No Healthcare Deal In Sight As Parties Nuke Each Other’s Plans
'Dead on arrival'
Congress fights Trump admin to keep more US troops in Europe and Korea
The Trump administration indicated in its newly released National Security Strategy that "the days of propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over" — that American allies will have to "take more responsibility for security in their neighborhoods," especially as America orients its focus to the Western Hemisphere and hardens its presence in the Western Pacific.
The strategy document specifically called for "Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including taking primary responsibility for its own defense."
It appears, however, that members of Congress want America to shoulder the burden of European defense indefinitely.
In order to withdraw US forces past the 76,000 mark, the Trump administration would have to demonstrate to Congress that such a move would not adversely impact American or NATO security interests.
The version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act finalized by both House and Senate negotiators and released on Sunday — a budget that exceeds President Donald Trump's $892.6 billion budget request for the Pentagon by $8 billion — would block the Pentagon both from reducing the number of troops "stationed in or deployed to the area of responsibility of the United States European Command below 76,000 for longer than a 45-day period" and from using any funds appropriated under the act to move any Pentagon equipment originally valued at $500,000 out of Europe.
In order to withdraw U.S. forces past the 76,000 mark, the Trump administration would have to demonstrate to Congress that such a move would not adversely impact American or NATO security interests. The number of U.S. troops stationed in Europe fluctuates between around 80,000 and 100,000.
Citing five sources familiar with the discussion, including a U.S. official, Reuters reported that Pentagon officials told European diplomats during a recent meeting that Washington expects Europe to take over most of NATO's conventional defense capabilities such as troops and missile defense by 2027. Failure to do so might prompt America to end its participation in certain NATO defense coordination mechanisms, said the sources.
Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said in a statement, "We've been very clear in the need for Europeans to lead in the conventional defense of Europe. We are committed to working through NATO coordination mechanisms to strengthen the alliance and ensure its long-term viability as European allies increasingly take on responsibility for conventional deterrence and defense in Europe."
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau added on X that "Europe must take primary responsibility for its own security."
"Successive US Administrations have been saying this in one form or another pretty much my whole life — look up the 1969 'Nixon doctrine' — but our Administration means what it says," added Landau.
The current version of the NDAA would also prohibit the administration from letting the head of U.S. European Command — Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich — relinquish his role as NATO supreme allied commander in Europe.
Thanks to Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the NDAA as written would also codify the Baltic Security Initiative, hamstringing any efforts on the part of the administration to suspend the program, which uses American funds to bankroll Baltic states' defense capabilities. Billions of U.S. dollars have been poured into the BSI in recent years even as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia began investing more into their own defense.
In addition to ensuring that America remains bogged down in Europe, the 2026 NDAA as written has other provisions that might hamper the administration's ability to realize its national security strategy in full.
The legislation states that it is "the sense of Congress that the Secretary of Defense should continue efforts that strengthen United States defense alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region so as to further the comparative advantage of the United States in strategic competition with the People's Republic of China."
To this end, the legislation would prohibit obligating or expending any funds to reduce the total number of troops that are permanently stationed in or deployed to Korea below 28,500 or "to complete the transition of wartime operational control of the United States-Republic of Korea Combined Forces Command from United States-led command to Republic of Korea-led command" unless War Secretary Pete Hegseth provides an assessment and certification to Congress showing that doing so is in America's national interest and is being undertaken only after consulting with several foreign nations, including Korea and Japan.
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How the Senate’s phony ‘deliberation’ crushes working Americans
The United States Senate is broken, and most Americans know it — including President Donald Trump. A chamber that once passed laws with a simple 51-vote majority, a practice that held for more than a century, now demands 60 votes for nearly anything of consequence.
Defenders call this the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” guarding minority rights. In reality, the 60-vote threshold is a rule the Senate invented in the last century — and one it can discard tomorrow.
The filibuster transformed from a test of stamina into a tool for avoiding hard votes — and, today, a convenient excuse to delay or kill the America First agenda.
Article I lists exactly seven situations that require a supermajority: overriding vetoes, ratifying treaties, convicting in impeachment, expelling members, proposing constitutional amendments, and two obscure quorum rules. Passing ordinary legislation is not on the list.
The Senate’s tradition of unlimited debate — the seed of modern filibusters — wasn’t designed to create a supermajority requirement. It was an accident.
In 1806, on Aaron Burr’s suggestion that the Senate rulebook was cluttered, the chamber deleted the “previous question” motion, the mechanism the House still uses to end debate and vote. No one understood the implications at the time. Filibusters didn’t appear until the 1830s, and even then they were rare because they required real endurance. Senators had to speak nonstop, often for days, until they collapsed or yielded.
How the filibuster became a weapon
Everything changed in 1917. After 11 anti-war senators filibustered Woodrow Wilson’s bill to arm merchant ships on the eve of World War I, the public revolted. Wilson demanded action. The Senate responded by creating Rule XXII — the first cloture rule — allowing two-thirds of senators to end debate.
Instead of restraining obstruction, the rule supercharged it. For the first time, a minority didn’t need to speak until exhaustion. They only needed to threaten it. The majority now had to assemble a supermajority to progress.
The filibuster transformed from a test of stamina into a tool for avoiding hard votes — and, today, a convenient excuse to delay or kill the America First agenda.
The Senate has rewritten its filibuster rule many times since. In 1975, it lowered the cloture threshold from two-thirds to three-fifths (60 votes). In 2013, Democrats eliminated the filibuster for most presidential nominees; in 2017, Republicans applied that same exception to Supreme Court justices.
These changes all point to the same reality: The filibuster is not a sacred tradition. It is a standing rule, created and amended by simple-majority votes. The Senate can change it again any time.
The myth of ‘unprecedented change’
Filibuster defenders insist that ending the 60-vote rule would be radical.
It wouldn’t. In reality, it would restore the practice that governed the Senate for its first 128 years — unlimited debate, yes, but no supermajority threshold for passing laws.
RELATED: Democrats reject ‘current policy’ — unless it pays their base
Defenders also claim the filibuster forces compromise. History says otherwise. The biggest legislative achievements of the last century — Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — all passed when the filibuster was weakened, bypassed, or irrelevant.
What we have now is not deliberation. It is paralysis: a rule that allows 41 senators, representing as little as 11% of the country, to veto the will of the rest. The Senate already protects small states through equal representation and long tenures. Adding a 60-vote requirement for routine governance is not what the framers intended.
The fix
The solution is straightforward. The Senate can return to simple-majority voting for legislation. It can keep unlimited debate if it wishes — but require a real talking filibuster that ends when the minority runs out of arguments or public patience. Or it can leave the system as it is now and watch President Trump’s America First agenda stall for another generation.
The filibuster is not a 230-year constitutional safeguard. It is a 108-year experiment born in 1917 — and it has failed. The Senate invented it. The Senate can un-invent it.
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