Viewpoint: After The Blue Tsunami

To say that the 2026 midterms ushered in a “blue wave” would be an understatement. For a better sense of the scale of these electoral waterworks, consider the 1,000-ft.-tall megatsunami triggered by a comet crashing into the Atlantic Ocean in the 1998 film Deep Impact (or, for younger readers, the mountain-sized wave on Miller’s Planet in 2014’s Interstellar).

Republicans lost nearly every competitive race this cycle, including House districts that had been specifically redrawn to favor them. They have lost a staggering number of their members on the House Armed Services Committee, including some of their most senior members. Republicans even managed to lose a few House and Senate contests that were not expected to be competitive at all. Democrats now enjoy comfortable majorities in both chambers of Congress that are so large it will likely take Republicans several election cycles to undo them. As of this writing, Democrats are on track to hold at least 250 seats in the House: a mark that Republicans have never reached and which Democrats have not in nearly 20 years. It is an electoral wipeout of truly historic proportions.

What does this mean for defense aviation and military space? In the short term, the defense budget environment is uncertain. The current continuing resolution (CR) that is funding the federal government expires on Dec. 11. While it is technically possible that Republicans and Democrats may come together to pass some full-year funding bills ahead of that deadline (including for the Pentagon), the sheer scale of the Democrats’ electoral triumph may motivate them to wait to pass any full-year spending bills until their majorities take power on Jan. 3, when they will have maximum leverage and be able to write new appropriations bills with little need to court Republican votes. In that case, they would demand Republicans work with them to pass a full-government CR ahead of the Dec. 11 deadline that would fund the government until at least mid-January. If Republicans refuse, we can expect a multiweek, full-government shutdown.

Once the Democrats’ new majorities are sworn in, the real work of governing will start, and Democratic leadership on the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees will begin to write the Pentagon’s fiscal 2028 budget. What may surprise people is that the Pentagon’s topline budget is likely to rise. Although nearly all Democrats balked at President Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense budget request for fiscal 2027, the party has largely recognized the growing threats to America’s national security around the world and has been mostly united in supporting modest increases to the defense budget to address those threats.

While it is true that incoming Speaker Hakeem Jeffries will have a new batch of members in his conference from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—whose platform explicitly calls to “defund the Department of [Defense]”—the size of his House majority will be so large that he may be able to pass a Pentagon budget without regard to the DSA’s demands to cut defense spending. Make no mistake: these members will cause Jeffries many headaches over the next several years, but they will, ironically, suffer from the Democrats’ success in securing a majority so large that it dilutes their influence.

Things get more interesting when we look at individual programs. Golden Dome, for example, will be put through the congressional wringer. For the past two years, Democratic defense leaders in Congress have raised questions about the cost, scope, and even the basic feasibility of the Golden Dome architecture. Those questions will only become more pointed now, because the people asking them will actually have the power to slash, or boost, funding based on how satisfactory the answers are. House and Senate armed services Democrats’ first order of business may simply be confirming Golden Dome’s exact price tag, on which the Pentagon and Congressional Budget Office cannot agree.

But don’t write the obituary for Golden Dome yet—its underlying goal of defending the homeland from aerial threats is an ambitious but noble one, and one that Democrats may entertain pursuing—but it faces a steep, uphill battle for survival. It may survive the 120th Congress, albeit in a more pared-back form.

On the other hand, the Pentagon’s efforts to boost production and adoption of drones are likely to face an easier path forward. Any casual observer of military affairs from either party can see how uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) have changed the face of warfare, providing a cheap, low-risk means of conducting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), deep strike, close air support, electronic warfare, counter-UAS, and other mission sets. Democrats may ask hard questions about the effectiveness of the Pentagon’s efforts thus far to get these systems into the hands of warfighters at scale, but they are unlikely to end or even curtail these efforts. 

The above estimates are just some of my best guesses about an uncertain future. One potential spoiler of these predictions, of course, is the conflict with Iran. If President Trump resumes strikes against the Iranian regime, congressional Democrats will likely withhold some or even all of the Pentagon’s funding in protest.

Another critical but unpredictable variable is the Secretary of Defense himself, Pete Hegseth. Democrats have made no secret of the fact that they intend to investigate him and his leadership of the Pentagon extensively during the 120th Congress. Will Democrats withhold funding from the Pentagon to compel his cooperation into these probes? If the subsequent depositions and oversight hearings go poorly for him, will even moderate Democrats refuse to fund “his” Pentagon? If he decides to resign, who—if anyone—could President Trump nominate to replace him who would survive the advice and consent of a deeply Democratic Senate? The trench warfare between Hegseth and his oversight committees next year will feature copious amounts of political theater from both sides, but the outcome of that conflict will determine the fate of the Pentagon’s budget for years to come.

Michael Callesen is principal and founder of Callesen Consulting LLC, a government relations firm based in Lexington, Kentucky. He previously worked in Congress for nearly a decade on national security, defense, and foreign relations issues.