House conservatives mount last-ditch push to sink defense authorization bill 

Hard-line conservative Republicans in the House are mounting a last-ditch effort against the annual defense authorization bill that is set for a final vote this week.

They object to its exclusion of culture war measures and inclusion of a short-term extension of controversial warrantless surveillance powers in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

“To be very clear, if Republicans vote for this, they’re voting for a bill that will continue abortion tourism, will continue transgender surgery funding, will continue diversity-equity-inclusion funding … and you’re voting to extend FISA,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said. “Good luck going selling that to voters.”

Conservatives had packed the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with right-wing social priorities, including measures blocking a Pentagon policy that offers paid leave and travel reimbursement to members who travel to get abortions; blocking funding for gender-affirming medical care for transgender service members; and blocking funding for drag shows.

But the bicameral compromise version of the bill that emerged after negotiation with the Senate dropped those measures.

The House Armed Services Committee’s Republican leadership has argued that the NDAA compromise includes several measures to end “wokeness” in the military — including one that prohibits funds from being used to teach “critical race theory” and another prohibiting adverse action against service members because they refused a COVID-19 vaccine.

But those are not good enough for the conservatives, with Roy compiling and sharing on social media a list of measures that were not included in the NDAA.

Beyond the dispute over the socially conservative measures, the bill adds a four-month extension authorization of Section 702 of FISA — which allows for warrantless surveillance of foreigners abroad but sometimes sweeps up communications of Americans — past its current end-of-year expiration to April. 

Its inclusion is infuriating the conservatives pushing for reforms intended to protect privacy, particularly since Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had initially signaled that it would not be part of the NDAA. 

“A clean reauthorization is unacceptable in my view,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said.

The NDAA is expected to get a final passage vote in the House on Thursday after it cleared the Senate, making it one of the last major pieces of legislation in Congress for the year.

“It’s a piece of garbage, and it needs to be voted down,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) said of the NDAA on local radio station KSGF this week. 

But with the bill expected to get bipartisan support, it appears unlikely that the conservatives could rile up enough opposition to vote it down. The NDAA is also coming up under a fast-track suspension process, requiring two-thirds support for passage, that bypasses a procedural party-line rule vote that conservatives have used multiple times this year to sink legislation.

At the same time the conservatives are peeved about the FISA extension, the House GOP is divided over two competing proposals to address the spy powers from the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, with conservatives thwarting Johnson’s plan to bring up both resolutions under a special rule.

Johnson has defended the FISA extension.

“Having a short-term extension on the NDAA allows us the time to work not only in our own chamber, but [the] other chamber as well, to come forward with a compromise provision to not only keep us safe, but will also safeguard our civil liberties,” Johnson said of the FISA extension in a press conference Tuesday.

Also infuriating the Republicans opposed to the NDAA is the process under which the compromise was struck. They say that although House Republicans had authorized a conference committee to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the NDAA, the final agreement came out of a deal struck between party leaders, a process similar to years past that conservatives have tried to change.

“It might have been completely different coming out of conference committee,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.).

The House Freedom Caucus reportedly compared the process to the tactics of former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) — who they had helped to push out in 2015 — according to an internal memo reported by Axios.

“This is an obvious play to end-run conservative objections and pass liberal ‘woke’ military policy with the help of House Democrats — a page ripped from the Boehner playbook,” the memo reportedly said.

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), chairman-elect for the Freedom Caucus, argued that a brief lapse in FISA authority would help to create leverage to get the reforms they want. 

“We’ve got to be willing to risk an expiration of FISA in order to force those who don’t want reforms to negotiate for those reforms,” Good said.

Asked about the opposition to the NDAA from the Freedom Caucus members and their allies, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) brushed off his frequently critical GOP colleagues. 

“There is no piece of legislation that’s of consequence around here that they’re satisfied with unless they get 100 percent of what they will, period, end of story. And that’s not practical,” Rogers said.

“It just annoys me that they continue to think it’s all our way or nothing. We have a narrow majority in one chamber in the legislative branch of government,” Rogers said.

Biggs argued that the Freedom Caucus might be more willing to accept certain changes if the process was more open.

“If they want us to be more kind of, get along and cooperative, why would you cram a three-to-four-thousand-page NDAA bill [when] we had people on it that were assigned to a conference committee, but you don’t involve them in the conference committee, and you went to a four corners deal?” Biggs said.