Documents › Signing statements › DCPD-202501207
Statement on signing legislation
Statement on Signing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026
Issued by Donald J. Trump on December 18, 2025, on signing S. 1071, and printed at DCPD-202501207. 946 words.
The President signed the yearly defense law. The statement names parts he reads as advice only. He says some of them limit his powers.
What It Says
Today, I have signed into law S. 1071, the "National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026" (the "Act"). The Act authorizes fiscal year appropriations for the Department of War (DoW), the Department of Energy national security programs, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Intelligence Community, and other executive departments and agencies. The Act will enable the DoW to carry out my Peace Through Strength agenda, protect the homeland from domestic and foreign threats, and strengthen the defense industrial base, while eliminating funding for wasteful and radical programs that undermine the warfighting ethos of our Nation's men and women in uniform. Importantly, the Act codifies aspects of over a dozen Executive Orders and actions taken by my Administration, including those focused on warfighter lethality, advancing homeland missile defense by fully…
Quoted from the opening of the statement as the Compilation prints it. The whole of it is one click away.
Where the Statement Reserves a Reading
Certain provisions of the Act, including sections 343, 1032–1035, 1048(d)(4)(B), 1266, 5143, and 8304(a), purport to dictate the position of the United States in external military and foreign affairs. My Administration will treat these provisions consistent with the President's constitutional authority as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and the President's constitutional authority to conduct the foreign affairs of the United States, which includes the authority to recognize foreign sovereigns.
This is the paragraph in which the statement names provisions of the law and says how the executive branch will treat them. It is quoted whole and in the statement's own words. Whether the reading holds is not settled here.
The Law It Names
- National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026Public Law 119-60 · S. 1071 · number from the Compilation's own note on the statement · held here
Every law this statement names is held here, and each entry above opens that law's own page.
The Note Printed With It
S. 1071, approved December 18, was assigned Public Law No. 119–60. An original was not available for verification of the content of this statement.
The Government Publishing Office prints this note beneath the statement in the Compilation, and it is carried here as printed.
- The statement itself
Donald J. Trump, “Statement on Signing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026,” December 18, 2025. Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents, DCPD-202501207.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/DCPD-202501207/html/DCPD-202501207.htm - This page
“Statement on Signing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026,” quoted from its opening. Read the Mandate, https://readthemandate.org/signing-statements/dcpd-202501207/ (retrieved August 27, 2026).
Cite the document when the claim is about what the document says. Cite this page when the indexing, the wording or the record of what has happened is what is being relied on.
What a Signing Statement Is
A signing statement is issued by the President on signing a bill into law. It says how the executive branch reads the law: which provisions it treats as binding, which it reads as advisory, and which it will apply consistent with the President's own constitutional authority. It is a reading of the law by the branch that will carry it out, and it is recorded here beside the law rather than in place of it.
These are United States government works and are not under copyright. This page quotes the statement rather than reproducing it, because an index is not a mirror.