Final FY2026 Defense, FAA Bills Signed into Law

The FY2026 Defense and Transportation-HUD appropriations bills were signed into law today, ending a brief partial government shutdown that began Friday night. The Defense bill funds the U.S. Space Force, and THUD funds the FAA and its Office of Commercial Space Transportation. Coupled with three others in the same package, 11 of the 12 FY2026 appropriations bills are now enacted. Only the Homeland Security bill, controversial because it funds ICE, remains in limbo under a two-week Continuing Resolution.

Six of the 12 FY2026 appropriations bills, including Commerce-Justice-Science that funds NASA and NOAA, were enacted in November and early January. A package for the remaining six, H.R. 7148, passed the Senate on Friday, January 30, hours before a Continuing Resolution (CR) expired at midnight.

Included in that package was Defense, Financial Services-General Government, Labor-HHS, State-Foreign Ops (called National Security-State Dept in the House), and Transportation-HUD (THUD). Not included was Homeland Security. Instead, with White House support the Senate passed a two-week CR for Homeland. The House was in recess last week, so funding for all of them lapsed over the weekend, causing a second partial government shutdown for those departments and agencies.

The House had passed all six earlier, but as three bills. Homeland was separated from the others because it funds Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is especially controversial. It passed the House by a narrow margin, 220-207. Hopes that incorporating it with the others would enhance the chances of Senate passage in order to avoid another shutdown were not realized following ICE’s killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on January 24. The Senate could reach agreement only on the other five. With White House support, the Senate substituted a 2-week CR for Homeland while leaving the other bills untouched. Because the Senate changed what the House passed, it had to go back to the House for agreement. Both chambers must agree to identical legislation.

That’s the vote that took place in the House today. Democratic opposition to any funding for ICE versus Republican support for ICE plus some opposition to the total amount of money in the package, made today’s vote a cliffhanger. In the end, it passed 217-214 with 21 Republicans and 21 Democrats voting no.

President Trump immediately signed the bill into law.

The THUD bill has $41.755 million for FAA/AST, slightly less than the $42.179 million requested. FAA/AST had $42.018 million in FY2025.

The U.S. Space Force gets $26.135 billion: $1.494 billion for Military Personnel (MilPers), $5.688 billion for Operations and Maintenance (O&M), $14.917 billion for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E), and $4.036 billion for procurement. The total is close to the $26.265 billion requested.

The Space Force received an additional $13.843 billion in the reconciliation bill (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, OBBBA). That brings its total FY2026 funding to $39.978 billion.