Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy took aim at diversity “wokeism” in the armed forces with a bill introduced Thursday, dubbed the Military Refocus Act, that would eliminate top diversity officers in the Pentagon.
“The Department of Defense’s top priority should be to develop our men and women in the Armed Forces into a united, lethal, and battle-ready force primed to defend the United States’ interests at a moment’s notice,” Roy said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Instead, the Defense Department has allocated tax-payer dollars to support Chief Diversity Officers tasked to establish ‘training in diversity dynamics’ and ‘evaluations and assessments of diversity.’”
Text of the legislation, first provided to the Washington Examiner, specifically eliminates the Department of Defense’s Chief Diversity Officer, a position appointed by the defense secretary, as well as the positions of senior advisers for diversity and inclusion, positions appointed by each secretary of the military in each department. It would also prohibit the use of federal funds to establish those roles.
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“We need to stop the politicization of the Department of Defense and keep our Armed Forces focused on their goal of defending our national security,” Roy said, adding that the bill is an “important and necessary step to push back against the progressive agenda at the Department of Defense.”
Cyrus Salazar is the current chief diversity officer in the Department of Defense’s Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, whose position is one of many that would be eliminated by the bill.
But Republican concerns about “woke” teachings and practices in the military pushed under the guise of “diversity and inclusion” do not stop there. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has pledged to build “diversity, equity, and inclusion into all aspects of our work and in everything we do” and appointed Bishop Garrison to a special new role tasked with stamping out “extremism” in the military.
A viral Army recruitment ad that featured a lesbian wedding added to that concern, as did a speech from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley during a congressional hearing last month in which Milley defended the validity of wanting to “understand white rage.”
Indiana Rep. Jim Banks last month got in a heated exchange with Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, over his “professional reading program” reading list that included Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist. Other members of Congress have also raised objections to Gilday’s recommendation.
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Austin said on Wednesday that the military does not embrace critical race theory, which started as an academic framework for examining racism and has become a descriptor for teachings and policies that frame individuals and society through the lens of race and oppressors.
