7/20/2017

HOUSE OF REPS/LGBTQ/MILITARY: “Several House Republicans are working behind the scenes to revive a failed effort to bar the Pentagon from funding gender reassignment surgeries for troops.
A mix of GOP defense hawks and conservatives are urging Speaker Paul Ryan and his team to use a procedural trick to automatically include the controversial proposal in a spending package set for floor consideration next week.
If Ryan doesn’t go along with that plan, they want him to give them a second shot at passing the amendment on the floor — a prospect that would anger the proposal’s opponents…
Hartzler’s initiative would end a President Barack Obama-era policy that let the Defense Department pay for gender reassignment surgeries and treatments for transgender active-duty personnel. Last week, 24 mostly moderate Republicans teamed up with 190 Democrats to kill the effort to end the policy, voting 209 to 214 against Hartzler’s amendment to a defense authorization bill. Six Republicans did not vote on the measure at all.
But some Republicans can’t let it go. They’re urging leadership to tuck the provision into a rules package governing the GOP’s appropriation legislation, ensuring it would become part of the text without another vote. Or, if that won’t work, they want leadership to let them try to pass it again.”

-Rachel Bade, “House Republicans try to revive ban on Pentagon transgender surgeries,” Politico, July 20, 2017 05:57pm