Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Chip Roy recently introduced the Restoring Military Focus Act, identical bills in the House and Senate that will “eliminate the position of the Chief Diversity Officer of the Department of Defense [(DOD)].”
In a press release, Rep. Roy stated that the Pentagon “is not supposed to be a woke social engineering experiment wrapped in a uniform.”
The Restoring Military Focus Act, according to the press release, will “push back against the progressive agenda” by revising the FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA allocated funds for the DOD’s Chief Diversity Officer and the Senior Advisor for Diversity and Inclusion of each military department.
Rubio and Roy’s bills will eliminate these positions and prohibit their future funding.
“Not only are these positions a waste of hard-earned tax-payers dollars, but they also undermine and distract from the purpose of the U.S. military,” the press release says.
Sen. Rubio said that “[w]oke ideology has infected every aspect of American life and culture.” Initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and critical race theory (CRT), as Campus Reform has reported, are present in professional associations, major foundations, and even U.S. military academies.
Not all members of Congress, however, share the concerns of Rubio, Chip, and the bills’ co-sponsors over “woke” culture. Rep. Pat Ryan told Military.com that he has “zero time for the political distractions.”
Ryan is the Democratic congressman who represents the district that includes his alma mater, the U.S. Military Academy West Point. He plans to rejoin the House Armed Services Committee, according to Military.com, and suggested that Republicans sounding the alarm over critical race theory (CRT) in military academies is a distraction.
Other Republican leaders have pushed back against the politicization of the military academies and DOD-affiliated K-12 schools, including an investigation of the chief DEI officer for the DOD’s Education Activity.
The DEI officer tweeted that she is “exhausted by 99% of the white men in education and 95% of the white women.” Before she made her Twitter account private, as the New York Post reported, she described the “CAUdacity,” or caucasian audacity, of participants in a professional development session.
Campus Reform contacted all relevant parties for comment and will update this article accordingly.
Republished with permission from Campus Reform
