Defense Bill Sparks Capitol Power Struggle, Slashes Woke Pentagon Programs

This year was supposed to be routine. Yet, in a political climate where routine is a luxury, the NDAA metamorphosed into something decidedly less predictable. The bill zipped through with broad bipartisan support—Senate Majority Leader John Thune, never one for hyperbole, called it “a step in the right direction”—but the fissures underneath were hard to miss.

Take, for instance, the tempest over military aviation safety in the wake of a grisly January accident outside Washington. The crash, involving an Army chopper and a commercial flight, left 67 dead and stunned even frequent fliers on these sorts of technical issues. Senator Ted Cruz, carving out his niche as the Senate’s resident watchdog on military oversight, spent weeks championing his ROTOR Act. His argument was plain: military aircraft needed to be as “visible” in civilian airspace as the commercial jets they occasionally collided with.

The bill’s drafters, however, were running on a tightrope of amendments and deadlines; Cruz’s plan ended up on ice—at least for now. “I’m seeking a vote on the ROTOR Act as part of any appropriations measure before the current continuing resolution expires at the end of next month,” Cruz announced, sounding more resigned than resolute as the paperwork shuffled onward.

Yet, all that paled next to the intrigue brewing over an entirely different episode—American strikes on alleged drug boats in Venezuelan waters. With a straight face, the White House pitched it as routine counter-narcotics. Lawmakers on both sides saw it differently, some skeptical, others simply eager for answers; they demanded the unfiltered, unspooled video footage of a double-strike that took place on September 2. What they got, instead, was a closed-door briefing by War Secretary Pete Hegseth, marked as much by what he refused to say as what he did. Democrats like Chuck Schumer left the meeting sharply critical: “He refused,” Schumer fumed afterwards. “The administration came to this briefing empty-handed. If they can’t be transparent on this, how can you trust their transparency on all the other issues swirling about in the Caribbean.”

Frustration didn’t remain rhetorical. Lawmakers went straight for the purse strings, inserting language in the NDAA threatening to slice a quarter from Hegseth’s travel budget if raw video and operation orders weren’t handed over for Congressional review. It’s the classic “follow the money” gambit—old-fashioned, but, in the halls of Congress, unfailingly effective.

Of course, the real drama played out behind closed doors. That’s where you’d have found Hegseth and Senator Mark Kelly—one a polarizing cabinet chief, the other a former Navy pilot with more than a few dogfights to his record—trading verbal jabs. Hegseth, perhaps sensing an opening, redirected an already-tense discussion from the Caribbean strike to Kelly’s involvement in a recent PSA urging troops not to follow “illegal orders.” Talk of a court-martial landed like a lead weight, even if most observers considered it theater. “It seems like he came there with a little bit of a speech for me, which says, again, a lot about him,” Kelly recounted. The squabble spilled over into the corridors, with Kelly’s legal team firing off denials and several Republicans publicly rolling their eyes at the idea of an internal investigation.

While that drama unfolded, the NDAA’s fine print revealed as much about the mood of Washington as the headlines ever could. Troops are getting a pay bump—3.8 percent, a figure that will show up on a lot of January paychecks but isn’t likely to silence grumbling about inflation. Bipartisan hands reached across the divide to finally repeal the authorizations for the 1991 and 2002 wars in Iraq and the Gulf, a move largely greeted by veterans’ groups and constitutional lawyers as overdue. The text also locks in current troop levels in Europe and Korea, cooling any speculation about troop withdrawals—a concern among NATO allies especially.

Then there are the aid packages: new hundreds of millions on the way to Ukraine, and—most delicately—a permanent lifting of U.S. sanctions on Syria. That decision, controversial in its quietness as much as its substance, comes as the battered country begins picking through the ruins left by Bashar Assad’s reign.

But zoom in on the Pentagon’s culture wars for a minute. The NDAA, in a nod to White House priorities, walks back the clock: diversity and inclusion offices—already dicey in the military’s tradition-heavy corridors—will shutter, with officials claiming $40 million in savings. Scrapping funding for climate-related initiatives (to the tune of $1.6 billion) marks a tilt toward a more old-school, hardware-first definition of “security.” Critics decry it as shortsighted; supporters, for their part, see a return to fundamentals.

Amid these policy swings, Congress seems determined to reclaim leverage over decisions of war and peace. The bill now mandates that lawmakers get advance notice before the Pentagon can play musical chairs with top brass or pull significant troop contingents from NATO countries. Couple those new guardrails with the scrapped war authorizations, and a picture forms: both parties, at least for now, appear intent on reminding the executive branch who writes the rules.

Yet, as lawmakers lift their heads from the defense bill’s dense pages, they’re already bracing for what’s next. Eyes swivel to the five-bill spending package hovering over January’s horizon; the clock ticks toward a hard deadline. Meanwhile, the rush to confirm nearly a hundred Trump picks keeps everyone’s nerves jangling—no shortage of contest, no matter how many hands have been shaken over the NDAA.

In the end, the new defense bill feels less like an unqualified victory and more like the table-setting for Washington’s next bout of brinkmanship—a moment of clarity, perhaps, before the fog descends again. Congress, as always, stakes its claim—but the terms of power, trust, and transparency are, as ever, up for negotiation.