Trump's ask comes as the Treasury Department reports that the federal budget deficit rose this year to $779 billion. That amounts to a 17 percent increase over the previous year, and is the highest deficit in six years.

Trump has previously called for deep, double-digit percentage reductions for some federal departments that were rejected by Congress. His first proposed budget last year included the complete elimination of 62 agencies, which lawmakers ignored.

More: The national debt and the federal deficit are skyrocketing. How it affects you

But the president has also come under fire on two fronts recently: Conservatives have grown increasingly restive about budget deficits, an issue that has received far less attention from Republicans lately than it did during the Obama administration.

Trump has also blamed Democrats in Congress for seeking increased spending on domestic programs in exchange for Trump's desire to build up the military. Unwilling to threaten a shutdown before the midterm election, Trump has indicated in recent weeks that he felt compelled to go along with spending bills to secure his desired increases for the Pentagon.

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Earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin suggested that the rising deficit was the "dire consequences of irresponsible and unnecessary spending."

But a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, released earlier this month, said tax cuts Congress approved last year partially led to the deficit jump.

Budget analysts said Trump's demand is very unlikely, and would have little impact on the budget deficit in any event.

Stan Collender, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, said if you cut the entire annual federal budget by 5%, it would be only $200 billion to $300 billion -- and the federal budget deficit for next year is projected at $1.1 trillion.

Trump has bragged about his defense hikes, and presumably isn't interested in cutting that budget, Collender noted. And he hasn't said anything about reducing the real drivers of federal spending, entitlement spending like Social Security and Medicare.

"This really shows Trump is not ready is not ready for prime time," Collender said.

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Under Canada's new federal cannabis act, adults will be allowed to possess, carry and share with other adults up to 30 grams of dried cannabis, enough to roll roughly 60 regular-size joints. They will also be permitted a maximum of four homegrown marijuana plants per household.

Marijuana for medical purposes has been legal in Canada since 2001, and about 330,000 Canadians, including cancer patients, are registered to receive it from licensed producers.

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To ensure that prices remain competitive with the black market, one gram of cannabis can be purchased for as low as about $4, or $5.25 Canadian dollars.

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As with cigarettes, the cannabis is clearly marked with health warnings like "One in eleven people who use cannabis will become addicted."

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The government's stated rationale for legalizing cannabis is to tame an illegal trade estimated at $6.2 billion. But from Toronto to Winnipeg to Vancouver, hundreds of illegal shops have indicated they have no intention of shutting down, and the black market supply chain remains deeply entrenched.

... the 2018 landlord waiting game is denuding New York of its particularity and turning the city into a high-density simulacrum of the American suburb. The West Village landlords hoping to lease their spaces to national chains are turning one of America's most famous neighborhoods into a labyrinthine strip mall. Their strategy bodes the disappearance of those quirky restaurants, curious antique shops, and any coffee shops that aren't publicly traded on the NYSE.

In Jane Jacobs's famous vision of New York, the city ideally served as a playful laboratory, which nursed new firms and ideas and exported its blessedly strange culture to the world. Today's New York is the opposite: a net importer of the un-weird, so desperate to bring in national chains to pay exorbitant leases that landlords are willing to sit on barren blocks.

"Right now, we're pretty much at a trough in corporate liquidity," said Keith Parker, head of US equity strategy at UBS.

Parker said that previous market tailspins, including the scary sell-offs in February as well as the one in April, coincided with buyback blackouts. "Almost to the day," he said.

Investors are willing to pay more for liquid asset because they are safer investments (investors can get out quicker). There's also a psychological element to it. People are averse to risk, and long-term holding is risky. Traditionally, with these types of assets, there is an illiquidity discount in today's market, in which you may invest $40,000 in a startup, but you may have to give anywhere between a 20-30% discount off your investment to get another accredited investor interested enough to buy your shares.

That is monstrous, and it's compounded by the tepid response from Washington. President Trump is already rejecting the idea of responding to such a murder by cutting off weapons sales. Trump sounds as if he believes that the consequence of such an assassination should be a hiccup and then business as usual.

Frankly, it's a disgrace that Trump administration officials and American business tycoons enabled and applauded M.B.S. as he imprisoned business executives, kidnapped Lebanon's prime minister, rashly created a crisis with Qatar, and went to war in Yemen to create what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis there. Some eight million Yemenis on the edge of starvation there don't share this bizarre view that M.B.S. is a magnificent reformer.

Trump has expressed "great confidence" in M.B.S. and said that he and King Salman "know exactly what they are doing." Jared Kushner wooed M.B.S. and built a close relationship with him -- communicating privately without involving State Department experts -- in ways that certainly assisted M.B.S. in his bid to consolidate power for himself.

The bipartisan cheers from Washington, Silicon Valley and Wall Street fed his recklessness. If he could be feted after kidnapping a Lebanese prime minister and slaughtering Yemeni children, why expect a fuss for murdering a mere journalist?

M.B.S. knows how to push Americans' buttons, speaking about reform and playing us like a fiddle. His willingness to sound accepting of Israel may also be one reason Trump and so many Americans were willing to embrace M.B.S. even as he was out of control at home.

In the end, M.B.S. played Kushner, Trump and his other American acolytes for suckers. The White House boasted about $110 billion in arms sales, but nothing close to that came through. Saudi Arabia backed away from Trump's Middle East peace deal. Financiers salivated over an initial public offering for Aramco, the state-owned oil company, but that keeps getting delayed.

The crackdown on corruption is an example of M.B.S.'s manipulation and hypocrisy. It sounded great, but M.B.S. himself has purchased a $300 million castle in France, and a $500 million yacht -- and he didn't buy them by scrimping on his government salary.

... . In the United States, we also must investigate whether Saudis bought influence with spending that benefited the Trump family, such as $270,000 spent as of early 2017 by a lobbying firm for Saudi Arabia at the Trump hotel in Washington. The Washington Post reported that Saudi bookings at Trump Chicago increased 169 percent from the first half of 2016 to the first half of this year, and that the general manager of a Trump hotel in New York told investors that revenues rose partly because of "a last-minute visit to New York by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia."

Trump loves teh swaggering "strongmen"; all they need is to pay a little lip service to progressive policies.

Earlier this year, Google decided not to renew another defense contract called Project Maven, which provided artificial intelligence for the assesement of drone imagery. After details of Google's involvement with Project Maven came to light, thousands of Google employees signed a petition asking for Google to bow out of the project, and dozens more resigned in protest.

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he warned that "it's the longer term that we're more concerned about now given the technical breakdown we've seen. Expect a rally soon, but don't go loading up on cyclicals with the expectation that the pain is over once we bounce. There is likely more volatility to come in the weeks ahead."

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The decline could also be due in part to savvy investors increasingly showing interest in buying equity instead of tokens in startups, Autonomous said. Some projects may also be gearing up to issue so-called security tokens, which are at least expected to be more compliant with existing regulations.

Calm before the STO (security token offering) storm?

... and where Trump says "The Democrats' plan that would eviscerate Medicare.", Trump's link goes to a New York Times article that says the opposite.