A $900 billion defense budget, automatic draft registration, and repealed war authorizations — how much military power should the government hold, over whom, and for how long?
Each issue breaks into the specific questions Congress actually fights over. Read each position, then head to the interactive version of this issue to mark which reflects your view and build a message to your representatives.
A ballooning defense topline, now stretched further by war costs, needs oversight more than new money. The FY26 NDAA's $900.6 billion topline was already growing before the Iran war added an estimated $37.5 billion in additional, largely unbudgeted costs as of July 2026. Pouring $25 billion more into a bigger munitions arsenal on top of that is escalation dressed up as "reindustrialization," not the tighter oversight of Pentagon cost overruns and waste that real reform would require.
Industrial-base modernization is one of the few defense priorities with support across the spectrum. Expanding robotic automation in munitions manufacturing, streamlining sustainment data requirements, and easing the path for nontraditional contractors is overdue after years of a shrinking supplier base. Most of these efficiency reforms draw support across the spectrum even when the overall topline — now stretched further by ongoing Iran war costs — doesn't.
Years of underinvestment in the industrial base made this kind of buildup overdue, war or no war. China's military buildup and a hollowed-out post-Cold-War industrial base require exactly this kind of investment — the FY26 NDAA's $25 billion munitions push finally starts correcting decades of underinvestment. The Iran war's $37.5 billion cost so far is itself evidence of why the capacity to produce munitions and sustain operations at wartime scale can't be an afterthought.
Registering only young men for the draft revives a double standard the courts left unresolved in 1981. Automatic registration requires young men to register for Selective Service without extending the same requirement to women, despite decades of women serving in every combat role. The Supreme Court left this exact question open in 1981 — this provision revives the double standard rather than resolving it.
This mostly fixes a compliance gap — the sex-based registration question is a separate fight. Many young men currently fail to register for Selective Service and lose access to federal student aid and jobs as a result — automatic registration mostly closes that administrative gap. The sex-based registration question is a real and separate debate that this compliance fix doesn't resolve one way or the other.
This is bookkeeping to keep draft rolls accurate, not a step toward restarting conscription. Automatic registration is a sensible administrative modernization ensuring Selective Service rolls stay accurate in case a national emergency ever requires mobilization. It doesn't restart the draft itself, which still requires separate congressional action — this is bookkeeping, not conscription.
Congress finally used its war-powers authority to vote against an unauthorized war, but a symbolic resolution isn't enough. Both the House (215-208) and the Senate (50-48) passed war powers resolutions in June 2026 directing the President to end hostilities with Iran or seek specific authorization — the first time either chamber has passed such a measure on a final vote since the war began February 28. But the resolution doesn't require the President's signature and doesn't carry the force of law, and the war has continued past it — repealing the outdated 1991 and 2002 Iraq AUMFs the same NDAA cycle was overdue, but real reform means Congress backing its votes with binding funding restrictions, not just resolutions.
Repealing obsolete war authorizations is uncontroversial good governance; the harder question is whether Congress will actually assert authority over the live Iran war. Repealing authorizations for wars that ended years ago — the 1991 and 2002 Iraq AUMFs — is uncontroversial good governance that passed with support across the spectrum. The harder, unresolved question is the live one: whether Congress's bipartisan war powers votes against the Iran war will lead to any actual change in the war's conduct, or remain, as skeptics note, largely symbolic given they carry no legal force.
The commander-in-chief retains Article II authority to respond to genuine threats, and a non-binding resolution doesn't change that. The war powers resolutions against the Iran war passed by narrow margins and, as constitutional scholars have noted, carry no legal force — the President retains Article II commander-in-chief authority to respond to Iranian aggression, including attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Repealing the outdated 1991 and 2002 Iraq AUMFs reflects a genuine commitment to ending forever wars without weakening that core Article II authority to respond to genuine emerging threats.
Replacing DEI programs with a political litmus test risks the recruitment pipeline the military most needs. Eliminating DEI offices department-wide and permanently barring men from women's teams at military academies replaces evidence-based personnel practices with a political litmus test. That risks recruitment and retention among exactly the groups the military most needs to reach in a tight labor market.
Merit-based promotion is easy to endorse — whether DEI programs actually undermined it is the real dispute. Promotions and command selection resting on demonstrated performance is hard to argue with in principle. The real dispute — whether existing DEI programs were undermining or supporting that standard — got resolved by statute rather than by evidence, and future NDAA cycles will likely revisit it.
A single merit standard, without DEI bureaucracy, keeps the focus on lethality and readiness. Restoring a single merit-based standard for promotion, accession, and command selection — explicitly excluding race, ethnicity, and sex as factors — refocuses the military on lethality and warfighting readiness. Eliminating DEI bureaucracy removes programs that had become a political flashpoint rather than a demonstrated readiness benefit.
Broader shootdown authority without clear guardrails risks mistakes and creep into ordinary policing. Expanding counter-drone authority to "defeat" threats near public events raises real concerns about mistaken shootdowns. Without clear guardrails on when and where it can be used, this authority risks mission creep from protecting major events into ordinary domestic law enforcement.
One coordinating task force makes sense — staying scoped to major events is the real test. Centralizing counter-drone efforts under a single task force to coordinate strategy and validate systems is a sensible response to a fast-growing threat. The real test is whether the authorities stay scoped to major events and critical infrastructure rather than expanding into routine domestic policing.
Drone technology has outpaced the legal tools available to counter it near sensitive sites. Hostile and hobbyist drones near military installations and major public events are a serious, underappreciated threat. Expanded authority to detect and disable them is overdue given how far drone technology has outpaced the legal tools available to counter it.
Statutory troop floors substitute distrust of the executive branch for actual force-planning judgment. Locking specific troop-count floors into statute — 28,500 in South Korea, 76,000 in Europe — ties the hands of military planners who may want to right-size forces based on actual strategic needs. This reflects distrust of the administration's stated intentions more than sound force planning.
Requiring consultation before a drawdown protects allies without freezing troop levels outright. Requiring consultation and reporting before any drawdown, rather than banning drawdowns outright, is a reasonable check. It preserves executive flexibility while ensuring allies and NATO aren't blindsided by a sudden posture change they'd have to react to on short notice.
Troop floors needlessly tie the commander-in-chief's hands at the moment force posture most needs to shift. The troop-floor requirements needlessly constrain the commander-in-chief's authority to modernize and rightsize U.S. force posture based on current requirements rather than outdated troop counts. That's especially true at exactly the moment the administration is trying to prioritize the Indo-Pacific over Europe.