Nobody reads a bill this size. Congress weighs it. The Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act comes to $1.15 trillion, and together with its supplemental bills it carries most of what President Donald Trump wants for his military: the “Golden Dome” missile shield, the so-called “Trump-class” battleship. Somewhere in that bulk sits a short section that would tie the arms industries of two countries together. After the elections of November 3, as Joseph Stepansky reported for Al Jazeera, advocates believe Democrats are better placed than they have ever been to cut it out.
The clause
Section 219 would set up a “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative” to “expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, coordination.” Even the number moves around. Al Jazeera places Section 219 in the Senate version. The tracker A New Policy lists it as Section 219 of the House bill and Section 1217 of the Senate’s. It began life as Section 224, and before that as the core of the U.S.-Israel FUTURES Act, a Republican bill. Analysts at Inkstick and the Arab Center Washington DC have described it as going beyond aid, into joint ventures, licensing and co-production.
Its critics fear two things. The first is a murky channel through which taxpayers’ money could reach Israel by way of joint ventures, out of sight of congressional oversight. The second is that Israeli technology, once built into American programmes, would make any later change of policy expensive. Some see the initiative as the next stage of decades of US military support, arriving just as direct aid has become a political burden that both Trump and Vice-President JD Vance have acknowledged. The president has already said he could let the yearly aid pledge go, and talks on a new memorandum to replace the current one, which covers FY2019 to FY2028, began the week of June 1, 2026.
Matthew Duss, executive vice-president of the Center for International Policy, said the section aims to move aid “further outside the purview of Congress”, to “inoculate it from democracy.”
A reflection, offered as no more than that: aid voted on every year can be refused every year. A shared factory floor cannot be undone by a single vote.
The calendar
In May the Republican-controlled House passed its version of the package. In July Senate Democrats held up their chamber’s bill with a procedural vote. Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, citing the Iran war and the cost of living, sent a “dear colleague” letter accusing Republicans of wanting a bill “that would dump billions more into the defense industry.” Senator Chris Van Hollen and six colleagues rejected the Israel provision outright.
Then came November 3, and Democrats took both chambers, with control passing to them in January. This week a new letter against the provision appeared, signed by 12 senators, Bernie Sanders, Ron Wyden and Tammy Duckworth among them. The fight, The Defense Watch reported, has now moved into House-Senate negotiations over the final text.
The senators’ letter lists what the cooperation would cover: technology sharing, weapons co-production, joint research in biotechnology, quantum, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence and cyberwarfare. That, they argue, goes further than America’s integration with some NATO allies. They warn it could “threaten US national security interests by handing Israel leverage over American weapons systems”, and lock in dependencies that make future changes costly. Given Israeli policies in Gaza, the West Bank and the wider region, which they say clash with US interests and values, “To do so in this instance would be unwise.”
The leverage comes from the calendar. The current stopgap funding runs out on December 11, so Congress must pass either another stopgap or the full NDAA. The bill needs 60 votes. A separate $360bn supplemental package is stuck, and defence analysts expect Pentagon funding to shrink considerably.
The men at the top
Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, first supported the Israel provision and later turned against it. Since the election he has called for a “more realistic and sustainable approach to our national security.” Schumer and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, both trying to hold on to their leadership posts, have said nothing in public about the clause.
Duss expects resistance from “this leadership that remains very strongly pro-Israel”, though he thinks Schumer and Jeffries know their caucuses now see the issue differently from them. Opponents, he said, are “on firm ground to hold a hard line.”
Cavan Kharrazian, senior policy adviser at Demand Progress, wants that line drawn now. “Democrats need to make it clear right now that their votes for the NDAA depend on substantial changes,” he said, urging a filibuster until the provisions are gone. “An amendment vote alone is insufficient if Democrats then let the bill advance with the provisions intact.”
Hamid Bendaas, communications director of the IMEU Policy Project, said the letter’s signers reflect “a broader range of the Democratic Caucus.” He pointed to polls showing Democratic voters oppose military aid to Israel, driven by the genocide in Gaza. Pouring money into Israeli companies, some of them state-owned, would be “about the worst thing that they could possibly do right now,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be a Democrat or a Republican who votes yes on the text that we’ve seen.”
The new Congress sits in January. The old one has until December 11, and it still needs 60 votes.