Thursday, July 23, 2026

Pasadena Congresswoman Judy Chu Votes No on Defense Bill

Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA), whose 28th Congressional District covers Pasadena, Altadena and much of the west San Gabriel Valley, voted Wednesday against the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027, the annual bill that sets Pentagon policy and spending levels.

The House passed the measure, H.R. 8800, by a vote of 216 to 212, according to the official House Clerk roll call, and the bill now moves to the Senate.

Passage came a day after House leaders revived the legislation under a new procedural rule; an earlier attempt to bring it to the floor had collapsed in late June, leaving the bill stalled for roughly three weeks.

Chu was among the members who voted against the final passage. The measure carries a topline of roughly $1.15 trillion, a figure set during committee work earlier this year.

In a statement released by her office, Chu said she opposed the bill on three grounds: its overall level of defense spending, its relationship to U.S. military action in Iran, and the inclusion of the SAVE America Act, a voter-registration measure attached to the defense bill.

“This year’s NDAA gives President Trump a $1.15 trillion blank check to continue his illegal, destabilizing, and deeply unpopular war in Iran, while once again asking working families to pay the price,” Chu said. She said the conflict had “claimed seventeen American lives, injured nearly 500 more, and diverted hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars away from the urgent needs facing families here at home.” Those casualty figures are Chu’s, provided in her office’s statement, and are not independently verified in this article.

Chu, who sits on the House Budget Committee and the Ways and Means Committee, argued that the money would be better spent at home.

Pointing to a time when, in her words, “Americans are struggling to afford groceries, gas, housing, child care, and health care,” she said the roughly $250 billion the bill directs to the Pentagon “could fund SNAP benefits for 110 million people or provide Medicaid coverage for 29 million people.” She also described the Department of Defense as an agency that has “failed six consecutive audits.” Those characterizations and estimates are drawn from her statement.

The congresswoman reserved particular criticism for the SAVE America Act, which was folded into the defense bill and which she characterized as “a voter suppression bill.”

According to her statement, the provision would require documentation such as passports or birth certificates to register to vote and “would make it significantly harder for eligible Americans to register to vote.” She said the requirement would “create needless bureaucratic hurdles that threaten to lock millions of eligible voters out of our democracy,” warning it could affect “married women, working families, young people, people of color, and low-income Americans.”

The measure’s inclusion in H.R. 8800 has been noted by outside groups, including the National Education Association, which urged members to oppose the rule that carried it.

“For these reasons, I voted no,” Chu said.

The Senate is weighing its own version of the defense bill. Several senators, including Democrats, have raised objections tied to the spending level and to the administration’s military actions in Iran, and the two chambers would need to reconcile their versions before any measure could reach the president’s desk.