Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) harshly criticized the “insane” new draft of the National Defense Authorization Act, which would require women to be registered for selective service.
The NDAA’s draft for fiscal 2025 includes an amendment to the Military Selective Service Act, which at the moment only requires men between the ages of 18 and 25 to get registered for selective service in the event of a military draft. Hawley contended that the creators of this new amendment are “so out of touch” and criticized lawmakers on both parties who want this.
“You’ve got the Democrats who want to turn the entire military into a giant trans experiment,” Hawley said on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle. “They want to force women to accept men in their sports. They want to turn biological women into men. And then you got a whole group of Republicans who just want more people to fight all these wars they want to get us into. And the rest of the country, the normal people, are like, ‘Leave our daughters alone.’ This is insane stuff!”
The Missouri senator contended that women are free to serve their country in the military if they please but that drafting them in an involuntary draft is not the solution. He also criticized “the further erasure of women in our society,” adding that this draft is an “insane” point to reach in the country’s history.
Hawley also suggested that this amendment could stem from a decline in military recruitment, which he suspected is partly due to people being turned off by the military’s embrace of “wokeness.” Because of these declining recruitment rates, as well as several wars happening across the globe, Hawley suspected that some lawmakers believe that bringing back the draft could be necessary.
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The House of Representatives approved its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which sets policy for the Pentagon and authorizes $895.2 billion in spending for national defense for the coming fiscal year, roughly $9 billion more than what was approved for fiscal 2024. The bill passed Friday in a 217-199 vote, with six Democrats joining all but three Republicans in support of the measure.
Former President Donald Trump, who is running for president again this year, has dismissed speculation he could institute mandatory military service for young people in the United States despite thoughts from some in Trump’s orbit suggesting that more should be done to boost military recruitment.
