And as we’ve known for some time, Trump wasn’t a presence on Epstein Air, regular or otherwise.
Someone else was though. Remember when all the late-night shows piled on former President Bill Clinton for taking the Lolita Express a reported 26 times?
Somehow, Kimmel and co. forgot that news ...
There’s a morbidly funny “Simpsons” meme that captures the “piling on” of anyone who has already suffered enough.
“Stop! He’s already dead!”
Now, it’s "Supergirl’s" turn. The Warner Bros. bust flamed out this year with critics and moviegoers. It stalled the DC Comics franchise and put overseer James Gunn in the hot seat.
The clunker is facing new problems this week. A featurette sharing some behind-the-scenes magic from the movie revealed the production used AI to enhance the movie.
In particular, it appears that the creative team used AI to help design the Lobo character played by Jason Momoa.
That’s a no-no in Hollywood these days (even if more and more artists are copping to using the technology).
Team Warner Bros. yanked the video off of YouTube, but the news went viral all the same. Turns out Kryptonite isn’t the only thing Supergirl fears …
There’s a reason the legacy media is suddenly in love with all things “South Park.” It has nothing to do with Cartman, Butters, or the show’s no-holds-barred approach to comedy.
Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone pounced on President Donald Trump all last season. Hard. Relentlessly. Now, suddenly, the show has fawning articles across the media landscape.
Imagine that!
Deadline did the honors this week, recalling how the show has tackled American presidents over its 30-year run. Yet one leader got very little attention. Hmmm. As the trade rag writes:
"Curiously, Joseph Robinette Biden — 47th President of the United States — has never appeared in a significant role in 'South Park,' having had his animated cameo cut from [season 12 episode] 'About Last Night …' There were fewer seasons during his presidency, so that may be why."
Fewer seasons. Yeah, that’s the ticket. It has nothing to do with the creators ignoring a leader with obvious cognitive decline or a vice president known for her word salad spinning …
Blacklists ain’t what they used to be.
Once upon a time, a communist sympathizer would be hounded out of Hollywood. Or worse.
In recent times, all it took to get blacklisted was suggesting you voted for President Donald Trump. James Woods hasn’t had a major starring role in a decade, meaning La La Land would rather ignore his two Oscar nominations to make sure a free thinker didn’t grace the movie set.
And of course, he’s far from alone. Cheryl Hines’ bustling career dried up the moment her husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., joined team Trump.
Now, ex-“Scream” actress Melissa Barrera is complaining about her blacklisting for her anti-Israel musings.
“There are a lot of people that got fired for basically saying Palestinians deserve human rights and they shouldn’t be getting bombed and attacked in this way.”
“Basically” does a ton of heavy lifting in that quote. Except that’s not why a microscopically small group of stars, including Barrera, suffered professional punishment. Nor does it explain why she’s so ... busy ... all of a sudden.
Her recent credits include “Your Monster” (2024), “Abigail” (2024), “The Copenhagen Test” (2025), and the upcoming “Black Tides” and “The Collaboration.” Plus, she just made her Broadway debut earlier this year.
Worst. Blacklisting. Ever.
The Senate finally voted Saturday to confirm Todd Blanche as President Donald Trump’s new attorney general. Anyone who wants a Justice Department that enforces the law instead of bending it to politics can breathe a little easier.
Blanche is unusually well-suited for the job. He has seen the justice system from both sides — first as a federal prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, then as a defense attorney, including as one of Trump’s lead lawyers during the prosecutions he faced before returning to the White House. Few incoming attorneys general have had a more personal view of what prosecutorial power can become when politics infects the justice system.
Trump’s effort to reform the Justice Department is not complete, but the direction is a stark improvement over what came before.
A new era at the Justice Department has now officially begun, but the turnaround started before Blanche’s confirmation. Speed bumps aside, the direction under Trump’s team is unmistakable: order restored at the southern border, an end to lawfare, and a saner approach to antitrust enforcement. Blanche’s job is not to start that work. It is to finish it.
A timely reminder arrived last week, when the Department of Justice reached a settlement with Paul Vaughn days before Blanche was confirmed.
The Biden Justice Department charged Vaughn, a pro-life father of 11, under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act after he participated in a sit-in at a Tennessee abortion clinic in 2021.
FBI agents staged a predawn raid at his home and arrested him in front of his wife and children. Vaughn ultimately received three years of supervised release and no prison time, but other pro-life defendants were not so lucky.
Lauren Handy was sentenced to 57 months in prison. Jonathan Darnel received 34 months. Seventy-six-year-old Joan Andrews Bell got 27 months, and 75-year-old Paula Harlow received 24 months.
When Harlow’s husband pleaded for leniency because of her age and declining health, the judge replied that she should “make every effort to remain alive” in keeping with “the tenets of your religion.” All four were later pardoned by Trump.
The FACE Act protects access to abortion clinics, but it also protects pregnancy centers and houses of worship. Yet the Biden administration’s aggressive prosecution of pro-life demonstrators contrasted sharply with the much thinner record of prosecutions after extremists firebombed and vandalized pregnancy centers following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
Attorney General Merrick Garland once explained the difficulty by noting that many of the attacks happened at night. Apparently darkness is now a federal jurisdictional problem. Good to know. Garland was almost on the Supreme Court.
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The pro-life cases were among the most visible abuses of the Garland years, but hardly the only ones. His department drew justified outrage over its treatment of parents protesting school policies; House Republicans later accused the DOJ of having labeled parents as terrorist threats. The FBI also came under fire after an internal memo contemplated cultivating sources in traditionalist Catholic communities — what critics described as a plan to send spies into parishes. And special counsel Jack Smith pursued Trump through the heat of the 2024 campaign.
Even antitrust enforcement became an exercise in questionable priorities. The Justice Department blocked JetBlue from acquiring Spirit Airlines in 2024. Spirit later collapsed, removing a low-fare competitor from an already concentrated airline market. Regulators claimed to be protecting consumers; consumers ended up with one fewer discount carrier.
The Biden administration also moved to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s acquisition of Juniper Networks, a deal the intelligence community reportedly deemed vital to national security. The Trump team ultimately allowed the transaction to proceed, strengthening an American competitor in a market where China’s Huawei remains formidable.
RELATED: The right needs a public defender network for lawfare
Anti-Christian, anti-conservative, anti-business, and heedless of national-security concerns: We have seen what happens when partisan priorities seep into the Justice Department. Trump’s effort to reform the Justice Department is not complete, but the direction is a stark improvement over what came before.
And the danger of backsliding is obvious. If a Democrat wins the White House in 2028, expect pressure for an attorney general even more aggressive than Garland. Biden himself reportedly regretted choosing Garland and wished he had listened to advisers who preferred the more partisan Doug Jones. That should tell you something.
Todd Blanche is infinitely preferable. He knows prosecutorial power from both sides of the courtroom, and he has every reason to understand how quickly discretion can become abuse.
The Justice Department does not need revenge. It needs restraint, consistency, and equal treatment under the law. Blanche has the experience — and now the authority — to deliver it.
In 2019, a sitting president was impeached after pressing Ukraine to investigate matters involving Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Viktor Shokin's explosive new book, “Biden’s Corruption and War,” offers a first-person account from one of the figures at the center of that controversy.
No freedom-loving American can forget the video of then-Vice President Joe Biden recounting how he threatened to withhold U.S. loan guarantees unless Ukraine fired its prosecutor general.
Americans deserve to know how their government uses power abroad, how foreign aid is distributed, and whether politically connected families benefit.
“Well, son of a bitch. He got fired,” Biden said. “And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
The clip has been replayed for years because it sounds, at minimum, astonishingly cavalier: a sitting vice president boasting that American leverage forced the removal of a foreign prosecutor.
The central dispute is why.
Shokin says he was removed because he was pursuing corruption connected to Burisma and investigating matters involving Hunter Biden. Biden and his defenders have long maintained that Shokin was ineffective and that U.S. pressure for his dismissal reflected a broader Western anti-corruption consensus.
That conflict is the heart of Shokin's book.
The stakes were high enough that Trump's efforts to press Ukraine for investigations eventually produced one of his impeachments. Shokin's account asks readers to revisit the events that made Ukraine such a combustible subject in American politics.
Here was Joe Biden celebrating the removal of Ukraine's prosecutor general, Shokin — the man who says he was pursuing Burisma, the energy company that had placed Hunter Biden on its board.
For years, Biden and his allies insisted there was nothing improper to see in Hunter Biden's Burisma role or Joe Biden's conduct in Ukraine.
Now the fight over that history has begun in earnest. Joe and Hunter Biden are back on the interview circuit, while the ex-president’s memoir is on the way. The authorized version of history is being written now. Shokin's book is meant to challenge it.
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Shokin presents a stark thesis: He argues that the war in Ukraine became a vehicle for corruption and hidden agendas extending far beyond the battlefield.
Among his most explosive allegations are claims that $350 billion in U.S. taxpayer money was recycled through political and globalist networks, that arms arrangements were tainted by corruption, and that wartime chaos facilitated the trafficking of Ukrainian women and children.
Those are grave allegations. They come from a man who says he paid a personal price for getting too close to uncomfortable truths. But they remain allegations, and the book should be read as Shokin's case — not as independent proof of every charge.
Shokin has practiced law since the 1980s and served multiple times as deputy prosecutor general before becoming prosecutor general. He says his troubles began when he was investigating Mykola Zlochevsky and Burisma.
Shokin in the book gives his account of the pressure campaign that ended with his removal.
He writes that Joe Biden was known in Ukraine as the "Vice King" and portrays the vice president as wielding extraordinary influence over then-President Petro Poroshenko and the Ukrainian government.
The book lays out names, dates, meetings, and episodes that Shokin says connect the Burisma investigation to the effort to fire him.
RELATED: The Biden tapes blow open the autopen scandal
Shokin also argues that his story has been suppressed through limited media attention and reduced online visibility. He describes a system in which war, foreign aid, lobbying, and personal enrichment became intertwined, and he presents his own removal as one episode in that larger pattern.
Whether readers accept all of his conclusions or not, the book raises questions that deserve examination rather than dismissal.
Shokin's case is not merely historical. He argues that the same patterns of influence, opaque foreign aid, and political pressure continue today in Ukraine and elsewhere.
That claim should be tested, not waved away.
Americans deserve to know how their government uses power abroad, how foreign aid is distributed, and whether politically connected families benefit from relationships that ordinary citizens would never be allowed to maintain without scrutiny.
"Biden's Corruption and War" is valuable because it puts the testimony of a central participant into the record. It may not be the final word, and it does not relieve readers or journalists of the duty to verify its most serious claims.
But it does make it harder to pretend there is no dispute at all.
Read it before the people who tried to bury this story write the only version anyone remembers.
Democrats inflate spending on government programs without anyone noticing and then attack Republicans for 'cuts' when they attempt to scale back these stealth spending increases.
New York Times content creator Bret Stephens, who once described himself as a “Biden conservative” and who voted for Kamala Harris, is calling on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to apologize for “Woke 1” while acting like he himself didn’t vote for it. Not so fast, sweaty. I asked Stephens in an email if he regretted his vote […]
While Biden policies are responsible for runaway inflation, the Trump admin has still has work to do to get costs back under control.
Milwaukee has a way of coming up with just enough votes the Democrat machine needs to win swing state Wisconsin. Call it a 'lair for drama.'
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