Tipsheet

Community Notes Has Now Gotten Involved as Republicans Fight Over NDAA Compromises

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  December 08, 2023 4:45 PM

A divided Congress is facing a spending battle, this time over the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The Republican-controlled House is facing issues of infighting, as conservative members raise issues with what came out of negotiations between the House and the Democratic-controlled Senate. Now, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has been caught by Community Notes trying to promote the bill.

A Thursday post from the speaker spoke to House Republicans' fight "to secure crucial wins in this year’s NDAA," which they did do. Chief among them included cultural priorities so as to not allow the Department of Defense (DOD) to make the military any more woke than it already is. In fact, Johnson's post noted that one of those "wins" is to "Weed out wokeness in the military by gutting DEI programs and banning CRT and drag shows."

Johnson's post is a repost from The House Armed Services Committees chaired by Mike Rogers (R-AL), with a statement urging their colleagues in both chambers to vote for the bill. Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA), Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-RI) and Ranking Member Roger Wicker (R-MS) have also signed on. 

"We would like to thank all the conferees for their hard work and contributions to this year’s bill. Through months of hard-fought and productive negotiations, we have crafted a bipartisan and bicameral conference report that strengthens our national security and supports our servicemembers," the statement read in part. "We urge Congress to pass the NDAA quickly and President Biden to sign it when it reaches his desk."

There's no mention of such priorities coming from the bipartisan lawmakers, with the NDAA being spoken about in such general terms. However, since a House version of the bill passed with such priorities, there's now a new version, which does not contain such wins.

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As the Community Notes points out in response to Johnson's celebratory post, "The final NDAA agreed upon by the House and Senate does not ban 'drag shows' or 'gender-affirming care.' Those provisions initially appeared in the House-passed NDAA, but after negotiations with the Senate, some House Republicans agreed to drop those provisions."

In addition to citing an article from The Hill, the context added comes from the House Armed Services Committee's own website. Beyond The Hill article cited by Community Notes, there's an even more foreboding headline from Reuters, reading "US lawmakers introduce sweeping defense bill, drop most 'culture war' issues."

In addition to woke provisions such as abortion, drag shows, and transgender surgeries, the current NDAA plan also fails to drop pornographic materias and gender ideology in schools. 

Johnson's post was also hit with 2,000 replies of users calling "BS," as well as over 100 quoted reposts, especially after Community Notes got involved. Many highlighted concerns with 702, a provision of FISA, including Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) has been a vocal opponent of this version of the NDAA, which includes sharing a graphic showing what's actually in the bill, and what's not. He's called this version "watered-down" and claimed it "was jammed through with no real conference."

The graphic highlights how the "compromise," in scare quotes, does not end taxpayer funded abortion travel, taxpayer funded gender transition surgeries, President Joe Biden's "radical climte agenda," ban "drag shows and drag queen story hours on DoD installations," prohibit "race-based admissions at military academies," or get rid of "Chief Diversity Officers," all which the House Republican bill did. It also has a weaker protection of servicemembers who were discharged for not getting the COVID-19 vaccine, and is weaker on accountability for funding Ukraine than what had been in the House Republican version. 

Since Thursday afternoon, Roy has posted the chart no less than four times from his X account.