Senate Democrats delivered a blow to the Trump administration on Tuesday, blocking the $1.15 trillion National Defence Authorisation Act in a vote that split along party lines. The 50 to 46 result left Republicans 10 votes shy of the 60 needed to begin debate on the sprawling Pentagon policy bill, which sets defence spending priorities and authorises over $1.1 trillion in annual funding. What is normally one of Congress's more routine exercises has instead become the latest flashpoint in the battle over Trump's war with Iran.
The immediate trigger for the Democratic blockade is the administration's conduct of the widening conflict with Iran. Hostilities resumed last week, bringing an abrupt end to a fragile, month-old ceasefire. The White House subsequently informed lawmakers that fighting had restarted, arguing this opened a new 60-day window under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which allows a president to conduct military operations without explicit congressional approval provided Congress is notified within 48 hours.
Democrats have not held back in their criticism of both the legal justification and the strategy behind it. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused the president of disregarding bipartisan majorities in both chambers and pressing ahead with an unauthorised conflict. He called it "the nation's most urgent national security crisis" and warned that passing the NDAA as it stands would amount to handing Trump "a permission slip" for further recklessness. On the president's strategic thinking, Schumer was blunt: there had been no plan and no exit strategy from the outset, and 136 days on, nothing had changed. Senator Richard Blumenthal went further, describing the bill as having effectively "become a referendum on the Iran war." Senator Tammy Duckworth, meanwhile, questioned the wisdom of committing $1.14 trillion to what she called an "out-of-control military operation," warning it was a straightforward recipe for a forever war.
Senator Peter Welch took issue with the scale of the budget itself, arguing that half a trillion dollars earmarked for what he called outdated "weapons systems of yesterday" commits taxpayers to enormous spending with no serious plan for how it will be paid for.
That opposition has been reinforced from outside Congress too. Fourteen civil liberties and antiwar organisations, among them the ACLU, J Street and CODEPINK, wrote to lawmakers urging them to use Congress's constitutional power of the purse, calling for the NDAA to be withheld from further progress unless a vote is guaranteed on an amendment barring funding for unauthorised Iran operations. Anxiety over the region has been sharpened further by Trump's own unpredictability, including a short-lived threat to impose a 20 per cent "security" fee on vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a proposal he later abandoned.
The Iran war is not the only source of friction. Progressive Democrats have also taken aim at provisions, largely overlooked until now, that would tie the US and Israeli militaries more closely together. One measure would require the Pentagon to appoint an official dedicated to coordinating defence technology with Israel, enabling joint weapons research and system integration. More troubling still to privacy advocates is a "data fusion" clause that would merge intelligence feeds into a single targeting system, a move Human Rights Watch has warned could see the US military absorb Israeli intelligence gathered through mass surveillance.
A related provision in the accompanying 2027 Intelligence Authorization Act would expand intelligence sharing further still. Senators Chris Van Hollen, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren circulated a letter opposing the measure, arguing the United States should not be pushed into deeper ties with what they termed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "extremist government."
Republicans, for their part, have made little effort to hide their frustration. Senator Deb Fischer accused Democrats of "putting party above country" and warned that dragging unrelated political disputes into a bill funding the armed forces put national security at risk. Majority Leader John Thune defended the legislation as essential to military modernisation, pointing to a 3.6 per cent pay rise for troops and substantial investment in unmanned systems, counter-drone technology, new B-21 long-range bombers and naval shipbuilding.
For now, the bill's fate hangs in the balance. Thune deliberately voted against it himself, a procedural move that preserves his right to bring it back to the floor at a later date. When that might happen, and on what terms, remains an open question.
