Military policies related to transgender service members, abortion and diversity could all be on the chopping block if Republicans take control of Congress and the White House in next month's election.
Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail have spent nearly four years decrying those policies as "woke" indoctrination in the military by the Biden administration and Democrats.
Now, as the presidential and congressional campaigns enter their final stretch before Nov. 5, GOP vows to undo wokeness are growing louder, drawing attention to what the election will mean for military personnel policies.
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"WE WILL NOT HAVE A WOKE MILITARY!" Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump posted on social media earlier this month alongside a video that glorified the abusive drill sergeant from the movie "Full Metal Jacket," which is widely recognized as a critique on the dehumanizing nature of the military, and derided current LGBTQ+ service members.
Complaints about wokeness have also been a common refrain from Republican candidates for the House and Senate.
"When the Biden administration prioritizes social agendas in our military, it demonstrates to all our enemies that military readiness is no longer a priority to the USA. Woke campaign talking points have no business in our armed services," Sam Brown, the Republican nominee for Senate in Nevada and an Army veteran, posted on social media in June in response to a Fox News article about the Pentagon's annual Pride Month ceremony.
Woke has become a malleable term for whatever policies Republicans disagree with, but with respect to the military, they most often apply it to policies meant to make the armed forces more welcoming to historically marginalized groups such as minorities, women and LGBTQ+ people.
The GOP platform for this election cycle, which Trump has taken credit for writing and which is posted on his campaign website as his main policy blueprint, has few specific plans for military personnel policies should the party win, beyond pledging to "get woke Leftwing Democrats fired" from the military "as soon as possible."
But clues about what policies Republicans would target can be gleaned from their legislative efforts in recent years, policy maps for the next GOP administration that have been produced by conservative think tanks, and rhetoric on the campaign trail.
For example, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who is in a closer-than-expected race for reelection against Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, recently knocked his challenger for opposing anti-LGBTQ+ measures in the House-passed version of this year's annual defense policy bill.
"Just two weeks ago, Congressman Allred joined 100 radical Democrats in demanding that our military allow drag shows on military bases, pay for soldiers to have sex changes using taxpayer money, and pay for children to be sterilized and have sex changes on military bases," Cruz said at a debate against Allred, referring to Allred co-signing a letter from 162 House Democrats calling for anti-LGBTQ+ provisions to be removed from the defense bill during House-Senate negotiations on a compromise.
Tim Sheehy, a Navy SEAL veteran and the GOP Senate nominee in Montana who is on track to beat incumbent Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., released an ad early in the campaign cycle saying he was running to "get this woke crap out of our military." The ad specifically cited drag shows on military bases, which, by the time the ad was released in August 2023, the Pentagon had already banned after pressure from congressional Republicans.
Since Republicans took control of the House after the 2022 congressional elections, they have loaded early drafts of the annual defense policy and spending bills with provisions that would ban gender-affirming health care for transgender troops and transgender dependents, repeal the nearly two-year-old Pentagon policy covering travel and leave for service members seeking abortions, and eliminate all offices and jobs focused on promoting diversity.
With Democrats in control of the Senate and White House, those provisions have not had enough support to become law.
That could change if Republicans win big in November -- a prospect conservatives are counting on and liberals are dreading in equal measure.
"Ending DEI policies would be the first step toward reclaiming the military's integrity as an institution," Will Thibeau, director of the American Military Project at the conservative Claremont Institute who wrote a report earlier this year calling for an end to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, policies in the military, said in an email to Military.com. "The military must exist apart from the politics and ideologies of the civil society it is sworn to protect. The military, as it exists now, is not suited to compete in modern war, so our time is running out."
On the other side, Janessa Goldbeck, CEO of the left-leaning Vet Voice Foundation, said the organization is "deeply concerned" about Republicans rolling back policies on reproductive care and LGBTQ+ rights in the military should they win.
"I personally know at least one individual, a trans man, who was in the pipeline to serve, who, during that time, stepped out of the process," Goldbeck said of when Trump banned transgender military service in his first term. "Just felt unsafe serving with a commander in chief who had so vehemently declared that his service would not be welcome. And so this has a real downstream impact. And it's hard for me to see, especially for young women, how they would feel safe and comfortable with a commander in chief who doesn't believe in reproductive health care."
The presidential election is considered a toss-up in most polls and election prediction models, as is which party will win control of the House. Republicans are favored to win control of the Senate.
The abortion travel policy Republicans want to repeal was implemented by the Biden administration after the Supreme Court ruled in 2022 to allow states to ban the procedure. Since the military is legally barred from providing abortions in most cases and many major military bases are in states that have now banned or severely restricted abortion, Pentagon officials were concerned about the ruling's effect on retaining and recruiting female service members.
The policy does not cover the procedure, but allows service members to take administrative leave and be reimbursed for travel costs. It also is broader than just abortion, allowing service members to travel for other reproductive care not covered by the Pentagon, such as fertility treatments.
Limited data released by the Pentagon earlier this year showed few service members had used the policy and that costs to taxpayers were low. But Republicans have still been focused on repealing it, arguing that no taxpayers dollars should fund anything related to abortion.
Meanwhile, transgender service members have been on a roller-coaster ride since 2016. That year, then-President Barack Obama ended a ban on transgender troops serving openly.
A year later, Trump announced on social media that he was reimposing the ban on transgender service members. After some court battles, Trump's ban was implemented in 2019.
Then, days after taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden reversed Trump's ban, allowing transgender troops to serve openly once more. Republicans have introduced some legislation to bar open transgender military service yet again, but the provisions that have made it into drafts of large defense bills have more narrowly focused on restricting their health care.
On diversity, GOP targets have been more ill-defined, with Republicans leveling generalized accusations that the military has become too focused on diversity, equity and inclusion at the expense of training for war. Most diversity training in the military predates the Biden administration by decades and amounts to cursory efforts to abide by equal employment opportunity law.
The specific proposals Republicans have included in defense bills focus on shuttering any offices within the Pentagon and military branches devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion and firing the personnel who work in the offices. They have also sought to ban any training based on "critical race theory," which is an academic framework largely confined to graduate school classes that examines the intersection of law and racism.
Ending policies that allow transgender troops to serve in the military, facilitate access to abortions and promote the "Marxist indoctrination" of diversity is all called for in Project 2025, the blueprint for the next GOP president that was organized by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Trump has sought to disavow Project 2025, but it was written by people with close ties to him. The chapter on military policies was written by Chris Miller, who served as acting defense secretary in the final weeks of the Trump administration.
A separate, less-known blueprint for a GOP administration, called the America First Agenda, similarly alleges the Biden administration has "imposed 'woke' policies that have diverted focus from top threats while dividing and deterring America's service members" and calls for "eliminating divisive policies."
The agenda from the America First Policy Institute, which The New York Times reported this week is poised to be more influential for a potential second Trump administration than Project 2025, is less specific on which Pentagon policies to end, though it does call for rewriting the department's definition of extremism.
Thibeau, from the Claremont Institute, voiced some concern that pledges to end diversity programs will not be fulfilled since "there is often a veneer of action and policy proposals without real change."
Still, he said he is "hopeful" about Republicans successfully rolling back social policies in the military because "that is politically beneficial for Republicans, and the Trump campaign has consistently applied pressure on the issue throughout the campaign."
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