Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (LA-04) allowed a provision to remain in the final FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act that withholds 25 percent of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office travel budget until the Pentagon provides unedited footage of Southern Command strikes, including the controversial September 2 boat takedown, to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
The measure has drawn quiet criticism from some conservatives who view the strike as lawful and the funding fence as an unnecessary concession.
The NDAA conference report, which dropped late Sunday and is scheduled for a House vote as early as Wednesday, is otherwise a massive conservative win: It axes DEI mandates, supercharges border security, pivots to counterbalancing China, and codifies President Trump’s executive orders into law.
Yet buried inside (covered on page 816 and titled "Limitation on Availability of Funds for Travel Expenses of the Office of the Secretary of Defense") is a Democrat-friendly pressure tactic that keeps a thoroughly debunked “war crime” narrative on life support even after administration lawyers and battlefield precedent had seemingly buried it.
As RedState reported exclusively last week, top legal advisor to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and former Trump Navy counsel Tim Parlatore said the left’s hysteria lacked legal context because the boat was a legitimate military target. “You have a boat full of cocaine and terrorists heading to this country to poison and kill Americans,” he said. In explaining the law, Parlatore drew a historical parallel with a famous WWII battle against the Japanese in Hawaii when U.S. Naval forces kept torpedoing burning Japanese carriers packed with wounded sailors until they sank.
DIVE DEEPER: DoW Legal Advisor Says 'Boat With Cocaine, Terrorists Heading to Poison Americans Is Legit Target'
Republicans who have watched the classified video in secure briefings have called it a clean, lifesaving operation. It’s just one of more than 20 similar strikes since September that have shredded cartel supply lines, arguably saving countless American lives from fentanyl.
Democrats, meanwhile, led by Rep. Jim Himes (CT-04) and Sen. Jack Reed (RI), have accused military officials of “war crimes,” perhaps highlighting how desperate left-wing politicians have been for any scalp in the administration.
All this makes Speaker Johnson’s decision to green-light the budget-withhold clause all the more baffling. With the significant oversight hurdle of a classified briefing in the rearview mirror, why offer Dems a visual hook that forces an integral part of President Trump’s cabinet to waste time placating the party trying to kneecap him? We reached out to Speaker Johnson’s office to inquire, and so far, he has declined to comment.
Democrats’ fixation on the September 2nd footage increasingly looks like a pretext for their overall discomfort with President Trump’s broader campaign against drug trafficking.
It’s hard to imagine any decisive military action against cartels that would not trigger an immediate rebuke from Democrats.
On Monday, President Trump reaffirmed total confidence in his Secretary of War on the matter of releasing footage, saying, “whatever Pete Hegseth wants to do is okay with me.”
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