A public accountability project
Congress voted twice to end the Iran war. Your vote is this November.
A live tracker of what Trump's military operations — Iran, Venezuela, and beyond — have cost American taxpayers, and what Congress has done about it.
On the ballot
These Senate races are most likely to shape the war's trajectory.
What you're paying at the pump
Government war spending shows up later, in budgets and testimony. This shows up every time you fill your tank.
Human cost
Cost breakdown
Broader economic impact
Not tracked in our data, but worth knowing. The war's financial ripple effects are showing up across the US economy.
Brown University researchers tracked the full economic footprint: higher pump prices, $4.55/gal nationally, $6.13 in California. Lower-income households spend 4.2% of income on gas vs. 2.7% for wealthier ones. Americans are buying less groceries and skipping medical care. 45 million extra bus rides in March alone. Diesel costs are feeding through to food prices — tomatoes up 40% year-over-year.
NYT Interactive ↗The IMF's July World Economic Outlook update raised its 2026 global inflation forecast to 4.7% — up 0.3 points from April — citing energy prices still running roughly 25% above pre-war levels. The Fund left its 2026 U.S. growth forecast unchanged at 2.3%, but noted the toll is landing unevenly: hardest on energy-importing and lower-income economies, more muted for the U.S. and energy exporters.
New York Times ↗ · IMF ↗The administration's request breaks down to $67B for the Pentagon (munitions, operations, classified programs), $767.5M for the Department of Energy, and $300M for State Department embassy security. It's part of a larger $87.6B package that also includes unrelated farm aid and Ebola response funding — not war costs, and not counted here. The request faces a difficult path in Congress on both sides of the aisle.
CBS News ↗The tradeoff
"It's not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. We have to take care of one thing: military protection."
— President Donald Trump, April 2, 2026
Methodology & sources
This tracker uses only hard, sourced costs — direct federal military spending and verified gas price data. It does not include broader economic impact estimates, which are significantly higher but harder to pin down precisely.
"TrumpWarCosts.com provides a vital public service. The President himself said that America must choose between healthcare and wars. The American people choose healthcare and peace."
— Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University
Acting Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst testified before the House Appropriations Committee that the war has cost approximately $29 billion, covering munitions, operations & maintenance, and equipment replacement for Operation Epic Fury. Updated from $25B (Apr 29 HASC testimony). Reuters ↗
What this figure does not include: Operation Southern Spear (Venezuela/Caribbean, ongoing since Nov 2025), Operation Midnight Hammer (Iran nuclear sites, Jun 2025), increased gas costs borne by American drivers, KIA/WIA casualty expenses, and the ongoing ceasefire/blockade phase costs. The Pentagon formally requested a war supplemental from Congress on July 10, 2026.
Our tracker adds these documented, sourced costs on top of the Pentagon's floor. The gap between $25B and our figure is not a dispute with the government — it is the sum of what they haven't counted yet.
⏸ Shelved — no Pentagon testimony has updated this figure since May 12, 2026, while active combat has continued. We're keeping the comparison here for the record rather than on the main page, since the live/frozen gap is now driven mostly by the lack of a new testimony date, not by newly-excluded cost categories.
Casualties. Costs. Context. Every Wednesday — in under 2 minutes.
This tracker doesn't run itself.
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