The Senate voted on Wednesday to pass the $895 billion Defense Authorization Bill, despite a provision on transgender care that caused concern among some Democrats, sending it to President Biden\u2019s desk for final approval.<\/p>\n
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was approved 85 to 14 by senators, surpassing the 60 votes needed in the 100-member chamber. The bill moved forward even with the inclusion of a controversial measure that would ban certain gender-affirming care for transgender children of service members, The Hill\u00a0reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, for the 64th consecutive year, the Senate passes a bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act to protect the American people and strengthen our security,\u201d Senate Majority Leader\u00a0Chuck Schumer\u00a0(D-N.Y.) said in a floor speech ahead of the vote. \u201cThe NDAA is not perfect, but it still makes several important advances Democrats fought for to secure America\u2019s national defense and take a strong stand against the Chinese Communist Party.\u201d<\/p>\n
The measure, which establishes Defense Department policy and priorities for the year, passed the House last week 281-140.<\/p>\n
The must-pass legislation, which usually receives broad bipartisan support, faced opposition this time after Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) added last-minute language restricting the use of TRICARE funds \u2014 the health care program for active-duty service members \u2014 for gender-affirming care for children 18 and under of military members.<\/p>\n
This change prompted a handful of Democrats to vote against the bill, including Sens. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), and Ed Markey (Mass.).<\/p>\n
But the fact that a transgender provision was included in a defense bill in the first place reinforces President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s choice of former Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the department. Hegseth has repeatedly said that transgenderism has no place in the U.S. military because gender-affirming care is ongoing and essentially makes trans troops non-deployable.<\/p>\n
Also, both Trump and Hegseth have said they want the Pentagon and the various U.S. military academies laser-focused on lethality and winning the nation\u2019s wars, not cultural and social issues that distract from producing such a force, especially as global threats from China and other nations grow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Senate voted on Wednesday to pass the $895 billion Defense Authorization Bill, despite a provision on transgender care that caused concern among some Democrats, sending it to President Biden\u2019s desk for final approval. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was approved 85 to 14 by senators, surpassing the 60 votes needed in the 100-member […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7730,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-daily-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7729"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7731,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7729\/revisions\/7731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}