National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. HORSFORD. Mr. Chair, I rise today in opposition to the amendment.

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Mr. HORSFORD. Mr. Chair, I rise today in strong opposition to this amendment. My Republican colleagues continue to argue against this so- called woke-ism in the military.

I ask my colleagues: Can they define what being woke is? According to the Florida Governor's own legal team, it is defined as ``the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.''

Mr. Chair, I have news for my colleagues. We need to be woke. We have decades and centuries of injustices and inequities heaped upon women, the LGBTQ+ community, Black and Latino, Native American and Asian, and so many other populations in our Nation.

Mr. Chair, while the Republicans and their friends across the country try to ban books and erase our history from school textbooks, we are fighting to defend the truth and our history.

Yes, I am woke, and more of my colleagues need to be woke.

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Mr. HORSFORD. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Clark), the whip of the Democratic Party.

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Mr. HORSFORD. Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith), the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee.

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Mr. HORSFORD. Mr. Chairman, my Republican colleagues insist that government should run more like a business, yet they are focused on creating divisions in the military instead of following the same practices as our best defense companies--companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon--who all have a chief diversity officer role or equivalent.

We are in the middle of a recruitment crisis. Mr. Chairman, instead of championing programs that will make it more enticing for underrepresented Americans to join the service, they are instead trying to make it more difficult for our military recruitment efforts to be successful.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this ill-advised amendment. Let's put our servicemembers, our national security, and their needs ahead of this amendment that does nothing but divide our country, divide our military. Let's continue to have strength in our military, and that strength comes from the diversity of our servicemembers.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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