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Politics|Senate Clears Defense Bill Denying Transgender Care to Minors
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/18/us/politics/senate-defense-bill-transgender-care-minors.html
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The annual defense bill directing $895 billion toward the Pentagon and other military programs would deny transgender health coverage to minors. It now heads to President Biden’s desk.
Dec. 18, 2024, 1:04 p.m. ET
The Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to a defense policy bill directing $895 billion toward the Pentagon and other military activities, moving over the objections of some Democrats who opposed a provision added late in the negotiations that would deny coverage for transgender health procedures for minors.
The 85-to-14 vote, coming a week after a divided House passed the same measure, cleared the bill for President Biden’s signature.
Most Republicans and many Democrats supported the measure, which provides a 14.5 percent pay raise to junior enlisted service members and a 4.5 percent pay raise for all other service members. It also expands access to meal assistance, housing and child care programs that benefit those in uniform.
But several Democrats withheld their backing in protest of a provision preventing TRICARE, the military’s health care plan for service members, from covering “medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization” for children under 18.
The language, which would affect the gender-transitioning children of service members, was recently added to the measure at the insistence of Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, who refused to bring a defense bill to the House floor without it, according to aides familiar with the negotiations.
Twenty-one Democrats, led by Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, proposed an amendment to strip the provision from the bill, but the matter was never brought to a vote. Several of them took to the floor on Tuesday to lodge their objections.
