Alabama Army National Guard Soldiers with the 122nd Special Troops Command stand in formation during the change of command ceremony on June 7, 2025. (Jordan Renfro/U.S. Army)
President Donald Trump signed the annual defense policy bill on Thursday, which authorizes a 3.8% pay raise for troops, curbs efforts to reduce the number of troops in Europe and South Korea, and forces more transparency from the Pentagon.
The bill, which is known as the National Defense Authorization Act and tops more than 3,000 pages in length, authorizes spending on defense programs.
One part of the bill is related to the strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that have killed nearly 100 people since September. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that the Pentagon will not release the entire unedited video of a divisive follow-up strike on a vessel on Sept. 2 to the public, but a provision in the bill withholds a quarter of his travel budget until he turns over the orders behind the boat bombing campaign as well as unedited videos of the strikes to the Armed Services Committees.
The White House had scheduled a public bill signing for the president but eventually kept the event closed to the news media.