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The legislation codifies President Trump’s agenda but includes a few measures challenging his policies and insisting on more consultation with Congress.
Speaker Mike Johnson at the Capitol on Wednesday. Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Dec. 10, 2025, 7:08 p.m. ET
The House on Wednesday approved a $900 billion defense policy bill that would codify much of President Trump’s national security agenda but seek to curb his move to withdraw from Europe and to mandate more Pentagon consultation with Congress.
The 312-112 vote on the legislation, which would provide a 3.8 percent pay raise to U.S. troops, reflected bipartisan support for what is commonly regarded as a must-pass bill. It goes next to the Senate, which is also…
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The legislation codifies President Trump’s agenda but includes a few measures challenging his policies and insisting on more consultation with Congress.
Speaker Mike Johnson at the Capitol on Wednesday. Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Dec. 10, 2025, 7:08 p.m. ET
The House on Wednesday approved a $900 billion defense policy bill that would codify much of President Trump’s national security agenda but seek to curb his move to withdraw from Europe and to mandate more Pentagon consultation with Congress.
The 312-112 vote on the legislation, which would provide a 3.8 percent pay raise to U.S. troops, reflected bipartisan support for what is commonly regarded as a must-pass bill. It goes next to the Senate, which is also expected to approve it overwhelmingly, sending it to Mr. Trump for his signature.
The measure includes an array of provisions that place Mr. Trump’s stamp on the U.S. military, including one that bans diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the Defense Department. But to bring it up, House Republicans had to overcome resistance in their own ranks from hard-right members, some of whom said the measure, which seeks to block U.S. troops from withdrawing from Europe and would send new aid to Ukraine, abandoned the president’s “America First” promises.
The legislation also reflected growing frustration among members of both parties with the way Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has run the Pentagon, especially when it comes to the administration’s boat strikes in international waters, which have killed at least 87 people since September.
It would mandate that the Defense Department send Congress unedited videos that officials have so far been unwilling to show lawmakers of the maritime attacks, which Mr. Trump has said are being undertaken to target narco-terrorists trafficking drugs into the United States. And it would withhold 25 percent of Mr. Hegseth’s travel budget if he failed to give the congressional national security committees the video footage and the command orders behind the strikes.
The price tag for the bill came in $8 billion above what the Trump administration had requested, reflecting continued support in Congress for pouring huge sums into the military.
Leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees said the bill would modernize and streamline the way the military buys weapons and supplies. White House officials argued in a statement that it would “strengthen the defense industrial base while eliminating funding for wasteful and radical programs.”
But the legislation also challenged parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda.
The bill would block the Pentagon from reducing the number of troops “permanently stationed in or deployed” to Europe below 76,000 for longer than 45 days, unless Mr. Hegseth and the top officer overseeing U.S. European Command certify to Congress that such a drawdown aligns with U.S. national security interests and that NATO allies were consulted.
And though Mr. Trump has pressed to end U.S. military support to Ukraine, the measure would authorize $400 million in annual security assistance for Kyiv for another two years. A handful of House Republicans, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, cited that provision in explaining their opposition to the bill.
“I would love to fund our military but refuse to support foreign aid and foreign militaries and foreign wars,” Ms. Greene wrote on social media.
Limiting the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe is at odds with recent moves by the Pentagon, which recently said it would cut U.S. troops in Germany, Romania and Poland, taking lawmakers by surprise. The provision also challenges the approach laid out in a new White House national security strategy that threatens to back European political parties “cultivating resistance” over longstanding U.S. allies in NATO countries.
Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in a speech on the House floor that voting for the bill was an act of reasserting Congress’ authority as a coequal branch of government, “which is but one step along a very long road.” The legislation, he added, was an effort “to try to get some restraint on the lack of transparency, the unaccountability and the problems that are coming out of this White House and this Department of Defense.”
Democrats had pushed to include a change to the Defense Department’s health care plan to cover in vitro fertilization for troops and their family members. But for the second year in a row, Speaker Mike Johnson intervened during final negotiations to kill that provision. His opposition sprang from concerns that I.V.F. would lead to the destruction of embryos, a central critique of the treatment by conservatives.
The bill would also repeal Iraq and Persian Gulf War-era authorizations for the use of military force that presidents of both parties have used to justify military operations overseas without the consent of Congress, something Democrats and Republicans have long called for.
And it would roll back sweeping sanctions imposed on Syria’s construction, energy and financial sectors when former president Bashar al-Assad was in power. In the aftermath of the Assad regime and more than a decade of civil war in Syria, lawmakers in both parties have pressed to repeal the penalties to spur economic development there.
The House originally passed a bill loaded with conservative social policy mandates, including a ban on the Pentagon covering gender-affirming surgeries for troops. But that provision and several others were stripped out in final negotiations. The legislation still includes a ban on transgender women participating in women’s athletic programs at U.S. military academies.
Some aspects of the measure agreed upon during final talks were drawing harsh criticism on Wednesday, including one that originated in the House that would weaken safety measures around Ronald Reagan National Airport outside of Washington.
The bill would create a waiver to allow military aircraft to turn off enhanced tracking software while flying on national security missions through parts of the Washington airspace, or if the military determines that the flight poses no risk to commercial planes.
The legislation “fails to make the skies safer,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Commerce Committee, and Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, the panel’s top Democrat, said in a joint statement.
House Democrats also took issue with what they said was a last-minute addition to the bill that would expand the ability of federal agencies, and potentially local law enforcement, to monitor, intercept and disable drones that could pose a threat.
Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said the provision lacked “necessary guardrails,” and warned that it could “lead to major civil liberties violations.”
Robert Jimison and Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting.
Megan Mineiro is a Times congressional reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
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