Press News Agency
The fate of the annual defense bill was in doubt Friday, after Republicans loaded the legislation with a series of conservative social policy restrictions limiting access to abortions, gender transition procedures and diversity training for the military personnel, alienating Democrats whose votes Republican leaders had seen as critical to passing the law.
Democrats vowed to oppose the bill in a vote scheduled for Friday morning, accusing Republican leaders of turning what started as a bipartisan bill into a hyperpoliticized salvo into a broader culture war to please. to a small right-wing faction of his party...
The House of Representatives defeated a broader measure by Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, that would have barred the Pentagon from spending money on diversity training. That measure failed by a vote of 210 to 221.
The votes came amid a heated debate in which Republicans and Democrats feuded over issues of race, sex and gender. Rep. Eli Crane, Republican of Arizona, at one point made reference to “people of color” when defending his amendment to prevent diversity training from becoming a condition of getting or keeping Defense Department jobs. Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, a Democrat who is black, demanded that her comments be struck from the record, and Crane later said in a statement that she “misspoke.”
Later that night, Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, admonished her Republican colleagues for the tenor of the debate.
“From the backwards, racially insensitive comments being said on this floor, it sounds like DEI training would be good here in the halls of Congress,” she said...