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Senators Block $1.15 Trillion Pentagon Bill Over Trump's Illegal Iran War, Israel Integration
"It's time to invest in the American people, not endless war," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Jul 14, 2026
As expected, members of the Senate Democratic Caucus on Tuesday blocked debate on an annual military spending authorization bill over President Donald Trump’s ongoing illegal war of choice on Iran and provisions for closer US-Israeli military integration.
Upper chamber lawmakers voted 50-46, mostly along party lines, against proceeding with debate on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2027.
The Trump administration’s broader national security proposal requests nearly $1.5 trillion in total defense-related spending for 2027, which includes $350 billion in supplemental funding for munitions production, shipbuilding, missile defense, drones, artificial intelligence, and other long-term military programs.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who along with Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) led the effort to vote down the NDAA in its current form, said on social media: "At a time when millions struggle to pay the bills, virtually every Senate Republican voted for a staggering $1.15 trillion Pentagon bill, which includes funding for the illegal and immoral war in Iran and a special provision to provide even more weapons to Israel with almost zero oversight."
"It's time to invest in the American people, not endless war," he added.
"I’m a NO on the NDAA," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said on social media. "I can’t support excessive military spending, de facto approval of Trump’s illegal war with Iran, and deeply troubling provisions that force deeper US-Israeli defense and intelligence sharing."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said he "cannot support an outrageous $1.15 trillion in military spending while Donald Trump engages in an idiotic war with Iran that is doing nothing to make Americans safer, puts US servicemembers and civilians in harm's way, and spikes the price of gas."
“I also cannot support new authorities included in the bill, which seek to deepen and accelerate cooperation with Israeli contractors on surveillance and AI technologies that are ripe for abuse," Wyden added. "On [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s watch, surveillance technologies developed by Israeli companies have repeatedly been used by repressive regimes, contributed to human rights violations in Gaza, and have been used against Americans."
Republicans, on the other hand, denounced Tuesday's vote, with Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio accusing his Democratic colleagues of "holding America hostage" and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas alleging they're "once again playing politics with our national security instead of prioritizing the safety of the American people."
Progressive groups campaigners cheered Tuesday's vote.
"For once, the Senate refused to fast-track a $1.15 trillion Pentagon budget," Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women-led peace group CodePink, said on social media following the vote. "After sustained grassroots pressure... people power made this vote possible. Now let’s make sure senators hold the line."
Taxpayers for Common Sense president Steve Ellis said, "The Senate just sent a clear signal to the Pentagon that its request for a $250 billion, 28% boost in its base budget is not going to fly."
"Taxpayers deserve a Pentagon budget that invests strategically in the essentials while cutting out outdated, unnecessary, and wasteful programs," he continued. "Instead, the Pentagon’s request would set a new baseline of unsustainable spending that would add more than $3 trillion to the debt over the next eight years."
"With the end of the fiscal year looming, lawmakers need to get realistic and work together to pass a bipartisan Pentagon budget aligned with our genuine needs, not this grab bag of ill-advised boondoggles," Ellis added.
At the consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen, co-president Robert Weissman called the vote "both a repudiation of throwing more money at the waste-and-fraud-ridden Pentagon while Republican cuts have forced millions to lose health coverage and food assistance, and a forceful rejection of the Trump’s Iran War."
“The American people are fed up with spending more on bombs and less on basic needs," Weissman continued. "And they are furious with a pointless, deadly, illegal, unconstitutional, and protracted war that is costing lives and driving up gas prices."
“Elected officials are beginning to listen," he added. "Today’s defeat of the procedural motion on... legislation that normally sails through Congress on a bipartisan basis is a sign that the Pentagon budget will no longer get a rubber stamp.”
Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, said in a statement that "the Senate was right to reject the National Defense Authorization Act, particularly as the executive branch continues its illegal, unsanctioned war in Iran."
"The budget topline in the bill is recklessly high—bringing an increase in military spending not seen since World War II," Williams added.
In a bid to address that point, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) recently introduced the Slash the Pentagon Act, legislation that would cap military spending at what some critics say is a still staggering $750 billion.
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‘Of the Pentagon, by the Congress, and for the War Profiteers’: Ad Blasts Trump Military Budget
“The $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request represents more than $9,000 per individual taxpayer."
Jul 13, 2026
As the Republican-controlled US Congress advances President Donald Trump's requested $1.5 trillion budget for "rebuilding" a military that's already more powerful than any armed force in human history, a group of former national security officials is urging Americans to challenge "out of control" Pentagon spending.
On Monday, the Eisenhower Media Network published a full-page advertisement in USA Today written by EMN executive director and retired Maj. Gen. Dennis Laich decrying what he called a military budget "of the Pentagon, by the Congress, and for the War Profiteers."
Invoking Thomas Paine's 1776 essay "Common Sense" and former Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower's repeated warnings about the dangers of the then-burgeoning military-industrial complex, the ad asserts that "time and reason strongly suggest that the US 'defense' budget is out of control, unsustainable, and absent of accountability."
"Only the American people can rein it in," Laich argued.
The advertisement notes that the US military budget is already "larger than the next eight nations (most of whom are allies) in the world combined, while American citizens lack healthcare, childcare, and other basic needs."
The ad continues:
The defense industry’s lobbyists team up with US politicians, who receive campaign financing from the industry, to draft the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which sets military policy, the expensive weaponry to be purchased, and the overall military budget. The industry takes the ensuing windfall and puts it toward stock buybacks, which increase the share price, making the rich richer; dividend payments for shareholders; eight-figure annual compensation packages for corporate executives; and the continual political graft (campaign contributions and lobbyists) that keeps the wheel spinning. Incredibly, some contracts stipulate that only the contractor may repair and maintain equipment. The most embarrassing example of this practice is the F-35 stealth fighter, which is grossly over budget, behind schedule, and is only 25% fully mission capable.
"Money talks in America, but few members of Congress choose to talk about the $39 trillion national debt to which military spending is a major contributor," Laich wrote.
"Additionally, the Pentagon cannot tell the American taxpayer where the money went, since it is unable to pass a financial audit as required by law—something every other department of the federal government is able to do," the ad notes. "Now, they are requesting a 50% increase in the defense budget to $1.5 trillion. This is equivalent to your child asking for more money a day after receiving his/her allowance. When you ask what happened to the money he/she received yesterday, the child can’t answer the question, but yougive him/her more money regardless."
Laich accused "uniformed bureaucrats" of lacking "the courage to stand up against a draft dodger and a Rambo-wannabe," an apparent swipe at Trump and, perhaps, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Meanwhile, despite having the best-funded and most powerful military on paper, the ad points out that since World War II, "the US has won one war (the first Gulf War), lost four (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran), and tied one (Korea). Iran may be as much an embarrassment as a loss. The United States has failed to achieve its stated objectives in any recent war."
The ad asks, "What football coach could keep his job with a 1-4-1 record?"
"The $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request represents more than $9,000 per individual taxpayer," EMN said. "If we Americans are tired of seeing our tax dollars spent on endless wars, bombing campaigns, and military excess while our own communities struggle with the costs of healthcare, childcare, education, and infrastructure, then the time has come to do what Thomas Paine asked Americans to do 250 years ago: challenge the assumptions that have become accepted simply because they are old."
"The courage required today is not to defeat an empire abroad, but to confront one at home—the military-industrial-congressional complex—and reclaim a government that serves the American people rather than the interests of perpetual war," the ad concludes.
EMN's advertisement follows an ad released by Hegseth in May touting Trump's $1.5 trillion proposal, which would add nearly $7 trillion to the US national debt over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan watchdog group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
A survey conducted in May by ReThink Media and the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs revealed that nearly 60% of Americans believe the proposed Pentagon budget is too large, including 40% who say $1.5 trillion is “much too high” to spend on the military.
Last month, US Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced the Slash the Pentagon Act, which would set a hard cap of $750 billion on the amount Congress could authorize for national defense spending in fiscal year 2027.
"As Americans struggle to pay for healthcare, rent, electricity, groceries, and gas... Trump has spent over $100 billion on his expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary war with Iran," Markey said at a Capitol Hill press conference introducing the legislation. “We should invest in our hospitals, schools, affordable housing, and the real security American families need right now—not expensive wars and weapons that make us less safe.”
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Trump Revives Iran Blockade, Demands 20% Toll for US 'Guarding' Strait of Hormuz
Critics noted that "20% of the value of any cargo is actually substantially MORE than Iran is seeking to charge ships to transit the strait."
Jul 13, 2026
Following fresh US airstrikes against Iran over the weekend, President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States would reimpose a naval blockade on the Mideast country, serve as the "guardian" of the Strait of Hormuz, and charge a 20% toll for cargo ships trying to safely travel on the key trade route.
Trump made the comments while calling in to "Fox & Friends" on Monday morning, as well as on his Truth Social platform.
"We're just gonna hit them very hard, and we're gonna keep the strait, and we'll probably run it. We'll become the guardian of the strait. Maybe we'll call it the guardian angel of the strait. And we should be reimbursed for that," Trump said on the Fox News morning show.
"When we do that, we're gonna be reimbursed, because the other nations are very wealthy. They're on our side, and we can't be expected to do that for nothing," the president said. "Now we're gonna guard it, and we're gonna get paid for guarding it—a lot of money."
Later Monday morning, Trump wrote on Truth that "the Hormuz Strait is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran. We are reinstating the THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE, so named because it is only stopping Iran's ships or customers from entering or leaving. All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait."
"The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as 'THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,' but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World," he added. "The process and formation will begin immediately."
Bloomberg energy and commodities columnist Javier Blas pointed to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's remarks just a couple of weeks ago that "no country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway."
Critics and experts were also quick to note that, as immigration attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick put on the platform X, "20% of the value of any cargo is actually substantially MORE than Iran is seeking to charge ships to transit the strait."
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, quipped that it "seems like Trump just made a pitch for the Iranian toll system. :) Because the Iranians were going to charge $1 million per ship, which would amount to 1-2% of the value of the cargo of an oil tanker. But Trump is going to charge 20%! :)"
In an early Monday blog post, Parsi had written that "for all practical purposes, the US-Iran memorandum of (mis)understanding is over. The dispute over how to manage the Strait of Hormuz in the interim has pushed the two sides back into open war."
As Parsi explained:
The dispute over the strait turns, at least on the surface, on paragraph 5 of the MOU: whether Iran is responsible for safe passage throughout the strait for the duration of the agreement, or only for the waterway's northern corridor.
Beneath the surface, however, lies a more fundamental strategic disagreement. Even before the MOU was signed, Tehran believed Washington's objective was to establish a southern shipping corridor through Omani waters that would gradually erode Iran's control over the strait. Such a corridor would require Oman's cooperation, which may explain why Trump at one point threatened to bomb Oman unless it abandoned its proposal for joint management of the strait, with administrative fees collected by Muscat and Tehran.
The corridor would remain operational even if war resumed and Iran sought once again to close the strait. From Tehran's perspective, Washington used the MOU to strengthen this alternative route, and the US military's escort of commercial shipping without coordinating with Iran marked a significant step in that direction. If successful, the strategy would deprive Iran of its most important source of leverage—which is precisely why it appeals to Washington.
"This is why Tehran has insisted that all ships transiting the strait—regardless of the corridor they use—coordinate with Iran, consistent with its reading of paragraph 5 of the MOU," he continued. "Washington, by contrast, argues that the MOU merely assigns Iran responsibility for ensuring the safe passage of commercial vessels, without granting it operational control over all maritime traffic."
Sina Toossi, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for International Policy, warned in a statement about Trump's Monday comments that "if implemented, the announced re-blockade would effectively restart the economic clock that the MOU had temporarily paused. Iran would once again face mounting pressure on its ability to export, store, and monetize oil, while the United States and the global economy would again confront the risks of prolonged disruption to Persian Gulf energy flows."
"The strategic environment, however, is no longer what it was before the war," he added. "US strategic petroleum reserves continued to decline during the MOU period and remain at historically low levels, while global inventories also remain tight. As a result, there is less cushion to absorb a prolonged supply disruption than in the previous round of fighting, increasing the risks of sharper energy price spikes, higher inflation, and broader economic disruption."
This article has been updated with comment from Sina Toossi.
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