House NDAA challenges Trump’s anti-union EO

The House Armed Services Committee finished its annual marathon markup session last week with a 55-to-2 vote that sent the bill to the House floor, including with some additions that push back against significant Trump administration priorities.

For starters, the committee voted narrowly during the amendment process to push back against the President’s March executive order that attempted to exclude unions from a large swath of the federal government. The order purported to ban collective bargaining at about three dozen federal agencies with missions in the areas of national defense, foreign relations, cybersecurity, border security and public safety.

That order is currently the subject of at least two federal lawsuits. But an amendment added to the House NDAA would prevent its enforcement at all, at least in the Defense Department.

Backers said it was meant to reverse what they said was an “unprecedented” attack on federal collective bargaining.

“While the justification for this executive order was national security concerns, the facts tell a very different story,” said Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.), the amendment’s lead sponsor. “This executive order is blatant union-busting. It’s clear that this is an effort not based on national security concerns, but instead on retaliation for labor unions defending the members’ rights and as a tactic to make it easier to fire employees. Any DoD employee union was formed when workers exercised their right and their voice in voting in a democratic process. For over 60 years, they have had this through both Democratic and Republican administrations.”

Three Republicans cross party lines

The amendment passed 30-27, gaining enough votes from the Republican majority for passage; Reps. Mike Turner of Ohio, Don Bacon of Nebraska and Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin each split from the rest of their party to vote in favor.

Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colo.), who was not among those supporters, argued that Congress standing in the way of the executive order would be “overreach.”

“The President needs flexibility to act quickly and to act decisively, not get bogged down in union negotiations, and the president is well within the authority granted by the Civil Service Reform Act to limit collective bargaining in agencies that have national security missions,” he said. “Previous Presidents have used the national security exemption to prohibit collective bargaining with the CIA and other national security agencies, and the amendment needlessly restricts the President’s constitutional authority to manage the executive branch and protect the nation. Congress shouldn’t tie the commander in chief’s hands just to score political points with unions.”

As the bill currently stands, the prohibition on enforcing the anti-union EO would only apply to DoD. But that’s largely because of jurisdictional limitations in the House Armed Services Committee. It’s still possible that the bill could be expanded to block the EO in other agencies once it reaches the House floor, or, alternatively, that it could be stripped out of the bill altogether before it reaches the President’s desk.

Base re-renaming

On another issue important to the administration, the committee also voted to reinforce a decision it made several years ago to rename numerous military bases that had been named after Confederate generals.

A bipartisan renaming commission selected new names for nine Army bases after a public hearing and deliberation process, and DoD started implementing the new names in 2023. But over the last several months, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been restoring the old base names while arguing they now honor different U.S. service members who just happen to have the same last names as the Confederate leaders.

By a vote of 29-28, the committee voted to prohibit any public funding from being used for the re-renaming process.

“They’re using the same ploy the commission rejected — finding new service members who shared the last names of these Confederate traitors. These service members are heroes in their own right, and we don’t deny that like Pvt. Fitz Lee, a Buffalo Soldier who was awarded the Medal of Honor, yet Secretary Hegseth saw them as nothing more than convenient names,” said Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.), that amendment’s lead sponsor. “Their families were not given the opportunity to weigh in on whether their legacy should be used this way. President Trump gave up the ruse last month when he said out loud that Fort Greg Adams is being restored to Fort Lee in honor of Robert E. Lee, not Fitz Lee.”

There are strong reasons to think the amendment on base names could set off a confrontation with the White House. That’s because President Trump has already vetoed a previous year’s NDAA over the exact same issue, at least in part. Though Congress later overrode the veto, in 2020, the President said one reason he was vetoing the overall bill was because of a provision that first set up the base renaming commission. He called it a “politically motivated” attempt to “wash away history.”

Rep. John McGuire (R-Va.) echoed those arguments during last week’s debate.

“The naming commission’s actions were perceived by many people, including a sizable part of my district, as an attack on American history, right or wrong,” he said. “Winston Churchill famously stated those that failed to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I feel this applies to attempts to erase history much as the names of our military installations. There were also places that many of those who served during the same time as myself feel a connection to, and have fond memories from our time in military service. When I was stationed at SEAL Team Four, I sometimes considered Fort Pickett my second home.”

Commission “followed the law”

Rep. Austin Scott, a Georgia Republican who served on the base renaming commission, said he wasn’t willing to vote for the amendment. But he did defend the commission’s work.

“The commission used a process — they went to every base,” he said. “We narrowed down, through historians, what we felt like were 10 appropriate names for the bases. We presented those names to the community at the bases, the soldiers as well as the civilian support networks. We then asked them if they had additional names that they recommended for the base renaming. I’ll speak to Fort Bragg. We went to Bragg, we met with them. They were not happy, as many of the people were not happy. But don’t blame the commission, because the commission followed the law … We got a phone call from Gold Star parents in the base area who asked that it be named Liberty, and we honored the request of the Gold Star families.”

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, said it’s certainly possible to abandon the Confederate-linked names without abandoning history.

“Honest to God, you think if we change the name of a base, we’ve erased history, and that nobody remembers the Civil War anymore? No. What we are changing is what we, at this current moment in our history, think we should honor, and what we think we want to value and respect,” he said. “We should not honor the people who fought against our nation, who rebelled and tried to destroy the country in order to maintain their right to enslave their fellow human beings. We should not honor that.”

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