US President Donald Trump signed the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law Thursday, completing the passage of the largest military spending bill in US history—$901 billion, or over $1 trillion when combined with supplemental funding passed earlier this year.
The Senate voted 77-20 on Wednesday to pass the bill. The Democratic leadership, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, voted for the bill. They were joined by Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, both of whom released a video last month calling on military personnel to disobey illegal orders—as Trump was sending the US military on a murder spree off the coast of Latin America.
Citing Trump’s statements about using troops to shoot protesters in America, Slotkin invoked the legacy of the Nuremberg tribunals, which convicted Nazi leaders for war crimes and crimes against peace. But when it came time to vote, this invocation was revealed to be completely meaningless. Slotkin voted to hand Trump the resources to pursue his military adventure against Venezuela.
The $901 billion authorization is $8 billion more than Trump himself requested. Combined with the $156 billion in supplemental military funding passed in July, total military spending for fiscal year 2026 will exceed $1 trillion. To put this in perspective: The 2015 NDAA authorized approximately $600 billion in military spending.
Sections of the media have promoted the claim that the NDAA “compels” the release of video footage of the September 2 strike in the Caribbean, in which US forces killed two people clinging to the wreckage of a destroyed boat. This is a fraud. The legislation merely cuts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget by 25 percent unless he releases the footage to congressional committees—a meaningless gesture that Hegseth can easily circumvent.
While the Democrats provide the votes for Trump’s military buildup, the corporate media has lined up behind his campaign against Venezuela.
The Washington Post—owned by centibillionaire Jeff Bezos—Wednesday published an editorial headlined “Blockading Venezuela is Trump’s best idea yet to squeeze Maduro.” The Post declared that Trump’s blockade of Venezuelan oil shipments is “a more coherent and legally defensible strategy to bring about regime change.”
The Post editorial explicitly endorses regime change—the violent overthrow of a foreign government—as a legitimate aim of US policy. It states: “The best-case scenario remains Maduro retreating to some faraway country, followed by Machado somehow taking charge in Caracas.” María Corina Machado is the leader of the US-backed Venezuelan opposition.
The New York Times, which is aligned with the Democratic Party, this month published a six-part editorial series calling for a major expansion of US military capabilities. It declared that “in the short term, the transformation of the American military may require additional spending, primarily to rebuild our industrial base.” The Times is calling for even greater military spending, framing it as necessary to prepare for war with China.
The Democrats fundamentally agree with Trump’s program of military escalation. Their criticism of the administration is not that it is preparing for a catastrophic war in Latin America, but that it is insufficiently committed to the conflict with Russia in Ukraine, and is threatening to draw down troop levels in Europe. The NDAA includes provisions restricting the Pentagon from reducing US troops in Europe below 76,000—a measure aimed not at opposing Trump’s militarism, but at ensuring that conflict with Russia continues.
The NDAA directs $34 billion toward nuclear weapons programs, further advancing a massive expansion of the US nuclear arsenal. This escalation traces back to policies initiated under the Obama administration, which in 2016 unveiled a plan to modernize all three components of the nuclear triad at a projected cost of $1 trillion over three decades. Since then, the price tag for this overhaul has surged, with current estimates approaching $1.5 trillion.
Other provisions include financing the Sentinel ICBM missiles, new nuclear-armed cruise missiles and $13 billion for a “Golden Dome” missile defense system.
Trump announced Tuesday a “total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into, and out of, Venezuela.” He demanded that Venezuela “return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us”—a statement of intent to rob Venezuela of its oil resources.
The blockade is already having devastating effects. Following the US seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker last week, at least five supertankers originally headed for Venezuela have reversed course. Seven oil tankers at Venezuelan ports have idled for nearly a week. According to the Wall Street Journal, strict enforcement of the blockade would curtail hard-currency inflows, stoking food and fuel shortages while exacerbating inflation, which the IMF estimates will reach nearly 700 percent next year.
Since early September, US forces have killed at least 95 people in 25 separate strikes on boats. On Monday alone, the military announced it had struck three more vessels in the eastern Pacific, killing eight people.
The Democrats have provided Trump with the resources, the legal cover and the political support for a war of colonial plunder against Venezuela. Workers in the United States and throughout the world must oppose this imperialist war drive and build a mass movement against war and the capitalist system that produces it.