MATTIS’ NEW BUDGET FIGHT: After a year’s worth of work, the Pentagon was just putting the finishing touches on a $733 billion total defense spending package for the coming year. Then President Trump intervened with new marching orders: Give me a $700 billion budget instead. Faced with the $33 billion cut, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has decided he is not ready to give up the original spending plan. “We are not going to reverse course on all of that planning but we will build two budgets,” Deputy Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan said Friday.

Call it the two-budget strategy. Having the second budget gives Mattis an idea of what goes on the chopping block as well as some leverage negotiating with the president and the fiscally hawkish Mick Mulvaney, who is director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. But the Pentagon’s original $733 billion proposal could also provide ammunition for opponents of Trump’s defense cuts, which also might be part of the idea.