By Suzanne Bowdey
The Washington Stand
After a frustrating and bitterly divided year in Congress, one thing that will go down as a bright shining success for the GOP is the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). On Wednesday, the Senate voted to send the 1,800-page behemoth to President Joe Biden’s desk, where he will be forced to do something neither side ever thought possible: sign a bill protecting children from his radical transgender agenda.
It’s a stunning turn of events for both parties. For Republicans, the idea that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) could negotiate a deal that not only stopped taxpayer-funded gender transitions for military kids, but also erased the women in the draft provision and axed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts with his narrow majority still has insiders shaking their heads in amazement. On the flip side, it shows just how vulnerable Democrats are after the November elections — especially on the trans issue, which pollsters almost universally believe cost Kamala Harris the White House.
That’s not to say that some of Schumer’s extremists didn’t put up a fight. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) was furious at the policy change, threatening — for the first time in her career — to vote against the NDAA, “a position I do not take lightly,” she insisted. “It’s flat-out wrong,” she fumed on the Senate floor, arguing that taxpayers should be forced to fork over their hard-earned dollars for the butchery of children.
In a move that was mostly for show, Baldwin fought to add an amendment to the NDAA that would reinstate the language for taxpayer-funded gender surgeries and hormones. “Let’s be clear: we’re talking about parents who are in uniform serving our country who have earned the right to make the best decisions for their families,” Baldwin and 20 senators wrote. “I trust our servicemembers and their doctors to make the best healthcare decisions for their kids, not politicians.”
The amendment to remove the protections for minors was backed by Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey (Mass.), Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden (Ore.), Cory Booker and Andy Kim (N.J.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Alex Padilla (Calif.), John Fetterman (Pa.), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), John Hickenlooper (Colo.), and Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.).
FRC’s senior director for Government Affairs, Quena Gonzalez, dismissed the push as “rank political theater.” “The effort failed,” he pointed out to The Washington Stand, “because it was designed to fail. If the Democrats who run the Senate had really wanted to block protections for military kids from taxpayer-funded gender transition procedures, they could’ve done that before the bill was ever negotiated with the Republican-led House.”
Instead, he points out, “language to protect kids was included in the base House text and in the base Senate text, even before it was negotiated. So to complain now — and file an amendment that won’t get 60 votes and is therefore doomed to fail — is pure posturing. Why did they wait until now, when it’s too late to do anything meaningful?” Gonzalez wondered. “Maybe they knew they didn’t have the votes. Or maybe they understood that it’s a political loser, but feel they have to keep pandering to their hard-core radical base. Two House Democrats, Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) and Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), wasted no time blaming the Left’s extremism on the related ‘gender identity’ issue of boys being allowed in girls’ sports, restrooms, showers, and locker rooms, etc.”
Fortunately for the Democratic Party, Schumer wouldn’t allow his senators to press the issue. Rather than let his members take a politically damaging vote that puts them on the record for a policy that Americans are very much against, he quietly shelved the amendment, telling the press brightly, “The NDAA is now on a glide path to final passage.” Throwing a bone to his far-Left caucus, he added, “Of course, the NDAA is not perfect. It doesn’t have everything either side would like. … But of course, you need bipartisanship to get this through the finish line.”
To most observers, this is one of the biggest signs yet that the country is at a tipping point on extreme gender ideology. “The passage of this NDAA is a huge loss for the Left,” Gonzalez insists. “Democrats ran for president and for Congress in part by calling conservatives who stood up to the woke mob ‘transphobic.’ For the longest time, we Christians have been told that we’re ‘on the wrong side of history,’ but we are on the right side of truth. This should give Christians courage,” he underscored. “When we stand up univocally for truth, even when it’s not culturally popular, we stand for unchanging principles that will ultimately be vindicated by a much higher authority than Congress, the president, or the Supreme Court.”
By way of background, the speaker explained to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “This Week on the Hill,” that the NDAA is usually passed with broad bipartisan agreement — a rarity in a city that can barely agree on anything. This year, he said, “We had some unnecessary controversy. One of the things that we were really focused on is … return[ing] the emphasis of our national defense policy to national defense. And so, we really were on guard to make sure that a lot of the woke progressive agenda was not part of that policy prescription. And we prevailed in that.”
Jubilantly, Johnson pointed out, “We, for the first time in federal law, will be preventing [the funding of] trans surgeries on minors. … You know, there [are] about two million-plus children that are [in] military families that are insured by Tricare, which is the big federal insurer. And we wanted to make sure that those taxpayer-funded dollars don’t go in any way to the provision of any kind of ‘gender-affirming care,’ as they call it. That would do dramatic harm — permanent harm — to these young people.”
Asked what it says about the Democratic Party that they’d pursue this cultural obsession at the expense of our military, the speaker could only shake his head. “I wish I could tell you,” he said. “I think that there [are] some on the Left [who] want to use every institution of the government to advance their woke progressive socialist policies [and] experiments, [hoping for] the transformational kind of change that they always brag about that they want to hoist upon America. But I can tell you what this election cycle affirmed for us, and that is that the American people are not having that. I mean, I think that’s one of the large reasons why President Donald J. Trump got reelected with the large mandate he has and why we won control of the Senate and the House for the Republican Party, because we’re advancing common-sense ideas. These traditional ideas that have made our country what it is are still held by the American people.”
At the end of the day, Johnson believes, “We’re still a center-Right country — in spite of what they’ve been trying to convince us of for the last several years, that we’ve gone progressive Left. We have not. And the American people demand common sense. They demand and desire and certainly need a military that is focused on lethality and protecting our national interest.”
Now, he celebrated, “This experimental, non-scientific nonsense that’s been going on everywhere will no longer be a part of the federal health care of our military servicemembers. So that was a big win. And we did a lot of other things as well,” he wanted people to know. “We’re trying to root out the DEI education nonsense in the military academies. And it goes on and on. But in addition to all of that, we also included the largest pay increase in many years for active-duty service members, enlisted members, a little over 14% pay raise. And that’s desperately needed. And we also added a lot of things to help with the quality of life for those who put on the uniform to serve our country, their families, and those related to them. So a lot of great, great winsin this policy, and we’re really excited that it got over the line.”
Originally published at The Washington Stand!
