Senate Republican pushes merit-based military promotions, targets Biden-era DEI policies

FIRST ON FOX: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has made it his priority to carve out “woke” policies from the Pentagon, and a Senate Republican is backing him up in Congress’ annual defense authorization bill. 

As the Senate moves forward with the perennial National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), one of the annual must-pass bills in Congress that authorizes eye-popping sums of taxpayer funding for the Pentagon, Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., scored a quiet win in Hegseth’s fight. 

Banks secured an amendment to the $1.15 trillion policy package that aims to reverse Biden-era diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies that seeped into hiring, communication and training at the Pentagon. 

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“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth are turning the Pentagon around by getting rid of the Biden-era DEI nonsense that hurt morale and took focus away from the mission,” Banks said in a statement.

“Our military should be focused on winning wars, not pushing political agendas,” he continued. “I’m proud to have fought for this amendment to reinforce these reforms.”

Banks’ amendment, first shared with Fox News Digital, includes three provisions targeting DEI practices at the Pentagon. 

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It would nix prioritizing diversity for active-duty warrant officers, active-duty officers and reserve officers seeking promotions and instead press promotion boards in their deliberations to focus on merit, qualifications and leadership.

Hegseth has pushed for the Pentagon to focus more on lethality and merit rather than diversity standards. 

“Real toxic leadership is endangering subordinates with low standards. Real toxic leadership is promoting people based on immutable characteristics or quotas instead of based on merit,” Hegseth said last year.

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Banks’ amendment would also repeal provisions that bar the Pentagon from banning the use of gender identifiers or personal pronouns in official communications, such as emails, in accordance with an executive order from President Donald Trump last year that said “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for Military Service.”

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The add-on to the NDAA would also shift focus from DEI training to instead emphasize instruction on military values, like honor, courage, commitment, integrity and excellence.