The next battle in Congress: MAGAs go after National Defense Authorization Act

As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, Virginia Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan issued a statement which announces her opposition to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2024.

McClellan said the legislation is passed by Congress every year to fully fund the Department of Defense and the United States military. NDAA is “one of the most important pieces of legislation.” She was proud to support the baseline bill after more than 14 hours of markup in the committee, because it was a strong compromise that “supported America’s servicemembers and their families, invested in cutting-edge research and development, and protected our national security and military readiness.”

“Unfortunately, Speaker McCarthy caved to the demands of the most extreme contingent of his conference and allowed this historically bipartisan bill to be turned into a harmful hyper-partisan piece of legislation,” McClellan said. “Instead of focusing on the needs of our servicemembers and their families, extreme MAGA Republicans have turned the NDAA into yet another vehicle to wage their culture wars. They have pushed poison pill amendments that dismantle DEI initiatives, limit service members and their families’ access to reproductive health care, undermine the work to remove Confederate names from military bases, and restrict transgender servicemembers’ ability to receive gender-affirming care under TRICARE.”

McClellan said she cannot support the legislation “that will have profoundly detrimental impacts on hundreds of thousands of servicemembers and their families. They deserve better.”