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Republicans on Friday rammed through the House a deeply partisan defense bill that would limit abortion access, transgender care and diversity training for military personnel, setting up a showdown in the Senate that could imperil the crucial annual measure to provide a pay raise for troops, set defense policy to counter U.S. adversaries and sustain Pentagon programs at a time of rising threats.
The House passed the measure on a vote of 219 to 210 with nearly unanimous Republican support, a significant victory for the far-right faction that forced a reluctant Speaker Kevin McCarthy to open the bill to an array of social policy prescriptions by threatening to block it if they did not get their way. But the move left the fate of the measure deeply in doubt, advancing a bill that has little chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate and raising questions about whether a compromise can be reached that could be enacted into law this fall.
And the outcome suggested even more intense battles ahead on Capitol Hill to avert a government shutdown. Mr. McCarthy’s capitulation to the right, despite knowing it could cost him critical Democratic support for the must-pass bill, was a gamble that could become a playbook for the coming fight over federal spending, where hard-liners are pressing to impose similar socially conservative policies governmentwide.
Some Republicans, particularly those in competitive districts, could also pay a political price for embracing legislation that would restrict the rights of women and transgender people and downplay problems of racism in the military. Democrats were already attacking them for having done so, highlighting the measure as a prime example of their argument that the Republican Party is extreme and out of step with the values of mainstream voters.
In the shorter term, the addition of partisan policy requirements is expected to drastically complicate the usually bipartisan process of negotiating a final defense bill in Congress. Senators are expected to vote this month on a competing version of the defense bill, setting up what promises to be a difficult set of talks as the two chambers hash out their differences. Congress has not failed to agree on and produce an annual defense bill in six decades.
On Friday, ultraconservative House Republicans warned they were in no mood to accept a compromise with the Senate.
“We are not going to relent, we are not going to back down, we’re not going to give up on the cause that is righteous,” Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania and the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, told reporters. He said his members were “going to use every single tool at our disposal” to defend the socially conservative changes to the bill, calling them “a huge victory.”
“What we’re not willing to do is just look for bipartisanship or look to compromise our principles to get their vote,” he added.
Democrats denounced the bill, accusing Republican leaders of having turned what began as a bipartisan measure into a hyper-politicized salvo in a wider culture war to please a small, right-wing faction of their party. They warned that the changes would alienate women, transgender people and minorities from enlisting, worsening recruiting challenges and compromising the military’s ability to defend the country.
“Whether you’re talking about women, whether you’re talking about trans people, whether you’re talking about people of color — this bill says that we’re going to make it more difficult for you to get a fair shake in the military,” Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said on the floor on Friday morning. “We are opposed to this bill because it is our firm belief that it will undermine our ability to meet the national security objectives of this country.”
At stake was an $886 billion bill that would grant a 5.2 percent raise to military personnel, include programs to counter aggressive moves by China and Russia, and establish a special inspector general to oversee U.S. aid to Ukraine.
The Republican-led House, prodded by right-wing lawmakers, attached a provision to undo a Pentagon policy that was adopted last year after the Supreme Court struck down abortion rights to provide time off and travel reimbursement to service members who must travel out of state to obtain an abortion. Hard-line members said on Friday that the measure demonstrated the House’s solidarity with Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, who has been blocking the promotions of all senior military generals and admirals — including the nominees to serve as Joint Chiefs of Staff — in protest over the policy. Mr. Tuberville has said, however, that he does not want to settle his dispute with the Pentagon in the defense bill.
Republicans also added measures prohibiting the military from offering health coverage for gender transition surgeries — which currently require a waiver — and related hormone therapies. They included language that would eliminate all diversity, equity and inclusion offices at the Pentagon, as well as the positions attached to them.
They adopted a measure barring the Pentagon’s educational arm from buying any book that contains pornographic material or “espouses radical gender ideology.” And with the help of nine Democrats, they approved an amendment that would prohibit Defense Department schools from teaching that the United States or its founding documents are racist.
Just before passage on Friday, the House also voted 218 to 210 to adopt a proposal by Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, to prevent the Defense Department from using affirmative action policies in admissions decisions at the military service academies. The House also voted 217 to 216 to block the Pentagon and the military from carrying out President Biden’s executive orders on climate change.
But while Mr. McCarthy and mainstream Republicans resisted the right-wing push to use the defense bill to pick fights on cultural issues, they ultimately sided with the most conservative members of their party, who argued that it was entirely appropriate.
“It is core and fundamental to defense that we stop making the Defense Department a social engineering experiment wrapped in a uniform,” Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas and one of the ultraconservative ringleaders, said on the floor on Thursday. “The American people I’ve talked to back home don’t want a weak military; they don’t want a woke military; they don’t want rainbow propaganda on bases; they don’t want to pay for troops’ sex changes.”
Nearly all Republicans voted for a measure to restrict funding for service members to travel to obtain abortions, which the House adopted 221 to 213, and for another denying transgender troops coverage for gender transition surgeries and hormone therapy, which passed 222 to 211. A measure by Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, that would eliminate all of the Pentagon’s diversity offices and employees eked through by a narrower margin, 214 to 213.
The House defeated a broader measure by Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, that would have prohibited the Pentagon from spending any money on diversity training whatsoever. That measure failed on a vote of 210 to 221.
The votes came amid a heated floor debate in which Republicans and Democrats feuded over issues of race, sex and gender. Representative Eli Crane, Republican of Arizona, at one point made a reference to “colored people” while defending his amendment to keep diversity training from becoming a condition for obtaining or keeping Defense Department jobs. Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, a Democrat who is Black, demanded that his comments be stricken from the record. Mr. Crane later said in a statement that he “misspoke.”
Later in the evening, Representative Jill N. Tokuda, Democrat of Hawaii, admonished her Republican colleagues for the tenor of the debate.
“From the backwards, racially insensitive comments spoken on this floor, it seems D.E.I. training would be good right here in the halls of Congress,” she said.
The one point of bipartisan consensus on Thursday, it seemed, was widespread opposition to Republican efforts to reduce or eliminate military assistance and weapons shipments for Ukraine.
On a vote of 276 to 147, the House rejected a proposal to ban the Biden administration from sending cluster munitions to Ukraine, with two lawmakers voting present. The administration announced last week that it would be sending the weapons to Kyiv, despite bipartisan concerns that they posed too great a danger to civilians.
The amendment was offered by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, who also failed in her effort to strip a $300 million program to train and equip Ukrainian soldiers that has been part of the defense bill for almost a decade. The House rejected that effort by a vote of 341 to 89, alongside a similar proposal by Mr. Gaetz to prohibit Congress from appropriating any more money for Ukraine’s war effort, which was defeated 358 to 70.
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