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The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee suggested Congress should strip the latest version of its annual defense policy bill of a provision banning most transgender medical care for minors.
Representative Adam Smith, D-Washington, leads the Democrats on the committee that is intimately involved in crafting the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) each year. Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 edition was released during the weekend.
“For the 64th year in a row, Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees worked across the aisle to craft a defense bill that invests in America’s primary sources of strength: service members and their families, science and technology, modernization and a commitment to allies and partners,” Smith said in a statement Sunday night.
“However, the final text includes a provision that prohibits medical treatment for military dependents under the age of 18 who have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Broadly deny health care to people who clearly need it , just because of a biased notion against transgender people, is wrong.”
Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, is critical of this year’s NDAA. (Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images)
The 1,800-page, $895.2 billion legislation, which sets out US national security and defense priorities for the fiscal year, is the product of bipartisan negotiations in the House and Senate.
It included a measure that said “medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization cannot be provided to a person under the age of 18,” referring to the transgender children of US service members.
Smith said: “This provision injected a level of partisanship not traditionally seen in defense bills. President Johnson is pandering to the most extreme elements of his party to ensure that he retains his position of “Speaker. In doing so, he has reversed what had been a bipartisan process.”
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House Speaker Mike Johnson praised the NDAA for the very measures Smith criticizes. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“I urge the president to abandon this current effort and let the House introduce a bill that reflects the traditional bipartisan process, that supports our troops and their families, invests in innovation and modernization, and does not attack the transgender community “. Smith finished.
When reached for comment, Johnson’s office pointed to Fox News Digital in the speaker’s opening statement praising the NDAA compromise.
“This legislation includes provisions passed by the House to restore our focus on military lethality and to end the radical woke ideology being imposed on our military by permanently banning transgender medical treatment for minors and combating anti-Semitism,” Johnson said.
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The NDAA sets the priorities for US defense policy each year. (Sgt. Lexie West/US Air Force via AP)
The hesitation of defense hawks like Smith could call into question the passage of the entire NDAA.
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Legislation typically passes with broad bipartisan approval, with expected opposition from progressives and conservatives critical of the military industrial base and American interventionism, among other issues.
Their first test will come Monday afternoon, when the NDAA is debated before the House Rules Committee, the final hurdle before the legislation could see a vote in the full House.
If it doesn’t pass in committee, House leaders will likely be forced to send it to the House under suspension of the rules. That would forgo the rules panel’s approval in exchange for raising the threshold to go from a simple majority to two-thirds of the chamber.
