In an extraordinary vote Tuesday, Senate Democrats blocked a $1.15 trillion annual defense policy bill, opposing the measure as part of an ongoing partisan showdown over defense spending levels and in protest against President Trump’s handling of the war with Iran.
The National Defense Authorization Act, the must-pass measure setting military policy for fiscal year 2027, failed to advance in a 50-46 vote that fell almost entirely along party lines, coming up short of the 60 votes needed to advance. Democrats John Fetterman and Alex Padilla and Republicans Jim Justice and Mitch McConnell missed the vote. Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune changed his vote from “yes” to “no” to be able to bring up the motion again at another time.
The vote came amid continued tension among top appropriators, who have failed to reach a deal on topline spending levels for fiscal year 2027. It also follows a re-escalation in the Iran conflict, after a shaky ceasefire collapsed, leading Trump to notify Congress this past weekend that the country is again at war.
“Trump started this war without authorization, without a strategy and without an exit,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said before the vote. “So, now the White House has formally notified Congress that hostilities have resumed, and American strikes are underway again, and our forces remain positioned for more. Yet Republicans want the Senate to take up the NDAA, the defense bill, as though none of this is happening — as though Congress can debate the nation’s central national security bill while ignoring the nation’s most urgent national security crisis. We cannot.”
Schumer went on to say that Trump isn’t leveling with the American public about the cost of the war, the mission or the endgame. “The NDAA cannot become a permission slip for that recklessness that we see occurring in Iran,” he said.
The NDAA typically passes with strong bipartisan support, but it has faltered in both chambers of Congress this year as Democrats and Republicans clash over the war and other political priorities. Democrats in both chambers have pushed back on Republican efforts to boost defense spending to $1.5 trillion, including a $350 billion boost via a partisan GOP bill, without similar increases in non-defense spending. And late last month, House Republican hard-liners blocked a procedural rule that would have set up votes on a slate of bills, preventing the NDAA from advancing.
The GOP rebels were maneuvering to pressure the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, the package of voter ID and other election restrictions that Trump has prioritized. House GOP leaders only managed to break the logjam and set up debate on other legislation today, after a weekslong standoff.
Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, reportedly slammed Democrats over their blockade on Tuesday. His committee had advanced the NDAA last month in a bipartisan 18-9 vote that demonstrated opposition from some Democrats.
“It’s unprecedented not to pass the motion to proceed on the NDAA and it reflects a decision and a mindset on the part of Sen. Schumer not to cooperate at all because so much of this has been done on a bipartisan basis,” Wicker said, according to The Hill. “It really is a new low.”
The bottom line: This year’s NDAA has been derailed because of political clashes stemming largely from the war in Iran, which Trump launched without congressional authorization — and which the administration now says can continue without such approval for another 60-day period that began July 7. It’s not at all clear how or when the Senate will be able to begin debate on the annual defense bill, which Congress has passed for 65 straight years.