Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin bristles as Republicans hit woke military

WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin became visibly frustrated Tuesday as Republicans on the Senate Armed Services committee criticized him for leftist Pentagon policies and programs, including a 2021 stand down to address extremism in the ranks.

“As one of your first acts, Mr. Secretary, you put our military – every single member, active duty and Reserve – to a mandatory training to root out extremists,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said during a hearing on the Defense Department’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2024. “That sent a message … that our military is filled with extremists.”

“Our military is one of the most diverse organizations in the world,” Tuberville added. “It is full of patriots.”

Defending the stand down, Austin said, “we’ve always had regulations against extremist behavior.”

“You’ve heard me say that 99.9% of our troops are focused on the right things each and every day,” he said. “But in this case, a small set of actions can have outsized impact.”

The hearing grew tense when Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) accused Austin of wasting more than five million military man hours on the training.

“You mentioned earlier that you didn’t want to spend a lot of time and you thought that it was a drag on our force [by] spending money on things that don’t make us a fighting force,” he said. “… [But] the stand down day to address extremism cost the military and taxpayers nearly 5.4 million man hours.”

Austin took issue with the claim, demanding that Schmitt say “where that number came from.”

The lawmaker replied that the calculation was based “on the number of folks [who] didn’t work that day.”

“That’s not accurate, Senator,” Austin responded, claiming that the number of hours lost added up to 4.2 million rather than 5.4 million.

“It’s as simple as this: When asked to provide that number, [the Pentagon’s] approach was – there are 2.1 million troops, each troop spent two hours,” the secretary said. “That’s where the number comes from.”

Undeterred, Schmitt said that whether it was 5.4 or 4.2 million hours, the military “can’t get that time back.”

“Whether we’re talking about dollars or hours, millions still matter,” the congressman said. “The folks that I represent think a million is a big number.”

Testifying alongside Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley claimed that the millions of man hours were “out of 2.8 billion man hours available on a 10-hour workday, five days a week for the US military.”

While two years have passed from the stand down, the reference to it during a hearing meant to address the DoD budget came as Congressional Republicans amp up their scrutiny of “wokeism” in federal policies.

Also Tuesday, the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs held a hearing dedicated to “examining progressivism’s impact on an all-volunteer military.”

“We all know the primary mission of the armed forces is to protect and defend the nation and our interests abroad,” said the subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.). “The military is not the institution for social experiments and political correctness.”

“The administration seems to be willfully blinded by how its progressive ideals are affecting military readiness,” he added.

The anti-woke movement got its latest win on Friday when House Republicans passed the Parents Bill of Rights to require public schools to disclose all curricula, reading lists, library books and budget costs, as well as force educators to seek parents’ consent before changing a child’s gender status in school documents.

However, the legislation – championed by House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) – is unlikely to make it to the Democrat-controlled Senate floor after passing in the House without any votes from the left.