In a turbulent week on Capitol Hill, the U.S. Senate found itself at the epicenter of two heated debates: the passage of a nearly $1 trillion defense spending bill and a failed attempt to curb presidential military powers in the Caribbean. Both issues highlighted deep divisions not just between Republicans and Democrats, but within the Democratic Party itself, as lawmakers grappled with questions of national security, executive authority, and political strategy in the final months of 2025.
On October 9, 2025, the Senate overwhelmingly approved the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2026, allocating $925 billion to the Pentagon—a sum that, as critics pointed out, is headed to a department that has never successfully passed an audit. The vote, 77 to 20, saw more than half of Senate Democrats siding with Republicans to advance the massive military budget. Among those opposing were prominent Democrats including Tammy Baldwin, Cory Booker, Maria Cantwell, Tammy Duckworth, Dick Durbin, Andy Kim, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Chris Murphy, Patty Murray, Alex Padilla, Brian Schatz, Adam Schiff, Tina Smith, Chris Van Hollen, Elizabeth Warren, Peter Welch, and Ron Wyden, joined by Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul.
Senator Ed Markey, one of the bill’s most vocal critics, delivered a blistering statement following the vote. According to Truthout, Markey declared, “Yesterday, the Senate voted to give the Pentagon a trillion-dollar spending package while the Trump administration and MAGA Republicans play politics with troop pay and nuclear security and refuse to reopen the federal government. All the while, they are stealing healthcare from American families to fund tax breaks for CEO billionaires. This isn’t a budget that funds America’s real security needs.” Markey’s criticism didn’t stop there; he accused Republicans of “showering their defense contractor cronies with hundreds of billions for wasteful and destabilizing programs like Trump’s Golden Dome space-based missile system,” while simultaneously threatening to cut funding for basic needs like military salaries and nuclear security operations.
The NDAA’s passage came with its own set of internal Democratic conflicts. Journalist Erin Reed, writing on Bluesky, called out Senate Democrats for supporting a bill that, in her words, “became the vehicle for one of the most consequential betrayals of transgender Americans by national Democrats in recent memory.” Reed pointed to provisions targeting trans military family members and dependents, as well as anti-DEI clauses and a lack of restraints on the domestic deployment of U.S. troops. “This year, history is repeating itself,” Reed wrote, lamenting that Democrats had “dropped key objections and allowed a vote to proceed on the bill—ultimately passing the Senate version of the bill, complete with anti-trans culture-war riders, an anti-DEI clause, and no limits on the domestic deployment of US troops.”
Senator Tammy Duckworth, herself a veteran, initially blocked the NDAA in protest, demanding a Senate hearing to investigate what she called President Trump’s “gross abuse of our military” through his deployment of soldiers into American cities. Shortly before a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s National Guard deployment in Illinois, Duckworth announced that a hearing was finally planned. “While it shouldn’t have taken this long for the Senate to look into Trump’s egregious abuse of our military, I have secured a hearing to investigate his deployments of troops into our cities,” Duckworth posted on social media, vowing to ask “tough questions of the Trump Administration when it happens.”
Not all Democratic efforts to amend the NDAA succeeded. Senator Tim Kaine managed to secure bipartisan support for an amendment to end longstanding authorizations for military force related to the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq invasion. As The Washington Post reported, a similar measure was included in the House bill, bringing Congress closer to repealing these decades-old laws. However, amendments from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Chris Van Hollen did not pass. Schumer’s proposal to block funds for retrofitting a luxury Qatari jet—intended as a replacement for Air Force One—was defeated, although he ultimately voted for the NDAA. Van Hollen’s amendment, which would have prevented the President or governors from deploying National Guard troops to another state without that state’s consent, was blocked by Republicans. “Presidents and governors shouldn’t be able to deploy National Guard troops from one state to another if that state’s governor objects,” Van Hollen argued on social media, calling the GOP’s opposition “another shameful abdication of duty.”
Meanwhile, on October 8, 2025, the Senate faced another contentious issue: whether to block President Trump’s use of military force against vessels in the Caribbean Sea suspected of drug trafficking. Senators Adam Schiff and Tim Kaine introduced a bill to withdraw U.S. forces from “hostilities that had not been authorized by Congress,” including strikes against non-state organizations involved in drug trafficking. As Al Jazeera reported, the bill invoked the War Powers Resolution of 1973, arguing that the president lacked legal authority to conduct such operations without congressional approval.
The measure was narrowly defeated, 48 to 51, with Democratic Senator John Fetterman crossing party lines to support the ongoing raids. The political calculus was clear: public sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of Trump’s strikes on drug-smuggling boats. According to a Harris Poll / HarrisX survey cited by Just The News, 71% of registered U.S. voters supported the raids, including 56% of Democrats, 67% of Independents, and a staggering 89% of Republicans. The opposition, as some commentators noted, appeared to be a political miscalculation, with columnist Glenn Reynolds dubbing it an “80-20 issue”—where Democrats chose to champion a position supported by only a small minority of voters.
The backlash wasn’t limited to the United States. Venezuelan citizens, many of whom view the Maduro regime as a brutal dictatorship, voiced strong support for U.S. intervention against narcotics trafficking. Social media posts from Venezuelans criticized Senator Schiff for opposing the strikes, with one user writing, “Senator @SenAdamSchiff, by voting against the use of the U.S. Armed Forces in the Caribbean, you are supporting the Venezuelan regime that has kidnapped a country that only wants democracy.” Another declared, “What Trump is doing is protecting Americans from narcotrafficking, which kills tens of thousands of Americans every year.”
For Democrats, the week’s debates underscored the challenges of navigating a political landscape where questions of war, security, and civil rights intersect in complex and often unpredictable ways. Some, like Markey and Duckworth, positioned themselves as principled opponents of unchecked military spending and executive overreach. Others, like Kaine and Schiff, sought to reassert congressional authority over war powers—even as their efforts ran up against public opinion and bipartisan resistance. The outcome left the party divided, with its progressive wing warning of the dangers of ceding moral ground, and moderates struggling to balance principle with political pragmatism.
As the NDAA moves to conference with the House and the debate over presidential war powers continues, lawmakers face tough questions about how best to safeguard both national security and democratic accountability. For now, the Senate’s actions have set the stage for further battles—both within Congress and in the court of public opinion.
