Lawmakers have taken a hard line against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, threatening to lock down a portion of his travel budget until he turns over unedited footage of U.S. military strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and copies of the orders behind the operations.
The provisions, tucked in the final text of the sweeping bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), land amid intensifying bipartisan scrutiny over a Sept. 2 operation off the coast of Venezuela, in which the military carried out a second strike on a suspected drug boat that killed two survivors.
They also come as Democrats sound the alarm on the administration’s overall strategy of sinking suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and as lawmakers express increasing misgivings about Hegseth’s leadership at the Pentagon.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who’s been critical of the September operation and sits on the House Armed Services Committee, told The Hill via text message that he supports the provision.
“It’s time to show Hegseth we are an independent branch,” he said.
Bacon has in recent days ramped up his criticism of Hegseth, telling Politico’s Dasha Burns on C-SPAN that “after ‘Signalgate,’ I think I’ve seen enough.”
He added that he thinks it was mainly leadership in the Senate and House Armed Services committees who pushed for the provision.
A Democratic congressional aide told The Hill on Tuesday the video provision was a result of a “joint effort, and it’s our understanding there are concerns in both chambers and parties.”
Another Democratic congressional aide said it is “clear the provision is coming from general frustrations with Hegseth” and the Trump administration.
The Hill reached out to House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers’s (R-Ala.) office for comment.
The provisions were added during negotiations to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the must-pass NDAA. House Republican leadership unveiled the final text over the weekend, and it is expected to pass the House this week and head to the Senate.
The bill says Hegseth has to turn over to the House and Senate Armed Services committees videos of strikes “conducted against designated terrorist organizations in the area of responsibility” of the U.S. Southern Command.
“Of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act or otherwise made available for fiscal year 2026 for operation and maintenance, defense-wide, and available for the Office of the Secretary of Defense for travel expenses, not more than 75 percent may be obligated or expended” until he does, the text of the legislation says.
The legislation would also compel the Pentagon to give lawmakers a specific order behind the attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats. Members of the committees have tried for weeks to extract more information from the Pentagon about the lethal maritime operations.
The Trump administration has provided at least 13 briefings to lawmakers on the ongoing strikes, but the sessions have not quelled the concerns of Democrats, who have called on Hegseth to resign.
President Trump last week backed the release of video showing the second boat strike, but he said Monday he would defer to Hegseth on the matter. Hegseth on Saturday declined to commit to releasing that video.
“We’re reviewing it right now to make sure sources, methods, I mean, it’s an ongoing operation. … We’ve got operators out there doing this right now,” he told Fox News’s Lucas Tomlinson.
“So, whatever we were to decide to release, we’d have to be very responsible about, we’re reviewing that right now,” he added.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, told The Hill he doesn’t know the “need” for the provision.
“Pete’s always been forthright. He’s always been honest. To put that in there, whether he has much of a question about it or not or objects to it … he’s straightforward. That’s not needed, but it’s in there,” Norman said.
U.S. troops on Sept. 2 conducted four strikes on a boat they suspected of carrying drugs, with the first one killing nine people and severely damaging the boat. Adm. Frank Bradley, who briefed lawmakers about the mission last week on Capitol Hill, authorized a second strike that killed two survivors who were in the water and leaning on the bow of the boat, the only part that was sticking out of the water. The third and fourth strikes sank the vessel.
Republicans who attended last week’s briefings with Bradley and watched the video of the strikes said that the two survivors were trying to flip the boat and carry on the mission. They said the Navy admiral, who is now the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, was acting lawfully and that the mission was witnessed by multiple military judge advocate generals.
So far, the U.S. military has carried out more than 20 strikes against purported drug-trafficking boats and killed at least 87 people in both the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
When reached for comment on the video provision, the Pentagon told The Hill on Tuesday it would not be “appropriate for the Department to comment on pending or proposed legislation.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have continued their calls for Hegseth to release the full video of the Sept. 2 attack to the public.
“If Hegseth has nothing to hide, releasing all audio/visual footage from the Venezuela boat strikes should not be an issue for Hegseth,” Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, told The Hill in a statement Tuesday. “I urge Hegseth to do the right thing and let the American people judge for themselves the whole story.”
Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the committee, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that “it seems pretty clear they don’t want to release this video because they don’t want people to see it because it’s very, very difficult to justify.”
“This Department of Defense and the president — they don’t really think that Congress should be allowed to exercise our oversight,” he said. “They have not kept us informed on this. They did not inform us of these strikes … and that’s the biggest problem with this Department of Defense. They don’t seem to think that the law applies to them.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday also called for the video to be released “so that the American people have an opportunity to determine for themselves whether that strike killing people who were shipwrecked, and by all accounts were not presenting any threat to American military personnel, whether that kind of seemingly extrajudicial killing is consistent with American values.”