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New Democratic Congress will likely strip the gilding from Trump's Golden Dome
“There’s no doubt that whatever it’s going to be called, it won’t be called Golden Dome.”
Two of the top lawmakers backing the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense shield are among the wave of Republicans leaving Congress in the coming Democratic takeover, raising questions about the future of President Donald Trump’s signature second-term defense initiative.
The shakeup on Capitol Hill comes after military officials signaled in recent months that they might backpedal from one element Trump asked for in Golden Dome: the capability to shoot down missiles in their initial boost phase shortly after launch.
The Golden Dome has escaped serious congressional scrutiny since Trump announced the program in January 2025, one week into his second term in the White House. That lack of scrutiny will change as Democrats take responsibility for writing the Pentagon’s budget, introduce limits on funding, and put forth bills to strip out Golden Dome’s most controversial component and give the program a new name.
That’s the opinion of a half-dozen current and former officials in industry and government. Ars spoke with sources before and after last week’s congressional elections to get a sense of how a new Democratic Congress might make its imprint on missile defense.
It’s important to know that much of what the Trump administration calls “Golden Dome” was already in development (or in some cases, operational) when Trump signed the executive order outlining the initiative 22 months ago. Trump’s order created a new program to consolidate the Pentagon’s existing missile defense efforts, accelerate work already underway on new Ground-Based Interceptors (GBIs), and deploy a new layer of orbiting sensors and Space-Based Interceptors (SBIs) to defend the US homeland against both traditional ballistic missiles and new emerging threats like drones and hypersonic weapons.
The Golden Dome was immediately politicized. The first tranche of its funding—approximately $24 billion—was part of Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” along with some of the White House’s other contentious policy priorities. The bill passed Congress on a party-line vote. This meant the budget for Golden Dome was not part of the normal military budgeting process in Congress, which usually involves both parties. Instead, it passed Congress through a controversial shortcut known as reconciliation.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said in a September hearing that the White House’s decision to link Golden Dome’s first tranche of funding to a partisan reconciliation bill was unnecessary. “This should have been on a bipartisan basis,” Rounds said. Indeed, Capitol Hill Republicans refused the Trump administration’s effort to add $350 billion to the Pentagon’s budget this year through a similar reconciliation mechanism.
Lawmakers also formed an all-Republican “Golden Dome Caucus” soon after the unveiling of Golden Dome. Seven House members of the caucus either lost their reelection bids or did not run for reelection at all in the 2026 midterms. These include the caucus’s co-chair, Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colo.), and the chair of the House subcommittee overseeing Golden Dome, Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.). Both are among the Golden Dome’s biggest cheerleaders in Congress.
The Democratic ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Rep. Scott Moulton (D-Mass.), is retiring from Congress. That leaves Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) as the next-senior Democrat on the subcommittee, with a path to becoming chairman when the new Congress convenes in January. In remarks earlier this year, he called Golden Dome a “massive, extraordinarily expensive, and ultimately inadequate defensive system.”