HRC Article:
WASHINGTON — Last night, President Biden signed the FY25 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law, which includes a provision inserted by Speaker Mike Johnson blocking healthcare for the transgender children of military servicemembers. This provision, the first anti-LGBTQ+ federal law enacted since the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, will rip medically necessary care from the transgender children of thousands of military families – families who make incredible sacrifices in defense of the country each and every day. The last anti-LGBTQ+ federal law that explicitly targeted military servicemembers was Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which went into effect in 1994.
Biden’s press release:
No service member should have to decide between their family’s health care access and their call to serve our Nation.
I’m lost. He spoke against it, but signed it anyway. Did they give any rationalization for signing it?
Most of the replies here aren’t giving you a solid answer, though @finitebanjo@lemmy.world was close—so sorry about that.
At one point, the bill text included anti-refugee, anti-CRT, and other controversial provisions that Republicans added, but those were fortunately removed.
However, the anti-trans language was reportedly “slipped in” during the final stages and didn’t even appear in the bill summary. The bill itself has been described as “must pass,” which means it’s prioritized regardless of what’s in it.
Final takeaway: Bad actors in Congress added the language, and Biden didn’t care enough about trans rights to thoroughly review it.
Sources:
This wasn’t missed. Rights organizations were bringing it up well in advance of voting/signing, and 20-ish senators tried to strip it from the bill. It wasn’t a whoopsie.
didn’t say it was. it was an intentional manipulation of the law, as i wrote above.
If he didn’t sign it then families would have just gone without coverage and the military would be unfunded until Trump entered office and signed it regardless. In fact, handing it off to the next congress could result in an even worse bill.
Paraphrasing here, but “we need to spend money on the military otherwise we won’t be safe”
Except that doesn’t really hold up since they could have sent it back to be modified and voted on again anyways.
“if we need to do it, you can fuck off with this shit and do it right” should have been the official explanation of a veto.
No, not enough time to send it back and the R’s knew exactly what they were doing here.
Democrats are willing to go into a government shutdown rather than cave. Biden should have fought harder.
Actually, Biden signed the congressional budget 5 days ago averting Shutdown. Democrats don’t want shutdown, Republicans do.