The U.S. Senate will begin debate Tuesday on a massive spending bill setting the spending priorities for the U.S. military for the coming year.

Last Friday, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of the $874.2 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by a vote of 219-210.

The conservative priorities in the bill backed by the House Freedom Caucus mean it has no chance of passage in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate. The Senate version of the NDAA passed out of the Senate Armed Services Committee by a 25-1 vote earlier this month. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he looked forward to a bipartisan debate.

“So we can keep our country safe, support our friends in Ukraine, outcompete China, and give our troops the pay raise they rightfully deserve,” Schumer said earlier this month.

Senate Republicans are expected to call for an increase in funding levels from the Biden’s administration’s budget request.

“Our colleagues on the Armed Services Committee will be called upon to carefully consider the requirements identified by our commanders that have gone unfunded in President [Joe] Biden’s budget. They should think about the steps that could improve our ability to project power into the Asia-Pacific, or the assistance that could support vulnerable partners in the region,” Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said last month. “Remember, threats of sanctions and stern diplomatic warnings didn’t deter [Russian President] Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. Words alone will not deter Chinese aggression in Asia.

“The Biden administration can continue to speak softly. But Congress must ensure that America carries a big stick,” he added.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy hailed the funding in the House-passed version Friday, saying “cutting-edge technology that is essential for the future of this country and to keep freedom around the world in the rise of China and Russia will receive more investment than we’ve watched in the past.”

But every year the House and Senate must reconcile their own versions of the NDAA to pass a final package that can be sent to the White House to be signed into law.

The Republican amendments in the House-passed version of the NDAA would undo a new Pentagon policy providing time off and financial reimbursements for service members needing to travel out of state for abortions as well as funding for military diversity initiatives and health coverage for gender-transition surgery.

“Obviously, a lot of these amendments will be probably stripped out and the Senate will have a little different version. But overall, you know, an increase in defense spending and our troops get a pay raise. It’s a very critical time right now. It’s a dangerous world,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul told reporters.

Five House Republican-led attempts to end U.S. aid to Ukraine failed last week. Most Republicans voted with Democrats to pass $300 million in funding for Ukraine. But conservatives did score several victories against the Biden administration.

“Taxpayer money is provided to the DOD [Department of Defense] and intended to provide for our national defense and our national security. It is not, not to promote and support the Biden administration’s radical, immoral, pro-abortion agenda,” Republican lawmaker Ronny Jackson told reporters Friday.

Republicans argue government health insurance should not cover abortions for service members and the Pentagon should not lead diversity initiatives that include outreach to transgender people. But Democrats said Republicans’ attempts to kill those amendments were another example of the party’s extremism.

“It is woefully irresponsible that extreme MAGA Republicans have hijacked a bipartisan bill that is essential to our national security and taken it over and weaponized it in order to jam their extreme right-wing ideology down the throats of the American people,” Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said Friday.

Senate Democrats have called for an end to Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville’s block on military nominations in protest of a new Pentagon health policy providing support to members of the military who need to travel out of state to obtain an abortion.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Monday that the U.S. is working with India to help quicken India’s transition to renewable energy. 

Yellen met with Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in India. 

“We look forward to working with India on an investment platform to deliver a lower cost of capital and increased private investment to speed India’s energy transition,” Yellen said.

Yellen’s current visit to India follows Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent state visit to Washington. Yellen’s latest visit to India is her third trip there in nine months, an indication of the growing ties between the two countries.  

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Under the tall prairie grass outside this southwestern Minnesota town lies a precious seam of dark red pipestone that, for thousands of years, Native Americans have quarried and carved into pipes essential to prayer and communication with the Creator.

Only a dozen Dakota carvers remain in the predominantly agricultural area bordering South Dakota. While tensions have flared periodically over how broadly to produce and share the rare artifacts, many Dakota today are focusing on how to pass on to future generations a difficult skillset that’s inextricably linked to spiritual practice.

“I’d be very happy to teach anyone … and the Spirit will be with you if you’re meant to do that,” said Cindy Pederson, who started learning how to carve from her grandparents six decades ago.

Enrolled in the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Nation, she regularly holds carving demonstrations at Pipestone National Monument, a small park that encompasses the quarries.

In the worldview of the Dakota peoples, sometimes referred to as Sioux, “the sacred is woven in” the land where the Creator placed them, said Iyekiyapiwin Darlene St. Clair, a professor at St. Cloud State University in central Minnesota.

But some places have a special relevance, because of events that occurred there, a sense of stronger spiritual power, or their importance in origin stories, she added.

These quarries of a unique variety of red pipestone check all three – starting with a history of enemy tribes laying down arms to allow for quarrying, with several stories warning that if fights broke out over the rare resource, it would make itself unavailable to all.

The colorful prayer ties and flags hung from trees alongside the trails that lead around the pink and red rocks testify to the continued sacredness of the space.

“It was always a place to go pray,” said Gabrielle Drapeau, a cultural resource specialist and park ranger at the monument who started coming here as a child.

From her elders in the Yankton Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, Drapeau grew up hearing one of many origin stories for the pipestone: In time immemorial, a great flood killed most people in the area, their blood seeping into the stone and turning it red. But the Creator came, pronounced it a place of peace, and smoked a pipe, adding this is how people could reach him.

“It’s like a tangible representation of how we can connect with Creator,” Drapeau said. “All people before you are represented in the stone itself. It’s not just willy-nilly stone.”

Pipes are widely used by Indigenous people across the Great Plains and beyond, either by spiritual leaders or individuals for personal prayer for healing and thanksgiving, as well as to mark rites of passage like vision quests and the solemnity of ceremonies and gatherings.

“Pipestone has a particular relationship to our spiritual practice – praying with pipes, we take very seriously,” St. Clair said.

The pipe itself is thought to become sacred when the pipestone bowl and the wooden stem are joined. The smoke, from tobacco or prairie plants, then carries the prayer from a person’s heart to the Creator.

Because of that crucial spiritual connection, only people enrolled in federally recognized tribes can obtain permits to quarry at the monument, some traveling from as far as Montana and Nebraska. Within tribes, there’s disagreement over whether pipes should be sold, especially to non-Natives, and the pipestone used to make other art objects like carved animal figures.

“Sacredness is going to be defined by you — that’s between you and the Creator,” said Travis Erickson, a fourth-generation carver who’s worked pipestone in the area for more than two decades and embraces a less restrictive view. “Everything on this Earth is spiritual.”

His first job in the quarries, at age 10, was to break through and remove the layers of harder-than-steel quartzite covering the pipestone seam – then about six feet down, now more than 18 feet into the quarry, so the process can take months. Only hand tools can be used to avoid damaging the pipestone.

Taken out in sheets only about a couple of inches thick, it is then carved using flint and files.

“The stone talks to me,” added Erickson, who has fashioned pipe bowls in different shapes, such as horses. “Most of those pipes showed what they wanted to be.”

Growing up in the 1960s, Erickson recalled making pipes as a family affair where the day often ended with a festive grilling. He taught his children, but laments that few younger people want to take up the arduous job.

So does Pederson, some of whose younger family members have shown interest, including a granddaughter who would hang out in her workshop starting when she was 3 and emerge “pink from head to toe” from the stone dust.

But they believe the tradition will continue as long as they can share it with Native youth who might have their first encounter with this deep history on field trips to the monument.

On a recent trip, Pederson’s brother, Mark Pederson, who also holds demonstrations at the visitor center, took several young visitors into the quarries and taught them how to swing sledgehammers — and many asked to return, she said.

Teaching the techniques of quarrying and carving is crucially important, and so is helping youth develop a relationship with the pipestone and its place in the Native worldview.

“We have to be concerned with that as Dakota people – all cultural messages young people get draw away from our traditional lifeways,” St. Clair said. “We need to hold on to the teachings, prayers, songs that make pipes be.”

From new exhibits to tailored school field trips, recent initiatives at the monument — undertaken in consultation between tribal leaders and the National Park Service — are trying to foster that awareness for Native youth.

“I remind them they have every right to come here and pray,” Drapeau said — a crucial point since many Native spiritual practices were systematically repressed for decades past 1937, when the monument was created to preserve the quarries from land encroachment.

Some areas of the park are open only for ceremonial use; the 75,000 yearly visitors are asked not to interfere with the quarriers.

“The National Park Service is the newcomer here — for 3,000 years, different tribal nations have come to quarry here and developed different protocols to protect the site,” said park superintendent Lauren Blacik.

One change brought through extensive consultations with tribal leaders is the park’s decision to no longer sell pipes at the visitor center, though other pipestone objects are — like small carved turtles or owls. Pipes are available at stores a few miles away in Pipestone’s downtown.

Tensions over the use of sacred pipes by non-Natives long predates the United States, when French and English explorers traded them, said Greg Gagnon, a scholar of Indian Studies and author of a textbook on Dakota culture.

“Nobody wants to have their world appropriated. The more you open it up, the more legitimate a fear of watering it down,” he said. But there’s also a danger in becoming entrenched in dogmatic ways of understanding traditions, Gagnon added.

For carvers like Pederson, good intentions and the Spirit at work in both those practicing the craft as well as those receiving the pipestone are reasons to be optimistic about the future.

“Grandma and Grandpa always said the stone takes care of itself, knows what’s in a person’s heart,” she said.
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Five sheep are spending their summer at the former military base-turned-park on New York City’s Governors Island. Their mission: removing unwanted invasive plants from an urban forest in the Hammock Grove section. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vladimir Badikov.
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Jack Mogannam, manager of Sam’s Cable Car Lounge in downtown San Francisco, relishes the days when his bar stayed open past midnight every night, welcoming crowds that jostled on the streets, bar hopped, window browsed or just took in the night air.

He’s had to drastically curtail those hours because of diminished foot traffic, and business is down 30%. A sign outside the lounge pleads: “We need your support!”

“I’d stand outside my bar at 10 p.m. and look, it would be like a party on the street,” Mogannam said. “Now you see, like, six people on the street up and down the block. It’s a ghost town.”

After a three-year exile, the pandemic now fading from view, the expected crowds and electric ambience of downtown have not returned.

Empty storefronts dot the streets. Large “going out of business” signs hang in windows. Uniqlo, Nordstrom Rack and Anthropologie are gone. Last month, the owner of Westfield San Francisco Centre, a fixture for more than 20 years, said it was handing the mall back to its lender, citing declining sales and foot traffic. The owner of two towering hotels, including a Hilton, did the same.

Shampoo, toothpaste and other toiletries are locked up at downtown pharmacies. And armed robbers recently hit a Gucci store in broad daylight.

San Francisco has become the prime example of what downtowns shouldn’t look like: vacant, crime-ridden and in various stages of decay. But in truth, it’s just one of many cities across the U.S. whose downtowns are reckoning with a post-pandemic wake-up call: diversify or die.

As the pandemic bore down in early 2020, it drove people out of city centers and boosted shopping and dining in residential neighborhoods and nearby suburbs as workers stayed closer to home. Those habits seem poised to stay.

No longer the purview of office workers, downtowns must become around-the-clock destinations for people to congregate, said Richard Florida, a specialist in city planning at the University of Toronto.

“They’re no longer central business districts. They’re centers of innovation, of entertainment, of recreation,” he said. “The faster places realize that, the better.”

Data bears out that San Francisco’s downtown is having a harder time than most. A study of 63 North American downtowns by the University of Toronto ranked the city dead last in a return to pre-pandemic activity, garnering only 32% of its 2019 traffic.

Hotel revenues are stuck at 73% of pre-pandemic levels, weekly office attendance remains below 50% and commuter rail travel to downtown is at 33%, according to a recent economic report by the city.

Office vacancy rates in San Francisco were 24.8% in the first quarter, more than five times higher than pre-pandemic levels and well above the average rate of 18.5% for the nation’s top 10 cities, according to CBRE, a commercial real estate services company.

Why? San Francisco relied heavily on international tourism and its tech workforce, both of which disappeared during the pandemic.

But other major cities including Portland and Seattle, which also rely on tech workers, are struggling with similar declines, according to the downtown recovery study, which used anonymized mobile phone data to analyze downtown activity patterns from before the pandemic and between March and May of this year.

In Chicago, which ranked 45th in the study, major retailers like AT&T, Old Navy and Banana Republic on the Magnificent Mile have closed or soon will as visitor foot traffic hasn’t rebounded.

And midwestern cities like Indianapolis and Cleveland already struggled pre-pandemic with diminished downtowns as they relied on a single industry to support them and lacked booming industries like tech, said Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto and author of the study.

San Francisco leaders are taking the demise of downtown seriously. Supervisors recently relaxed downtown zoning rules to allow mixed-use spaces: offices and services on upper floors and entertainment and pop-up shops on the ground floor. Legislation also reduces red tape to facilitate converting existing office space into housing.

Mayor London Breed recently announced $6 million to upgrade a three-block stretch by a popular cable car turnaround to improve walkability and lure back businesses.

But Marc Benioff, chief executive officer of Salesforce, the city’s largest employer and anchor tenant in its tallest skyscraper, said downtown is “never going back to the way it was” when it comes to workers commuting in each day. He advised Breed to convert office space into housing and hire more police to give visitors a sense of safety.

“We need to rebalance downtown,” Benioff said.

Downtown housing has been the key to success in Baltimore and Salt Lake City, Chapple said.

Real estate experts also point to office-to-housing conversions as a potential lifeline. Cities such as New York and Pittsburgh are offering sizeable tax breaks for developers to spur such conversions.

But for many cities, including San Francisco, it will take more than housing for downtowns to flourish.

Daud Shuja, owner and designer of Franco Uomo, a luxury clothier based in San Jose, said new customers who live in San Francisco drive at least an hour to the store. He plans to open a shop in a more convenient location in suburban Palo Alto next year.

“They just don’t want to deal with the homelessness, with the environment, with the ambience,” he said.

Still, San Francisco officials say the downtown, which stretches from City Hall to the Embarcadero Waterfront and encompasses the Financial District and parts of the South of Market neighborhood, is in transition.

Gap, which started in San Francisco in 1969, closed its flagship Gap and Old Navy stores near Union Square. But the company isn’t abandoning the city entirely, planning four new stores from its major brands at its headquarters near the waterfront and anticipating other new stores.

Marisa Rodriguez, CEO of the Union Square Alliance, said foot traffic is steadily up and a strong tourism season is expected. Sales tax revenue from fine and casual dining, as well as hotels and motels, is also up, said Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist, defying the narrative that San Francisco is in a doom loop.

Furthermore, new Union Square businesses include upscale fusion restaurants, a hot yoga studio favored by celebrity Jessica Alba and a rare sneaker shop. The area just has to overcome hesitation from local and national visitors due to negative press, Rodriguez said.

“When you’re making your plans to travel, and you’re like, ‘I’ve always wanted to go to San Francisco, but I just keep reading all this stuff.’ When in fact, it’s beautiful. It’s here to welcome you,” she said. “I just hope the noise settles quickly.”
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California, the seventh-biggest U.S. crude oil producer, has put a near halt on issuing permits for new drilling this year, according to state data.

The state’s Geologic Energy Management Division, known as CalGEM, has approved seven new active well permits in 2023. That compares with the more than 200 it had issued by this time last year.

The stalled approvals represent the latest tension between California’s bold environmental ambitions and its role as a major oil and gas producer and consumer.

New drilling permits have steadily declined since Gavin Newsom became governor in 2019, but the current rate of approval represents a sudden and dramatic drop.

“It’s just fallen off the cliff,” Rock Zierman, chief executive of the California Independent Petroleum Association (CIPA), said in an interview. The industry has more than 1,400 permit applications for new wells awaiting CalGEM approval, half of which are more than a year old, he said.

In an email, CalGEM attributed the smaller number of approvals to both the broader decline in California oil production and litigation that has paused permitting by Kern County, the center of the state’s oil industry.

CalGEM is processing far more approvals to permanently close wells than for any other activity, the agency said.

“We expect this permitting trend to continue as California transitions away from fossil fuels,” CalGEM said.

The approved new wells include one for Sentinel Peak Resources in San Luis Obispo County and five for E&B Natural Resources Management in Kern County.

In an apparent concession to the oil and gas industry, approvals to improve or repair established wells are up nearly 50% to 1,650 in the first half of this year, according to an analysis of the CalGEM data by environmental group FracTracker Alliance that was provided to Reuters by the consumer advocacy non-profit Consumer Watchdog.

Reworking existing wells to boost their production cannot replace volumes from new wells that are needed to meet California’s energy needs, CIPA’s Zierman said.

The governor wants to phase out oil drilling in the state by 2045.

California also passed a law last year banning oil and gas drilling within 3,200 feet of structures including homes, schools and hospitals. But CIPA has blocked implementation of that law by qualifying a referendum to overturn it for the November 2024 ballot.

Nearly half of the wells with rework permits approved this year are within the contested buffer zone.

Consumer Watchdog criticized those approvals as a threat to public health because they extend the lives of low- and non-producing wells, which the group argues would likely have been plugged had the setback law not been paused.

“The state is simply helping the oil industry cut costs by issuing permits to tinker with unproductive wells rather than making them plug and remediate those wells that endanger the public and environment by emitting toxic compounds,” said Liza Tucker, a consumer advocate for Consumer Watchdog.

CalGEM said it is required to evaluate permits so long as the law is barred from being implemented.
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The U.S., South Korea and Japan held a joint naval missile defense exercise on Sunday to counter North Korea’s evolving nuclear and missile threats, the South’s navy said, days after the North launched an intercontinental ballistic missile.

North Korea fired its latest Hwasong-18 missile, which Pyongyang describes as the core of its nuclear strike force, off the east coast on Wednesday in what it said was a “strong practical warning” to the adversaries.

Sunday’s trilateral drill was conducted in international waters between South Korea and Japan, bringing together destroyers equipped with Aegis radar systems from the three countries, the navy said.

Washington and its Asian allies have been working to improve their information-sharing system on North Korea’s missiles. South Korea and Japan are independently linked to U.S. radar systems but not to each other’s.

The exercise aimed at mastering the allies’ response to a North Korean ballistic missile launch with a scenario featuring a virtual target, the military said.

“We will effectively respond to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats with our military’s strong response system and the trilateral cooperation,” a South Korean Navy officer said.  

The North’s ICBM launch was denounced by the U.S., South Korea and Japan, though Pyongyang has rejected the condemnation, saying it was an exercise of its right to self-defense.  

The latest launch followed heated complaints from North Korea in recent days, accusing American spy planes of flying over its exclusive economic zone waters, condemning a recent visit to South Korea by an U.S. nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine and vowing to take steps in reaction. 
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Americans are not happy with the way democracy is working right now. 

 

According to a poll from The Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, nearly half of Americans, 49%, say democracy is not working well in the U.S.   

 

Only 10% say democracy is working very or extremely well, while 40% say it’s working somewhat well. 

 

The two main U.S. political parties also received low ratings on how each is upholding democratic principles. 

 

Forty-seven percent said Democrats are doing a bad job with democratic principles, while 56% of those polled say Republicans could do a better job.   

 

The Associated Press says the poll shows there is “widespread political alienation as a polarized country limps out of the pandemic and into a recovery haunted by inflation and fears of a recession.” 

 

The poll was conducted June 22-26. 
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Visitors to Las Vegas on Friday stepped out momentarily to snap photos and were hit by blast-furnace air. But most will spend their vacations in a vastly different climate — at casinos where the chilly air conditioning might require a light sweater.

Meanwhile, emergency room doctors were witnessing another world, as dehydrated construction workers, passed-out elderly residents and others suffered in an intense heat wave threatening to break the city’s all-time record high of 47.2 degrees Celsius this weekend.

Few places in the scorching Southwest demonstrate the surreal contrast between indoor and outdoor life like Las Vegas, a neon-lit city rich with resorts, casinos, swimming pools, indoor nightclubs and shopping. Tens of millions of others across California and the Southwest, were also scrambling for ways to stay cool and safe from the dangers of extreme heat.

“We’ve been talking about this building heat wave for a week now, and now the most intense period is beginning,” the National Weather Service wrote Friday.

Nearly a third of Americans were under extreme heat advisories, watches and warnings. The blistering heat wave was forecast to get worse this weekend for Nevada, Arizona and California, where desert temperatures were predicted to soar in parts past 48.8 degrees Celsius during the day and remain above 32.2 C overnight.

Sergio Cajamarca, his family and their dog, Max, were among those who lined up to pose for photos in front of the city’s iconic “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign. The temperature before noon already topped 37.8 C.

“I like the city, especially at night. It’s just the heat,” said Cajamarca, 46, an electrician from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.

His daughter, Kathy Zhagui, 20, offered her recipe for relief: “Probably just water, ice cream, staying inside.”

Meteorologists in Las Vegas warned people not to underestimate the danger. “This heatwave is NOT typical desert heat due to its long duration, extreme daytime temperatures, & warm nights. Everyone needs to take this heat seriously, including those who live in the desert,” the National Weather Service in Las Vegas said in a tweet.

Phoenix marked the city’s 15th consecutive day of 43.3 degrees Celsius or higher temperatures on Friday, hitting 46.6 degrees Celsius by late afternoon, and putting it on track to beat the longest measured stretch of such heat. The record is 18 days, recorded in 1974.

“This weekend there will be some of the most serious and hot conditions we’ve ever seen,” said David Hondula the city’s chief heat officer. “I think that it’s a time for maximum community vigilance.”

The heat was expected to continue well into next week as a high pressure dome moves west from Texas.

“We’re getting a lot of heat-related illness now, a lot of dehydration, heat exhaustion,” said Dr. Ashkan Morim, who works in the ER at Dignity Health Siena Hospital in suburban Henderson.

Morim said he has treated tourists this week who spent too long drinking by pools and became severely dehydrated; a stranded hiker who needed liters of fluids to regain his strength; and a man in his 70s who fell and was stuck for seven hours in his home until help arrived. The man kept his home thermostat at 26.7 C, concerned about his electric bill with air conditioning operating constantly to combat high nighttime temperatures.

Regional health officials in Las Vegas launched a new database Thursday to report “heat-caused” and “heat-related” deaths in the city and surrounding Clark County from April to October.

The Southern Nevada Health District said seven people have died since April 11, and a total of 152 deaths last year were determined to be heat-related.

Besides casinos, air-conditioned public libraries, police station lobbies and other places from Texas to California planned to be open to the public to offer relief at least for part of the day. In New Mexico’s largest city of Albuquerque, splash pads will be open for extended hours and many public pools were offering free admission. In Boise, Idaho, churches and other nonprofit groups were offering water, sunscreen and shelter.

Temperatures closer to the Pacific coast were less severe, but still made for a sweaty day on picket lines in the Los Angeles area where actors joined screenwriters in strikes against producers.

In Sacramento, the California State Fair kicked off with organizers canceling planned horseracing events due to concerns for animal safety.

Employers were reminded that outdoor workers must receive water, shade and regular breaks to cool off.

Pet owners were urged to keep their animals mostly inside. “Dogs are more susceptible to heat stroke and can literally die within minutes. Please leave them at home in the air conditioning,” David Szymanski, park superintendent for Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the wildfire season was ramping up amid the hot, dry conditions with a series of blazes erupting across California this week, Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the Natural Resources Agency, said at a media briefing.

Global climate change is “supercharging” heat waves, Crowfoot added.

Firefighters in Riverside County, southeast of Los Angeles, were battling multiple brush fires that started Friday afternoon.

Stefan Gligorevic, a software engineer from Lancaster, Pennsylvania visiting Las Vegas for the first time said he planned to stay hydrated and not let it ruin his vacation.

“Cold beer and probably a walk through the resorts. You take advantage of the shade when you can,” Gligorevic said. “Yeah, definitely.”
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Move comes after Iran tried to seize two oil tankers last week, opening fire on one of them
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The House passed a sweeping defense bill Friday that provides an expected 5.2% pay raise for service members. But the bill strays from traditional military policy with Republican additions that block abortion coverage, diversity initiatives at the Pentagon and transgender care that deeply divided the chamber. 

Democrats voted against the package, which had sailed out of the House Armed Services Committee on an almost unanimous vote weeks ago before being loaded with the GOP priorities during a heated late-night floor debate this week. 

The final vote was 219-210, with four Democrats siding with the GOP and four Republicans opposed. The bill, as written, is expected to go nowhere in the Democratic-majority Senate. 

Efforts to halt U.S. funding for Ukraine in its war against Russia were turned back, but Republicans added provisions to stem the Defense Department’s diversity initiatives and to restrict access to abortions. The abortion issue has been championed by Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, who is singularly stalling Senate confirmation of military officers, including the new commandant of the Marine Corps. 

“We are continuing to block the Biden administration’s ‘woke’ agenda,” said House lawmaker Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican. 

Turning the must-pass defense bill into a partisan battleground shows how deeply the nation’s military has been unexpectedly swept into disputes over race, equity and women’s health care that are driving the Republican Party’s priorities in America’s widening national divide. 

During one particularly tense moment in the debate, Democratic lawmaker Joyce Beatty of Ohio, a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, spoke of how difficult it was to look across the aisle as Republicans chip away at gains for women, Black people and others in the military. 

“You are setting us back,” she said about an amendment from lawmaker Eli Crane, an Arizona Republican, that would prevent the Defense Department from requiring participation in race-based training for hiring, promotions or retention. 

Crane argued that Russia and China do not mandate diversity measures in their military operations and neither should the United States. 

“We don’t want our military to be a social experiment,” he said. “We want the best of the best.” 

When Crane used the pejorative phrase “colored people” for Black military personnel, Beatty asked for his words to be stricken from the record. 

Friday’s vote capped a tumultuous week for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, as conservatives essentially drove the agenda, forcing their colleagues to consider their ideas for the annual bill that has been approved by Congress unfailingly since World War II. 

“I think he’s doing great because we are moving through — it was like over 1,500 amendments — and we’re moving through them,” said House lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia. She told reporters she changed her mind to support the bill after McCarthy offered her a seat on the committee that will be negotiating the final version with the Senate. 

Democrats, in a joint leadership statement, said they were voting against the bill because Republicans “turned what should be a meaningful investment in our men and women in uniform into an extreme and reckless legislative joyride.” 

“Extreme MAGA Republicans have chosen to hijack the historically bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act to continue attacking reproductive freedom and jamming their right-wing ideology down the throats of the American people,” said the statement from House lawmakers Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Pete Aguilar of California. 

The defense bill authorizes $874.2 billion in the coming year for defense spending, keeping with President Joe Biden’s budget request. The funding itself is to be allocated later, when Congress handles the appropriation bills, as is the normal process. 

The package sets policy across the Defense Department, as well as in aspects of the Energy Department, and this year focuses particularly on the U.S. stance toward China, Russia and other national security fronts. 

Republican opposition to U.S. support for the war in Ukraine drew a number of amendments, including one to block the use of cluster munitions that Biden just sent to help Ukraine battle Russia. It was a controversial move because the weapons, which can leave behind unexploded munitions endangering civilians, are banned by many other countries. 

Most of those efforts to stop U.S. support for Ukraine failed. Proposals to roll back the Pentagon’s diversity and inclusion measures and block some medical care for transgender personnel were approved. 

GOP Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas, who served as a White House physician, pushed the abortion measure that would prohibit the defense secretary from paying for or reimbursing expenses relating to abortion services. 

Jackson and other Republicans praised Tuberville for his stand against the Pentagon’s abortion policy, which gained prominence as states started banning the procedure after the Supreme Court decision last summer overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade law. 

But it’s not at all certain that the House position will stand as the legislation moves to the Senate, which is preparing its own version of the bill. Senate Democrats have the majority but will need to work with Republicans on a bipartisan measure to ensure enough support for passage in their chamber. 

Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee, led by lawmaker Adam Smith of Washington state, dropped their support because of the social policy amendments. 

Smith lamented that the bill that the committee passed overwhelmingly “no longer exists. What was once an example of compromise and functioning government has become an ode to bigotry and ignorance.” 
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The U.S. national team, like most of the rest of the field, faces a long flight to the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. Already seasoned travelers, the American players have strategies for wiling away the time. And they’ll certainly need those tactics: The flight to New Zealand, where they’ll spend the group stage of the tournament, is 12 hours. Midfielder Andi Sullivan plans on napping, while defender Emily Fox intends to keep with a soccer theme and finally watch “Ted Lasso.”

Midfielder Andi Sullivan plans on napping. Defender Emily Fox intends to keep with a soccer theme and finally watch “Ted Lasso.”

The U.S. national team — like most of the rest of the field — faces a long flight to the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

Already seasoned travelers, the Americans have strategies for wiling away the time. And they’ll certainly need those tactics: The flight to New Zealand, where they’ll spend the group stage of the tournament, is 12 hours.

“I need suggestions!” midfielder Kristie Mewis exclaimed about the shows she plans to download for the flight. “Honestly, I’m rewatching ‘Suits’ right now. I love ‘Suits.'”

Once they get there, the players will retreat into a self-imposed bubble where they shut out the noise and the distractions for some seven weeks. Most stay off of social media platforms for the duration.

Forward Trinity Rodman, making her World Cup debut, is taking the advice of the veterans. Rodman’s dad is former NBA star Dennis Rodman, so she gets a lot of attention just because of her name.

“They have been very open about making sure you have entertainment and ways to distract yourself outside of your phone and social media, because I do think with social media you can get consumed by it and you can definitely get sucked up in it,” Rodman said. “But I think finding those ways to isolate yourself, finding hobbies in the hotel room: Coloring, journaling, reading, Fortnite. I’m a bit of a gamer so that has definitely helped me to just like relax.”

The United States plays Wales in a send-off match on Sunday in San Jose, California. That same night, they’ll fly to training camp in New Zealand.

The World Cup kicks off July 20. The United States opens with a game against Vietnam on July 22.

 
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