Both versions of the defense authorization bill contained a requirement that the military rename the facilities named after the Confederate military leaders. While the provisions of the House and Senate bills are different, and will have to be reconciled, the inclusion in both bills makes it part of the final version of mandatory approval defense legislation that the Congress sends to Trump’s desk later. this year.
Provisions requiring base names to be changed (the Senate bill gives the Pentagon three years, while the House requires the task to be completed within a year) are another sign of the political change that followed. the national protests of police brutality and racial injustice after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
They are also an example where Trump’s popularity among Republicans is not always enough to get the Republican Party of Congress behind him, especially in an election year with a mandatory approval bill authorizing funding for the army and includes a raise for troops On Wednesday, the House voted 305-113 to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol, with 72 House Republicans joining Democrats in favor.
Trump has drawn a line in the sand against the shifting bases named for Confederate leaders like Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Lee in Virginia since Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Defense Secretary Mark Esper noted that they were open to the idea last month.
“We won two world wars, two world wars, beautiful world wars that were vicious and horrible, and we won them at Fort Bragg, we won at all of these fortresses that now want to drop those names,” Trump said in an interview Sunday with Chris Wallace of Fox News.
When asked about the military’s support for the name changes, Trump said, “I don’t care what the military says.”
While some Republicans agree with Trump, Republican leaders in Congress have not taken steps to try to remove the language from defense bills. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he supports the base name change.
“I have no problem with changing bases in the south that I didn’t even know were named after Confederate generals. I have no problem with that,” McConnell said in an interview with the Kentucky WDRB television station. this month. “The bill that we are about to pass in the Senate establishes a period to study the elimination of those names and their replacement by people who did not rebel against the country.”
Some Republicans sought to dilute the provision on the Senate floor. Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, offered an amendment that would have replaced the requirement with a commission to hold public hearings and provide recommendations after consulting with local communities, but it was not voted in the Senate.
“Here today, in the US Senate chamber, I have been told that we cannot even vote. We cannot even close the list on this,” Hawley said in the Senate chamber earlier this month. “No, we just have to swallow it and move on as the awakening cancellation culture progresses, revolutionizing our history and our traditions, and, yes, our best traditions as Americans.”
In the House, Democratic Rep. Anthony Brown of Maryland partnered with Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska to offer the provision requiring names of military installations to be changed after one year. A Republican surrogate proposal for the military to first study the issue was rejected, and the amendment was added to the House bill.
Now that the legislation has passed both houses, the leaders of the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate will draft the final version of the bill, which both houses will pass again.
That process is often the place where controversial measures passed by the House of Representatives or the Senate are weakened or removed entirely from the bill, but the fact that the requirement to rename facilities is in both bills. law means that they are unlikely to be removed.
Of course, a compromise may be found that will satisfy the White House and the leaders of Congress. Faced with calls to ban the Confederate flag from military installations, the Pentagon released a list of flags that can be displayed, acting as a de facto ban on the Confederate flag.
“We are confident that at the end of the day, the president and Congress will come to an agreement,” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman told reporters on Wednesday when asked about Trump’s threat of a veto on the name change. bases.
The timing for House Senate conference committee negotiations is fluid: if things move quickly, a final version of the bill could be ready in September, but could also slide until after the November election.
Senate Armed Services President Jim Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, has said he opposes the provision in the Senate bill that would change the name of the military facility. But he has downplayed Trump’s veto threat, saying there is a long way before the legislation reaches Trump’s desk.
“I wouldn’t veto something until I get to his desk,” Inhofe told reporters earlier this month. “That will probably happen sometime around November, so we have until now and November to make sure we get past the reason for his veto.”
Ted Barrett and Zachary Cohen of CNN contributed to this report.
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