Category World News

The United States House of Representatives has passed a far-reaching defence policy bill authorising a record $901bn in annual military spending.

The tally in Wednesday’s vote saw 312 lawmakers vote in favour of passing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), with 112 opposing the bill. It has now been sent to the Senate for consideration and is expected to pass next week.

The $901bn in defence spending for the 2026 fiscal year is $8bn more than US President Donald Trump requested in May this year.

The sweeping 3,086-page bill, which was unveiled on Sunday, includes typical NDAA provisions on defence acquisitions to compete militarily with rivals such as China and Russia. It also includes measures to improve living conditions for American troops, including an almost 4 percent pay rise and improvements in military base housing.

Lawmakers also forced the inclusion of several provisions cementing Washington’s commitment to Europe’s defence in the face of Russian aggression, including $400m in military assistance to Ukraine in each of the next two years to help repel Russia’s invasion.

Another measure requires the Pentagon to keep at least 76,000 troops and major equipment stationed in Europe unless NATO allies are consulted.

This year’s bill, however, also cut several programmes reviled by Trump, including about $1.6bn in funding to initiatives focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as climate change.

The legislation will now head to the Senate, with leaders aiming to pass the bill before lawmakers depart for a holiday break. Trump will then sign it into law once it reaches the White House.

Bill puts pressure on Defense Secretary Hegseth over transparency of attacks

The NDAA is one of a few major pieces of legislation to typically enjoy broad bipartisan support, having made it through Congress every year since its enactment in 1961.

This year’s process was rockier than usual, coming at a time of growing friction between the Republican-controlled Congress and the Trump administration over the management of the US military.

Before the vote, members of both parties urged their lawmakers to support the vital defence legislation, even if they objected to individual provisions contained within it.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Washington, DC, Mike Hanna, said that while there was “some significant dissent”, the bill still passed “very easily indeed”.

Also tucked into the NDAA are several measures pushing back against the Department of Defense, notably a demand for more transparency on deadly attacks carried out by the US military on alleged drug smuggling vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean in recent months.

Hanna said a “very noticeable” part of the bill threatens to take away 25 percent of US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel funding unless he discloses more information on the US attacks on vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, including allowing lawmakers to review unedited video of the strikes and the orders given to carry out the attack.

“This is a very strong move by the House forcing, it would appear, the defence secretary to provide full details of these attacks,” Hanna said.

At least 86 people have been killed across 22 known strikes since the Trump administration announced the first attack in early September.

The president has depicted them as a necessary counter-narcotics effort, even though they are widely considered illegal under both international and US law.

Hardline conservative lawmakers had expressed frustration that the NDAA did not do more to cut US commitments overseas, including in Europe.

Republican chair of the House Armed Services Committee Mike Rogers responded, saying “we need a ready, capable and lethal fighting force”.

“The threats to our nation, especially those from China, are more complex and challenging than at any point in the last 40 years,” Rogers said.

The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, said that while the bill does not do enough to rein in the Trump administration, it’s a “step in the right direction towards reasserting the authority of Congress”.

Deir el-Balah, Gaza – After a night of relentless rain, Arafat al-Ghandour and his wife, Nour, finally exhaled in relief as the morning sun emerged, if only briefly, over the soaked displacement camp.

The couple, parents of five, live in a worn tent riddled with holes. They spent the night battling water pouring in from every direction.

Arafat, 39, shares the cramped space, no larger than eight square metres (86sq feet), with 15 family members, including his elderly parents, his sister and her family, and his brother’s wife and children. The conditions, he says, are “inhumane”.

“All night I was plugging the holes with rags and plastic bags,” Arafat told Al Jazeera. “I haven’t slept yet. And they say the storm hasn’t really started.”

In the early morning, the family hurried to spread their drenched clothes, blankets, and belongings in the sunlight.

“We finally breathed a sigh of relief when the sun came out,” said Nour, sitting beside her husband. “All our clothes were soaked. We have nothing else. Even our blankets and the children’s clothes were drenched. I took the kids outside immediately just to dry off a little.”

Nour described the panic of waking up to find water pouring into the tent.

“My children were asleep and soaked. I started waking them one by one so they wouldn’t get even more drenched,” she said. “This isn’t living.”

Once a season she loved, winter now makes her anxious and miserable, with only meagre shelter offered by the tents.

“We’ve lost faith in everything. I’ve given so many interviews and made appeals. They all come to film our tents and our lives, and the media and everyone else see us crying out, but nothing changes,” Nour tells Al Jazeera angrily, pointing to the tattered sides of her tent.

“Would anyone accept living in this place? To face winter like this?”

“Would anyone accept living like this?”

The family fled Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza a year and a half ago and settled in Deir el-Balah after losing their home. With no means to rebuild or return, they remained in the south.

“There’s a tent there and a tent here. So we said, ‘Why try to move?’ We stayed,” said Arafat, who has been unemployed for two years.

“Can you believe we all sleep crammed together in this place without any privacy? Imagine me sleeping here with my wife next to me, while my brother’s wife and brother sleep directly opposite us?” Arafat says bitterly.

“No man with any sense of honour in the world would accept this. But what can we do? We have no other options. Our dignity has been trampled on from all sides.”

He looked around the camp, frustrated.

“Where are the caravans and housing units the media keeps talking about? We never see anything. Why isn’t anyone solving our suffering?”

The family, like thousands of displaced Palestinians, lives with no income and cannot afford food, clean water, clothes, or blankets.

“I can’t even feed my children,” Arafat said. “How am I supposed to buy a tent at these ridiculous prices? If charity kitchen (tekkiya) comes, we eat; if it doesn’t, we don’t. That’s our life now.”

According to Arafat, a good quality tent costs between 1,800 and 2,500 shekels, equivalent to about $550 to $775.

Tarpaulins and nylon range in price from 250 to 400 shekels (roughly $75-125) depending on their length, he said.

“These tents should be given to the displaced for free, not sold at prices no one can afford,” he said. “How can an unemployed man who has been struggling for two years, like me, buy a tent to shelter my children?”

Deeply anxious about the storm expected to hit Gaza from Wednesday night until next Saturday, Arafat desperately hopes his plight will be heard and his family’s suffering seen, even just once.

“We heard about caravans and housing units coming into Gaza. All lies. Empty promises,” he said. “I just want a decent tent to protect my children. Nothing more.”

Nearby, Basma al-Sheikh Khalil, 66, stood silently in front of her rain-soaked tent, watching sewage flow through the muddy paths between tents.

“Our situation is not like anyone else’s,” she laments to Al Jazeera with a sigh. “A woman my age needs rest and warmth, not this endless exhaustion we’ve endured for two years.”

She described watching her young grandchildren tremble through the night.

“I was so sad to see my young grandchildren shivering from the cold last night and continuing into the morning in the rain.”

“These children have suffered so much in the war.”

“My heart breaks for them,”  Basma said, tears welling in her eyes.

Basma recounted to Al Jazeera their recurring suffering with the winter, their tattered canvas tents unfit for habitation.

“Last night, we were completely flooded. The water reached halfway up our feet, and my children and I spent the night wading through it to get out.”

To make matters worse, their makeshift cesspool overflowed with rainwater, flooding the entire area with sewage.

“You can imagine the stench, how it permeated everything, how our tents and blankets were soaked with sewage,” Basma said, pausing.

“What can I say? What can I say? Our lives are beyond words.”

Pointing to a hole in the ground covered with scraps of wood and worn-out cloth, she added, “This filthy sandy hole has been our toilet for two years. Can you imagine what our lives must be like?

“Who understands us? Who feels our lives and what we endure? No one,” Basma said, clapping her hands together.

Basma and her family, her husband, their six married sons, and their children, were displaced to Deir el-Balah after fleeing the Shujayea neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City, fleeing intense Israeli bombardment of their area.

“We escaped by a miracle. We left everything behind, no blankets, no furniture, nothing.”

They returned to northern Gaza after October’s ceasefire, but headed back to the south as the situation deteriorated.

“The situation is catastrophic throughout Gaza. Our lives are a constant cycle of destruction, displacement, hunger, exhaustion, and suffering. It’s as if we’re destined to continue living like this,” she adds.

For Basma, the changing seasons are no longer a source of optimism now that she lives in a tent.

She said that the summer and its scorching heat were extremely difficult, but the winter rains were causing even more suffering.

“In summer, we would run away from the tent to find shade under any wall or nearby building, but the rain and its downpour? How do we deal with it? Where do we go in it? How do we endure the bitter cold and the rain at the same time?”

She shook her head slowly.

United States President Donald Trump has renewed his threats against his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, warning that the South American leader could be the next target for his anti-drug campaign.

On Wednesday, at a White House roundtable with business leaders, one reporter asked Trump if he had spoken to Petro. That touched off a fiery response from the Republican leader.

“I haven’t really thought too much about him. He’s been fairly hostile to the United States,” Trump began, before going on the offensive.

“He’s going to have himself some big problems if he doesn’t wise up,” Trump continued.

“Colombia is producing a lot of drugs. They have cocaine factories. They make cocaine, as you know, and they sell it right into the United States. So he better wise up, or he’ll be next. He’ll be next. I hope he’s listening. He’s going to be next because we don’t like people when they kill people.”

The remarks came shortly after Trump addressed a US military operation to seize an oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea, in an effort to punish Venezuela and Iran for alleged sanction violations.

Trump has long had a rocky relationship with Petro, the first left-wing leader in modern Colombian history.

But the Republican president’s aggressive comments towards Petro have strained relations with Colombia, which partnered with the US for decades as part of the global “war on drugs”.

A partner in the ‘war on drugs’

Until Trump’s return to the presidency in January, Colombia had been one of the largest recipients of US aid in South America.

The country not only contends with cocaine production within its borders but also a six-decade-long internal conflict, which pits government forces against left-wing rebels, right-wing paramilitaries and criminal networks.

Colombia is the world’s largest producer of coca, the raw material for cocaine and other products. Nearly 253,000 hectares, or 625,176 acres, are devoted to its cultivation, according to United Nations estimates.

Critics argue that coca eradication efforts largely disadvantage rural farmers without offering an alternative means to earn a livelihood.

Instead, Petro’s government has focused on attacking the criminal networks that convert the leaf into drugs.

But Trump and his allies have accused Petro of failing to take more aggressive action to stop cocaine production in Colombia.

The US president has repeatedly hinted he could take military action against Colombia over the issue.

On October 23, for instance, he called Petro a “thug” and said Colombia was “ not going to get away with it much longer”.

More recently, at a December 2 cabinet meeting, the US president spoke directly about the possibility of an attack.

“ I hear Colombia, the country of Colombia, is making cocaine,” Trump told his cabinet. “Anybody that’s doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack.”

But Petro has defended his record, highlighting the campaigns his government has undertaken to destroy drug-producing facilities. He claims that as many as 18,400 narcotics laboratories have been dismantled during his time in office.

After December’s cabinet meeting, Petro swiftly responded to Trump’s military threats. In a post on the social media platform X, the Colombian president reminded Trump that his country has been integral in the “war on drugs”.

“If any country has helped stop thousands of tons of cocaine from being consumed by Americans, it is Colombia,” Petro wrote.

He also warned Trump not to “awaken the jaguar” by launching an attack on an ally.

“Attacking our sovereignty is declaring war,” Petro said. “Do not damage two centuries of diplomatic relations.”

Instead, he invited Trump to participate in the fight against cocaine trafficking firsthand: “Come to Colombia, Mr Trump. I invite you, so you can participate in the destruction of the nine laboratories we dismantle every day.”

In September, however, the Trump administration issued a notice that accused Colombia of having “failed demonstrably” to “adhere to [its] obligations under international counternarcotics agreements”.

The next month, the US made the historic decision to decertify Colombia’s anti-narcotic efforts. It was the first time since 1997 that the US had taken such a measure.

A wide-ranging beef

Petro and Trump, however, have clashed over issues beyond the fight against drug trafficking.

Just days into Trump’s second term, on January 26, the two leaders exchanged a volley of social media threats over a newly unveiled mass deportation effort in the US.

Petro objected to the harsh treatment of immigrants being expelled from the US, often without due process and in handcuffs.

“The US cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals,” Petro wrote on social media. He warned he would not accept deportation flights from the US.

Trump responded by threatening to slap Colombia with 25-percent tariffs, an amount that would eventually rise to 50 percent. Petro ultimately backed down.

But the two leaders have continued to exchange blows. Trump, for example, has been highly critical of Petro’s “Total Peace” plan, a blueprint for negotiating with the rebel groups enmeshed in Colombia’s internal conflict.

The US president has also taken action to punish Petro personally. In September, Petro visited New York City to attend the United Nations General Assembly, where he spoke against Trump and participated in a pro-Palestinian rally.

Within hours, the Trump administration had yanked Petro’s visa, citing “his reckless and incendiary actions”.

The next month, it also sanctioned Petro, freezing any assets he may have in the US.

The Colombian president, meanwhile, has emerged as one of the most vocal detractors of Trump’s bombing campaign in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.

Since September 2, the Trump administration has attacked at least 22 vessels, killing an estimated 87 people.

Trump has maintained that the victims are drug traffickers, though neither he nor his officials have offered public evidence to justify their claims. Colombians have been among the victims.

One boat strike on October 17 allegedly targeted members of Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN), a rebel group. Another attack, on October 16, left two survivors, one of whom was Colombian.

The family of one Colombian citizen, Alejandro Carranza, also filed a complaint this month with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), claiming the fisherman was killed in a strike on September 15.