It’s no secret that House Republicans took a bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act, loaded it up with culture war priorities, and turned the package into a far-right wish list. What’s less well known is the full list of changes GOP members approved.
As we discussed last week, the House-approved version of the NDAA limits abortion access for servicemembers, ends diversity training in the military, curtails transgender care, prohibits work on combatting climate change, and even restricts what Defense Department schools can teach.
But that’s not all it does. The Military Times reported on a detail that had gone largely overlooked.
A conservative Republican provision of the fiscal 2024 defense policy bill that would prohibit Defense Department personnel from communicating with an established civil rights group survived a contentious House vote Friday. The amendment, slipped into the House version of the defense authorization bill by Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, would forbid service members from contacting the Military Religious Freedom Foundation or its leadership. The legislation would also bar commanders from taking “any action or mak[ing] any decision as a result of any claim, objection or protest” made by the group “without the authority of the Secretary of Defense.”
For those unfamiliar with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the civil liberties group was created by Mikey Weinstein, a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate, a veteran, and an attorney who worked in the Reagan White House. He’s also an ardent proponent of the separation of church and state.
With this in mind, Weinstein’s organization works to keep the military religiously neutral, preventing proselytizing, and routinely drawing the ire of the far-right. (The late TV preacher Pat Robertson famously condemned Weinstein as “a little Jewish radical.”)
As the Military Times’ report noted, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has kept busy in pursuit of its goals: “The nonprofit claims to have served around 84,000 service members over the course of its 18-year history, defending its clients from unwanted proselytizing and scrubbing DoD installations clean of religious symbolism.” To that end, House Republicans settled on a new plan: If American servicemen and women have concerns about religious liberty, they would no longer be permitted to contact the Military Religious Freedom Foundation — whether their concerns have merit or not. What’s more, if the Military Religious Freedom Foundation brought a legal problem to the attention of a military leader, commanders would have no choice but to ignore the issue without the direct approval of the Defense secretary, who presumably has other things to do. The Senate’s version of the NDAA has not yet passed, but once it does, there will be a conference committee to reconcile the competing versions of the legislation. Whether the final bill will include restrictions on troops interacting with a civil liberties group remains to be seen.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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