Politics
Their approach to military funding is all about their addiction to igniting culture wars.
Kevin McCarthy speaks to reporters after the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act on Friday in Washington.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
In a bid to keep the fires of right-wing outrage burning, the GOP has made a recent habit of demonizing prominent small-c conservative institutions as irredeemably soft, leftist, and immoral. Their targets tend to be entities liable to ignite culture wars, including the NFL, Major League Baseball, Disney, Budweiser, and even capital-C conservative Chick-fil-A.
Each has developed policies or promotions that offered cursory nods to members of marginalized groups, and for this, they have all been punished.
Last week, the Republican Party landed its latest blow against a bastion of purported liberal decadence: … the U.S. military.
On Friday, in a nail-biter of a vote, House Republicans pushed through a version of the National Defense Authorization Act, an essential policy and spending bill that Congress passes every year, that would roll back support for women, transgender people, and people of color in the military. Those provisions drove all but four House Democrats to vote against the legislation, ending a long tradition of bipartisan support for the annual bill.
One key amendment championed by Republicans would end reimbursements for travel costs service members incur crossing state lines for abortion care. Two more would bar the military’s health care program from covering gender-affirming care for both transgender service members and any children enrolled in a program for military family members. Others would eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion offices in the military and defund related programs.
The legislation is the latest maneuver in a battle the right has been waging for years against the military for taking steps to address the threats of racist extremism and support LGBTQ+ service members. Republicans maintain that the military is being eaten from within by so-called wokeness, a term they use to describe any efforts they perceive as a threat to white male power.
The elements of the military that have provoked fresh anger from the right are diverse, ranging from broad personnel policies to one-off videos or academic courses. Conservatives bemoan the renaming of military bases that bore the names of Confederate officers; they mock the Air Force for designing flight suits that can accommodate pregnant aviators. At a 2021 hearing, Republican Rep. Mike Waltz raised the alarm about a guest lecturer at West Point who used the phrase “white rage” in a presentation. Sen. Ted Cruz has criticized the nation’s “woke, emasculated military” for producing a recruiting ad about a woman who was raised by two mothers and grew up to join the Army.
In 2022, Sens. Marco Rubio and Chip Roy issued a report titled “Woke Warfighters” that argued for a ban on transgender service members because “these people are more prone to mental breakdowns.”
And earlier this year, Republican Rep. Cory Mills claimed that “woke ideology” has been hampering military recruitment. “When I talk to people and say, ‘Well, why aren’t you looking to join the military?’ A lot of them say, ‘Well, the military has been over-politicized.’ ‘Well, the military has gone woke,’ ” he said. Mills pressed the military leaders assembled on why service members have been subjected to something he called “pronoun training.” (In actuality, the Air Force “does not have pronoun training,” Air Force Chief Master Sgt. JoAnne Bass responded. Perhaps it should!)
But even when Republicans have denounced things that do exist—such as positions dedicated to fostering racial inclusion—most military leaders have not backed down. Their reasoning has been simple: To attract the best personnel and equip service members to do their best work, they have to provide adequate health care, recruit people from all demographic groups, and address the needs of those who have disproportionately faced discrimination and harassment in the military.
Furthermore, at a 2021 congressional hearing, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended West Point’s “white rage” presentation as a way to gain “situational understanding about the country we are here to defend.” For instance, he said, a course on white rage could help future officers get a better handle on what gave rise to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
It’s not hard to see why Republican officials and military leaders differ in their takes on these policies and programs. A legislator invested in harnessing white rage for political gains does not see white rage as a problem to solved. A politician who claims to believe abortion is tantamount to murder must treat soldiers seeking abortions as murderers-in-waiting. A right-wing commentator who smears trans people for profit sees a handy target in transgender officers. The very idea of women in the military is an easy joke for conservatives whose gender politics have somehow only regressed since the era of G.I. Jane.
But that’s not the whole story. Even as social progress has marched on in other arenas, the military has been a reliable stronghold for discrimination. Rates of sexual assault are alarmingly high—in one recent year, 13.4 percent of women in the Marines suffered unwanted sexual contact. In a 2020 poll, more than one-third of active-duty troops, including more than half of troops of color, said they had witnessed signs of white nationalism or racist ideology within their ranks. Openly gay people couldn’t even serve in the armed forces until 2011, more than a decade after public opinion shifted against “don’t ask, don’t tell.” In the military, conformity is enforced with great rigor, which has historically led to contempt and cruelty toward anyone who doesn’t fit the dominant mold.
The GOP is committed to nurturing just this type of environment in the rest of the country: downplaying the incidence of sexual assault and minimizing associated punishments; rewarding racial violence and allowing white nationalism to fester; demonizing LGBTQ+ people as dangerous perverts; promoting authoritarian rule.
Through that lens, the recent developments in the military feel like an especially formidable threat. To see this particular institution, which has been obsessively celebrated by the right for generations, taking steps to do better by groups it has traditionally alienated, even for the purpose of strengthening America’s defense, is demoralizing. It also gives greater weight to their public outrage. If the government is doing this stuff in the military, of all places, imagine what it’s doing in the schools!
The fact that modern warfare sees far less of the action-hero warrior mode fetishized by the right only adds to the sense that manly men are losing their exclusive hold on power. This feeds into a broader goal of contemporary conservatives: inciting panic over the declining cultural currency of white masculinity—and sowing distrust in all public institutions—so that voting Republicans, in their fear and rage, will beg for a strongman to step in and set things straight.
The version of the NDAA passed by the House will not make it through the Senate, where Democrats have the majority. But the bill must pass in some form. And even draft legislation is a statement of values—that’s why legislators go through the motions of passing bills in one chamber that will never make it through the other.
The values set forth by House Republicans last week reveal the void at the heart of the right wing’s purported support for American troops. They would force women who serve in the military to experience unwanted childbirth, with all the physical demands and risk of injury that presents, rather than assist them in seeking wanted abortion care—because women are more valuable as fetal incubators than as service members.
They think people of color are less capable of distinguished military service, such that promoting diversity in the ranks of the armed forces is akin to weakening America’s defenses. “The military was never intended to be inclusive. Its strength is not its diversity. Its strength is its standards,” said GOP Rep. Eli Crane last week, before referring to people of color as “colored people.” (He later said he “misspoke.”)
And Republicans harbor such disgust for transgender troops—including those who capably served for years before transitioning—that they eagerly disparage them as unstable and unreliable weak links in the military who pose a threat to the safety and comfort of cisgender women in places like shower facilities.
Imagine being a person of color in the military, or a woman, or trans, or some combination of the three, and internalizing this message from one of the two parties who hold power over your professional life—and, in the case of health care, important aspects of your personal one. When Republicans have argued against diversity trainings and allowing LGBTQ+ people in the armed forces, they have emphasized the importance of unit cohesion to military success. They have said that making white people feel racist, convincing people of color that they are victims of racism, or forcing cisgender soldiers to bunk next to trans people will deplete morale. It’s always been a disingenuous, concern-trolling argument. It’s even more laughable upon the passing of this bill, which will deplete morale as its sole accomplishment.
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