Crucial defense bill won't pass with controversial amendments, national security official warns

WASHINGTON — National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the Republican-controlled House’s version of the annual defense policy bill has zero chance of making it to President Joe Biden’s desk after Republicans added a litany of culture war amendments to the bill that “mix domestic social debates with the security needs of our nation.”

Sullivan on CNN’s “State of the Union” criticized what he called “an extreme group of Republicans” for pushing through several amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act, nixing multiple Pentagon policies House conservatives claim is wokeism in the armed services.

Sullivan said the NDAA “should be an area where politics stops and national security starts.”

House Republicans last week passed on a mostly party-line vote the annual defense bill, which sets the Pentagon’s policy agenda and authorizes how federal funding can be used. The bill is traditionally a bipartisan endeavor, but members from the House Freedom Caucus, a group of the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers, pressured House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., into allowing votes on amendments to the bill that ranged from undoing an abortion policy to restricting gender-affirming care for transgender service members.

McCarthy defended the legislation in a press conference last week hailing the bill’s passage.

“A military cannot defend themselves if you train them in woke,” McCarthy told reporters. “We want our men and women in the military to have every defense possible, and that’s what our bill does.”

The Senate is expected to soon pass its own version of the annual defense bill. Sullivan said he expects the House and Senate to be able to consolidate its differences and produce a bipartisan bill.

“After the Senate has come back together with the House, we will end up in a place where there is a broad bipartisan bill that can go to the president’s desk that he can sign,” Sullivan said.