Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee are touting provisions to the annual defense spending bill that would remove several left-wing policies and initiatives, according to a memo on the bill’s provisions obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Armed Services Committee passed on May 22 the draft of the National Defense Authorization Act, an $883 billion bill to set the Department of Defense’s 2025 spending budget. The memo touted several new provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act draft, including barring the Biden administration’s Pentagon from implementing or maintaining diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and climate change programs in the military.
The National Defense Authorization Act would bar the Defense Department from running committees or programs responsible for helping implement DEI policies at Department of Defense Education Activity schools worldwide. Pentagon internal documents previously obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation outlined millions in budget allocations from the Biden administration for DEI infinitives at DODEA schools.
“The FY25 NDAA builds upon our efforts last year to restore the focus of our military on lethality,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “By requiring merit-based promotions, ending affirmative action at service academies, and prohibiting climate change nonsense, the FY25 NDAA makes it clear that the military is no place for President Joe Biden’s far-left politics.”
The document promoted a provision in the House Armed Services Committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act that would require the Department of Defense to make all promotional and command decisions based on “individual merit and demonstrated performance, rather than political affiliation, race, sex, ethnicity, or religion.”
In doing so, the bill would also end affirmative action programs at service academies, including the Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy, and West Point, which would be consistent with the Supreme Court’s ruling that high academic institutions cannot factor race into admission selections.
The National Defense Authorization Act would also ban the implementation of any new climate change policies in the military, including Defense Department policies to pursue defense operations with “lower climate impacts” or implement greenhouse gas regulations on military initiatives. The bill would further require the Pentagon to release a report on how strict climate rules hinder the military’s capabilities and increase defense costs on the taxpayer’s dime.
The memo notes that the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act will build on the accomplishments from the 2024 version of the bill, including provisions that halted the Pentagon’s DEI hiring program and capped out the pay of existing DEI hires, and prohibited funding for the Pentagon’s counterextremism program that targeted what it defined as “extremist” ideologies, a program that has found little evidence of such extremism and may have created feelings of alienation with the military.
The National Defense Authorization Act draft, having passed the House Armed Services Committee last week, now moves to the full House for consideration and vote. Members will have the ability to suggest and make alterations before it is passed to the Senate, where upper chamber members will vote on whether to pass it for Biden’s signature.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
