Today, Explained - I want you! (to fight the culture war)

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

The defense bill is the latest piece of legislation to be weaponized by the far-right Freedom Caucus. It’s also the latest test for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Jon Ehrens, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard with help from Serena Solin, engineered by Patrick Boyd with help from Michael Raphael, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, the Senate is expected to vote on the National Defense Authorization Act. Her friends call her simply the defense bill. $866 billion for different parts of the U.S. military and other areas of national defense. Each year, this bill passes. This year, it's taken an interesting turn. When it was in the House, the Conservative Freedom Caucus added some amendments into the defense bill that are more about culture wars than actual wars. They're related to DEI initiatives, abortion, transgender rights. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said the following, should you not get it.

The military cannot defend themselves if you train them in work. Today on Today Explained, the war over defense spending. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM.

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She's been covering the defense bill, including this fight over the amendments. The top line is that the defense bill is the latest thing to be weaponized by Republicans as a vehicle for them to mount their culture wars. We don't want Disneyland to train our military. We want our men and women in the military to have every defense possible. And that's what our bill does. So to get into it a little bit more, the defense bill is typically bipartisan, but it recently passed the House on a mostly partisan vote because Republicans added a ton of controversial amendments

on issues like abortion, trans rights, and DE&I. What are the amendments? What's in this bill? The amendments focus on a couple hot-button social issues. So the first tries to roll back the Department of Defense's policy that pays for travel for abortion. And the logic that DOD has offered for that policy is that many service members have no say in where they get stationed. So if they have to travel for abortion for health care, the military will cover that cost. And a lot of Republicans have taken issue with that. This illegal Biden endorsed policy has no place in our military. Taxpayer money provided to DOD is intended to provide for our national defense and our national

security not to promote and support the Biden administration's radical and immoral pro-abortion agenda. The second amendment is one that really echoes a lot of what we're seeing across the country. It would prohibit the military from covering gender affirming care for trans service members including surgeries and hormone therapies. The question that must be asked is whether we're having trans individuals makes the United States a more lethal force and whether it helps recruit the best and most effective talent for the United States military. And the answer to that is a clear and resounding no. And the third eliminates the Pentagon's DE&I office and is again, you know, sort of an echo of a lot of what we've seen across the country in terms of

Republicans trying to attack these efforts in other states. The military's sole purpose is to provide for the defense of our nation. Our military's focus should be the protection of the American people and our freedoms, not liberals' feelings. So Congress votes on this every year. Does it become a controversy every year? It does not. So typically it is bipartisan. If you look at the last couple of years, it's been an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote. You saw, I think, almost 100 Republicans almost every year joining with Democrats to pass recent NDAAs. But historically, you have seen Democrats also use it in this way in terms of it being a vehicle for partisan amendments, things and messages that they want to get across as well.

Like what? What have the Democrats done in the past. So in 2019, I believe you saw amendments saying things like, you know, DOD can't invest in any Trump properties or give money to Trump-affiliated businesses. And I think you also saw more amendments that were polarizing that year, including trying to end prisoners to Guantanamo Bay, which Republicans were against. The NDAA was a test for this new majority. It was a test of whether they could put their radicalism aside and work across the aisle to do what was right for the country. The Democrats, or should I say, many call themselves socialist Democrats, failed that test. In other years, you've also seen amendments related to student loans, for example, which is not as tangential, per se, to defense explicitly. The injection of partisan priorities has happened in the past. What's so different this time? Why is everybody saying this is unprecedented when you just seem to suggest this is actually very precedent?

Right, right. I do think Congress tends to kind of repeat some of these patterns. This year does feel unique in that a lot of these amendments are so extreme and were pushed by members of the far right contingent in-house Republicans. And so they feel particularly ideological and controversial. And I think that's why this year feels so different. Which House Republicans were pushing these amendments? So these were all a familiar cast of characters. Members of the House Freedom Caucus.

You had Matt Rosendale. Allowing this radical trans agenda to infiltrate our military will put our service members and my constituents in harm's way. Ronny Jackson. The days of the radical left ignoring the law and pushing their destructive social agenda in the military are done. And then you also had a slate of interesting amendments aimed at cutting off aid to Ukraine that were pushed forward by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz.

While our troops are not yet on the ground in Ukraine fighting to defend another country's border, most Americans fear that could soon be the case because they know Washington's bloodlust for war is an addiction that seems almost impossible to be undone. One of the common themes that you hear from a lot of these lawmakers is that the military should not be a way to talk about identity, to talk about diversity, to have any type of messaging that's not like we're solely focused on the national defense. Obviously, the counter argument to that is that discussions like this are integral to service members feeling included and feeling able to do their jobs.

On the Ukraine front, you hear a lot of arguments being like, The American taxpayer is underwriting all of the pensions for every single government official in Ukraine. And we don't do that for the people who put out our fires and protect our streets. What about moderate Republicans? There are some in the party presumably who don't want these amendments or who think like, guys, let's let's take it elsewhere. Right. Let's not do this in the defense bill. What are they saying? Right. Yeah. Yeah.

You actually had some moderate Republicans, very small, to to vote against the abortion amendment. And you also had people like Nancy Mace, who did vote for the amendment, but she was very upset about it. And she had some of the most colorful quotes, I would say, about this issue. She called it an asshole amendment. I did not like the idea of this amendment. These are not issues that I believe we should be voting on right now without some consideration of what we can do to protect women and show that we're pro-women. She said this is something that should be separate because it's an issue that should be considered separately. And it really shows how the party has fallen short on how they've

treated women. She talked about how they promised to do a lot, but they haven't really gotten much done on things like rape kits and child care and things like that. OK, so House Republicans are not entirely in agreement on this. What about the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy? Where is he in all this mess? So Kevin McCarthy has the ability to oversee the floor schedule. So the fact that he allowed these amendments to come to the floor really indicates his implicit support for them.

A military cannot defend themselves if you train them in woke. And when you look at the actual final vote totals, you have almost all Republicans voting in favor for all of these social issues. So even if you do have some grumbling amongst moderates, you don't have a lot actually ultimately voting against them. You have the party pretty aligned at the end of the day. And I think that is probably telling as well. And now it goes from the Republican-controlled House to the Democrat-controlled Senate, and then can it pass? It can't pass, right? Something will pass. I do think this is one of those things where I feel like Congress does this all the time, where you think there's too much tension. I would say the debt ceiling bill is a good example where they seem so far apart and then suddenly they're not far apart. So the Senate bill will be very different from the House bill and it will likely not include any of these

additional amendments. You know, Chuck Schumer has already said, We want both sides to have input, but neither side should derail the bill. We should avoid the chaos we saw last week in the House that greatly hindered their NDAA process. But eventually they have to go to what's known as a conference committee, which effectively reconciles the two measures. And in that process, theoretically, they come up with something that can pass both chambers. Okay, so it's a compromise at the end of the day. Yeah. Has the defense bill ever not passed before? It has not. So I think that's the other reason

maybe people are slightly less panicked. So Congress has had to pass a version of this since 1961. And it has shockingly managed to get it done every year. So this would be a real unprecedented move if it didn't pass this year. I'm very curious whether any U.S. military leaders have said, you know, we actually do need to be worried that we are messing with our ability to be prepared

if North Korea comes up over a hill. Are military leaders telling Congress at all, guys, stop it? Absolutely. I think we've heard, especially on the abortion provision, which has been brought up over and over again. Why is the new DOD policy on abortion critical to military readiness? I'm really glad you asked that question. No, I mean, I really am. One in five members of the

U.S. military are women, 20 percent. We're an all-volunteer force. Nobody's forcing you to sign up and go. People volunteer to go. And so what happens if you get assigned to a state like Alabama, which has a pretty restrictive abortion law in place, and you're concerned about your reproductive care? What do you do? Do you say no and get out? Well, some people may decide to do that. And what does that mean? That means we lose talent, important talent. And we're, again, an all-volunteer force. Recruiting is tough enough as it is with a very strong economy out there. We want to keep the people that we get, and we want to make sure that they can continue to serve.

So it can have an extremely, extremely significant impact on our recruiting and our retention. The importance of the NDAA is that it updates policies, it modifies programs, it might set up new programs. So a lot of that is important for the military to adapt over time. And that's an important thing that would be lost if you do see substantial delays to how this bill moves forward. That was Vox's Lizzo. Coming up after the break, we need to talk about Kevin. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend.

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I'm Jonathan Blitzer. I'm a staff writer with The New Yorker magazine. Am I reading right that you sort of specialize in Kevin McCarthy? I follow him insofar as anyone following politics right now has to be keyed into Kevin McCarthy. Way back in January, we did an episode about how Kevin McCarthy, in order to become the House Speaker, had to make a bunch of promises to Republicans. How has that been unfolding in the last six, seven months? Well, in a way, what we're seeing is predictable. I mean, basically, for McCarthy to secure the speakership, he had to bring on board a number of far-right conservatives from a group called the Freedom Caucus. Look at this. There's finger-pointing

going on. Matt Gaetz is pointing at McCarthy. A crowd is gathering around them. McCarthy obviously trying to implore Gaetz at this point to do something. And everyone sort of expected that if he were able to corral those votes, he'd obviously have to win them over by promising various things. And that when he did become speaker, if everything went to plan, he'd be in this bind almost from day one where he'd have to manage the entire conference, which obviously has a kind of relatively diverse group of members from moderates to far right conservatives, while also catering to this group of far right extremists who are extracting very specific sorts of concessions from him. And that's what we're seeing now with the defense bill.

Is that right? The House Freedom Caucus has inserted some culture war issues into the defense bill against the wishes of center-right Republicans who are like, let's just fund the military. And Kevin McCarthy sort of has to go along with them. Yes. And we saw this with the debt ceiling vote. We will see this again in the fall with various spending bills. This is going to be the dynamic that is at the center of the Republican conference for as long as this Congress is in power. Something I'm curious about. Earlier in the show, Vox's Lizzo told us the fact that McCarthy has allowed these amendments to come to the floor to her indicates that he implicitly supports them.

And we heard him say, you know, a military cannot defend themselves if you train them in woke. Are these amendments ones that Kevin McCarthy agrees with politically? I mean, that's an interesting question. And I don't know that we can ever get to the bottom of what he actually believes, which is sort of the main criticism of his exercise of power. That he doesn't seem to stand for any ideological issues per se, but rather is mainly interested in keeping the conference together, preserving his role at the top of the conference. And he clearly sees these issues maybe not as political winners per se because he is, I have to say, like quite a savvy follower of local races. He certainly understands that he's got moderate members who are going to be put in very uncomfortable positions based on these votes that are being forced by the Freedom Caucus. But at the same time, his main objective each and every time one of these issues comes up

is to get a bill through the House. And then once the bill is through the House, to kind of deal with the fallout later. And so, you know, insofar as his supporting these amendments means getting to the number 218, which is the majority required to move any of these bills through the House, he's willing to support them. Do the lawmakers themselves, the lawmakers like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who are pushing for these amendments, do they benefit in being combative with McCarthy? I think so. I mean, listen to how much we're talking about them. Marjorie Taylor Greene, MTG. Marjorie talking about them. Marjorie Taylor Greene, MTG. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie Taylor Greene. And some of that's just a function of the math, you know? And I don't mean that as a kind of a criticism of the media for following this. The bottom line is these guys are front and center. You have to kind of reckon with their power and their influence. The members of the Freedom Caucus and certain other uber conservative members in the House,

you know, one of the key things to understand about them, they come from deep red districts where there's really no appetite for them to compromise at all. So you have to think about how they're positioning themselves. They're trying to show their own constituents that they're willing to fight the good fight, that they're not willing to waver, that they're gonna speak truth to power. Today we took down the rule because we're frustrated at the way this place is operating.

We took a stand in January to end the era of the imperial speakership. In the Republican conference, speaking truth to power means challenging Republican leadership and showing that you're willing to sort of fight the leadership to the last for the issues that you care about. And so the fact that at the end of the day, they may not get what they want politically, you know, in terms of policy, I don't think is a problem for them. The issue for them is to show

that they're fighting. And for as long as the fight lasts, they're front and center, and we frankly can't look away. Okay, so if the defense bill passes without the amendments, as we hear it's likely to, it's not necessarily a big loss or an embarrassment for the Republicans who pushed for them. I think their anger is real when these measures don't make it into final bills. I think we saw that a bit with the debt ceiling fight. Freedom Caucus members seemed very much to be guiding that process. I mean, the bill that emerged from the House to set the stage for the debt ceiling negotiations was written by the Freedom Caucus, which was an astonishing turn of events. And yet McCarthy, the final deal he negotiated, excluded a lot of key priorities that Freedom

Caucus members had. The Biden McCarthy deal has been dubbed the Fiscal Responsibility Act. But in truth, there's nothing responsible about it. Make no mistake, this is the Fiscal Irresponsibility Act. They were angry and they remain angry. And I think that is kind of just further fuel for the fire of their continued fights. So what does that mean for Kevin McCarthy? Does that mean his leadership is still tenuous?

Yeah, I mean, McCarthy is always on the knife's edge. And everyone knew this from the beginning. I mean, the second that the November midterms from 2022 came in, and we saw the results, and we saw how attenuated the Republican majority was. The GOP's divisions are now on full display, after Democrats won control of the Senate in a midterm election that didn't produce a predicted red wave. McCarthy is really between a rock and a hard place all the time. He is just fighting to stay in his position, to keep his conference together. He is not going to have a stress-free moment in his entire tenure as Speaker. And you said the next fight is spending bills. Tell us what's going to happen there. What do

we expect? I mean, I think it looks pretty likely that there will be a government shutdown sometime in the fall, because the same dynamic we saw with the debt ceiling fight is going to play out now with one key difference, which was that, you know, Republicans in the Freedom Caucus with the debt ceiling fight definitely pushed the conversation in a more conservative direction. And so leadership did take as a starting position some kind of ideas that were shaped by the Freedom Caucus. When that final deal was reached and a bill was passed and the president signed it, the Freedom Caucus responded by saying, you know what, we're going to keep fighting. We were so unhappy with the outcome here.

McCarthy made too many concessions. This deal fails, fails completely. And that's why these members and others will be absolutely opposed to the deal. And we will do everything in our power to stop it. And so now the Freedom Caucus is pushing for further spending cuts that go beyond those agreed in the debt ceiling negotiations. And so you're going to see that dynamic play out again. And now that there is a budget on the line, the inability to pass one is very likely going to result in the shutdown of the government. John, who would benefit from a shutdown. I think it's a catastrophic outcome. I think, though, that by the logic of members of the Freedom Caucus, that isn't necessarily defeat and might even be a victory. I mean, from their point of view, they don't believe that a government running in the

way that it runs is effective, and they want to do anything they can to stop it. And so in a way, if the government shuts down, they get to flex their muscles. They get to demonstrate how central they've become in these legislative processes. Politically, I mean, certainly it hurts the party. I think polling from past years suggests that when one party controls Congress, as the Republicans currently do it, at least in the House, it reflects negatively on them. Voters fault them for the general dysfunction. And yet, I don't think that's going to persuade any members of the Freedom Caucus to change course, again, because their constituents are happy to see them fighting the good fight. Let me ask you lastly about something that we assume will make some news this week. Kevin McCarthy might hold a vote on expunging former President Trump's impeachments from the congressional record. Now, he hasn't committed to it, but this is something that centrist Republicans,

many of them, say they're going to oppose. Why would McCarthy hold that vote? This has been a fascinating dynamic from the beginning of the rise of Trump, which was that McCarthy really bet early on Trump and ever since has chained himself to Trump. And he has had to, lately, in a kind of concession to a certain pocket of conservatives in his conference, a core group of moderates, indicated that he didn't necessarily think that Trump was the ideal candidate in 2024. He said that basically as tepidly as he could. Can he win that election? Yeah, he can. You think he can? The question is, is he the strongest to win the election? I don't know that answer. But, you know, he's scared to stick his neck out saying things definitively when it comes to Trump.

He said that. Trump and Trump allies heard it. They were incensed. And then they went back to McCarthy and tried to turn the screws. And so this, from what I can tell, is McCarthy trying to kind of reposition himself and get back in Trump's good graces. He needs Trump. For him to keep the conference together, Trump acolytes are crucial to McCarthy's support and to keeping him kind of in this position as speaker. He's kind of constantly got to come back to Trump and keep

Trump on good footing in order for him to stay in his role. And Trump was central in getting some votes to go McCarthy's way during the speakership race. So, you know, he's kind of always in this balancing act. Today's show was produced by John Ahrens and Miles Bryan. It was edited by Amin El-Sadi and fact-checked by Serena Solon and Laura Bullard. It was engineered by Patrick Boyd. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.