Dems say policy bill addresses defense loopholes

$840 billion legislation passed House and faces Senate changes later this summer

WASHINGTON — House Democrats are taking what may be their last shot to address the lack of government safeguards that enabled some of former President Donald Trump’s most audacious behavior, leveraging a mammoth Pentagon policy bill to target institutional shortcomings highlighted by his actions.

The $840 billion legislation, which passed the House on Thursday but is subject to change once the Senate weighs in later this summer, contains specific measures to fix problems laid bare by the U.S. Capitol riot carried out by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Some direct closer scrutiny — by the military, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security — of domestic terror threats posed by antisemitism, neo-Nazi groups and white supremacist ideologies, as well as groups on the far right such as the Proud Boys, are now the subject of investigation by federal prosecutors and the House select committee examining the riot. Another would give the mayor of D.C. the authority to mobilize the National Guard during an emergency — or another major security crisis.

The apparent sense of urgency goes beyond the simple fact that passing stand-alone legislation is difficult in a polarized Congress, observers say.

“Particularly if Republicans take the House, as many expect that they will, it’ll just be that much harder to get any of these kinds of fixes into big bills — because Republicans will have control of what comes to the floor in the House,” said Molly Reynolds, a congressional expert with the Brookings Institution.

Come 2023, should Democrats lose the handful of seats necessary to drive them into the minority, it would complicate “the idea of anything being portrayed as anti-Trump, especially if Trump comes out and says more formally that he’s running in 2024,” Reynolds said.

The annual defense authorization bill often serves as a forum for policy that radiates beyond the Pentagon, but it’s far from guaranteed that all or even any of these provisions will become law. Last year, for instance, the House agreed to upgrade to the D.C. mayor’s ability to mobilize the city’s National Guard units, but the idea was dropped during negotiations with the Senate and absent from the final bill that Congress sent to President Joe Biden for approval.

The political divisions shaping lawmakers’ calculations were thrown into sharp relief in recent days, when the House voted on an amendment to the defense bill offered by Rep. Bradley Schneider, D-Ill., to compel the Defense Department, the FBI and DHS to establish “strategies to combat White supremacist and neo-Nazi activity in the uniformed services and Federal law enforcement agencies,” as the measure read. This has been a focus of Schneider’s since 2017 but attracted much broader interest in the aftermath of Jan. 6.

Not a single House Republican voted in favor of the venture. It was adopted into the House’s defense bill solely with Democratic support.

Many supporters of the Trump-themed provisions, all of which were included in the House’s final defense bill through the amendment process, have been clear what — and who — inspired their legislative efforts.

“On January 6, 2021, as our democracy was under attack, D.C.’s mayor was unable to call out the D.C. National Guard, wasting hours and potentially costing lives,” Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.; Anthony Brown, D-Md.; and Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat, D.C.’s delegate to Congress, said in a joint statement last week. “The January 6th attack on the Capitol demonstrated why this authority belongs in the hands of D.C.’s