Congressional Democrats have found themselves in a pickle after Republicans inserted language into an $895 billion defense bill that aims to ban transgender procedures for minors under the government’s military health insurance program. 

The singular provision —  in the more than 1,800 pages of the National Defense Authorization Act — would prohibit coverage for transgender medical treatment for minors under Tricare if those procedures could “result in sterilization.”

If Democrats vote against the bill, they’re opposing a slew of landmark investments for military housing, healthcare, childcare, and troop pay increases, including 14.5 pay bumps for junior service members. If they vote for it, however, they could face the wrath of their own party and hundreds of civil rights groups that have called on lawmakers to vote against the bill, calling it “damaging and dehumanizing.”

“We stopped funds from going to CRT in our military academies, we banned Tricare from prescribing treatments that would ultimately sterilize our kids, and we gutted the DEI bureaucracy,” Mr. Johnson said of the bill on Tuesday. “And because we believe in peace through strength, we blocked the Biden administration’s plan to reduce the number of U.S. Special Forces, we supported the deployment of the National Guard at the border, we expanded U.S. joint military exercises with Israel, and we increased funding for U.S. defense initiatives in the Indo-Pacific, and that includes Taiwan.”

The bill also cuts $31 billion in “bloated Pentagon bureaucracy,” he said, noting that he expects a vote on the House floor affirming the bill later this week.

When the compromise version of the bill was unveiled this weekend, Mr. Johnson said the legislation will “restore our focus on military lethality” and “end the radical woke ideology being imposed on our military by permanently banning transgender medical treatment for minors and countering antisemitism.” The proposed legislation, he added, includes a prohibition on sales of goods at “DOD commissaries and exchanges from any entities that have or are engaged in a boycott of Israel.” 

Yet the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Adam Smith, signaled earlier this week that the provision could potentially be a deal-breaker — urging Mr. Johnson to “abandon” the effort and bring forward a bill that “doesn’t attack the transgender community.” 

“Blanketly denying health care to people who clearly need it, just because of a biased notion against transgender people, is wrong,” he said in a statement. “This provision injected a level of partisanship not traditionally seen in defense bills. Speaker Johnson is pandering to the most extreme elements of his party to ensure that he retains his speakership. In doing so, he has upended what had been a bipartisan process.” 

As of Saturday, Mr. Smith told Politico that he was “undecided” on how he would vote on the bill because of the transgender provision. Others in Congress are urging Democrats to look beyond the lone provision.
“We cannot risk our national security and the entire United States military over the left’s absurd belief that the DOD should be paying for minors to transition their gender,” Republican Representative Austin Scott told NOTUS.