Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee added an amendment to a 2024 defense spending package on Wednesday that mandates the Pentagon use merit-based personnel systems.
Introduced by Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., the amendment requires the Secretary of Defense to issue regulations no later than Sept. 30, 2024, that “any effort to recruit an individual to serve in a covered Armed Force may not take into account the race or gender of such individual.” The reform further specifies that the Defense Department must use a merit-based system to determine military promotions and assignments, which includes factors such as “qualifications, performance, integrity, fitness, training, and conduct.”
The Banks amendment was one of several considered during a committee markup of the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.
“America’s military became the greatest fighting force in the history of the world by promoting excellence, embracing colorblind principles, and attracting our nation’s best and brightest,” Banks said. “The Biden DoD’s indefensible race and gender-based treatment of servicemembers is making our military weaker and our nation less safe. Anti-woke legislators should continue to roll back the Biden administration’s radical attempts to deny Americans’ equal protection under the law.”
Following President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, the Defense Department began heavily pushing military leadership to adopt discriminatory “DEI” ideology. For context, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (often abbreviated to DEI) promote a divisive and poisonous ideology that’s dismissive of merit and discriminates based on characteristics such as skin color and sexual orientation. Individuals who qualify
