Congress Has the Power to Codify Trump's Military Reforms. Will They Use It?
The Senate Armed Services Committee risks putting the nation's military needs ahead of the far Left's social justice agendas.
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is a little-discussed bill that controls key aspects of defense spending. It's also a tool for legislating key military priorities and ensuring accountability. Republicans are finally solidifying much of President Trump's agenda into law, no longer relying on executive orders that can be changed under new administrations with a stroke of a pen.
This year, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), chaired by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MI), is leading the way by including many of the President's priorities in the 2027 NDAA released on June 15.
Restoration of America Foundation (ROAF) has led the way exposing harmful ideologies and divisive agendas that have degraded America's military over the last several decades. From the lowering of fitness standards to prioritizing social justice agendas over warfighting—the use of the American military as a social sciences experiment is ending.
Doug Truax, founder and CEO of Restoration of America and former Army Ranger, summarizes the issue appropriately saying, "We don't need temporary fixes. We need permanent legislative reforms that return the Pentagon's focus to winning wars."
The SASC is going to ensure the military is a lethal fighting force, not a social sciences experiment.
What's in the SASC Recommendations?
Merit Based Personnel Actions
The 2027 NDAA SASC proposal requires merit-based standards for military promotions, nominative assignments, command selection, and selection for military service academies. This provision requires equal opportunity and race and sex neutrality in personnel actions.
Restoration News has reported extensively on affirmative action practices degrading the military, including the nation's prestigious military service academies. The United States Naval Academy was one of the first offenders. Court documents revealed systemic race-based admissions practices at USNA:
There are four instances where the Naval Academy considers race: (1) when offering letters of assurance; (2) when deciding between two candidates with very close WPMs for nominations using the "competitive" method, service-connected nominations, and in some circumstances the "principal competitive alternate" method; (3) when extending Superintendent nominations; and (4) when extending offers to additional appointees.
A federal judge upheld that policy in December 2024, ruling that the academy had "established a compelling national security interest in a diverse officer corps." That logic only collapsed after President Trump's executive order, when the Academy formally barred race, ethnicity, and sex from admissions in February 2025. That history is the whole argument for writing this into law. A directive ends discrimination today. A statute ends it for good. If the SASC version passes, the military will no longer be allowed to discriminate based on race or sex, no matter who occupies the White House.
Fitness Standards
The proposed legislation also establishes sex-neutral occupational standards. It bars men from participating in athletic programs and entering private spaces designated for women at the service academies.
Sex-neutral occupational standards means one thing in plain English. The physical standard is set by what the combat job actually demands, not adjusted by sex. The alternative, which the services drifted toward, scores the same test differently for men and women. That produces equal pass rates on a briefing slide while the real task, carrying a wounded Marine or loading a main gun round, stays exactly as heavy as it always was.
The Marine Corps proved the point with its own data. In 2015, the Corps ran a nine-month study with roughly 300 men and 100 women training together. All-male units outperformed mixed-gender units on 69 percent of the 134 combat tasks measured. All-male squads shot more accurately, cleared obstacles faster, and evacuated casualties in less time. Female Marines suffered injuries at higher rates while performing the same tasks. The Marines spent about $36 million to learn what physics already predicted, and the political leadership set the findings aside anyway.
The SASC provision drags the standard back to the mission. This is a real win. It matches what the administration has already directed, and putting it in statute is what makes it stick.
Strategic Stockpiles
The bill mandates mass-producible low-cost munitions with a 2030 production deadline and requires expansion of the air defense interceptor inventory. Behind that language sits the most urgent readiness problem the country faces.
The problem is magazine depth, whether America has enough precision weapons to fight a major war past the opening weeks. The Center for Strategic and International Studies ran a Taiwan war game two dozen times. In every iteration, the United States burned through its inventory of long-range anti-ship missiles within the first week and faced replacement timelines measured in years. CSIS calls it the "empty bins" problem, and it warns bluntly that adversaries will not be deterred by empty bins.
The low-cost munitions line attacks that gap directly by making deep magazines affordable to build at scale. The interceptor provision rebuilds the air and missile defense stocks that real-world operations are already draining. The bill goes further than most readers realize. It moves to decouple critical-mineral and munitions inputs from China, the rare earths and energetics that go into guidance systems and propellants, and it directs hardened, distributed storage so the stockpile survives a first strike.
Build it, source it, protect it. SASC took on the whole problem set.
Here is where credit and candor meet. The Senate validated the entire case for a deep, secure national arsenal. It did so through a dozen scattered authorities rather than the single unified Strategic Equipment Reserve that ROAF has called for. The Senate proved the problem. The next step is to organize these wins into one auditable, two-war stockpile standard.
The Work Ahead
Honesty about what did not make the cut keeps the praise credible. The Senate markup did not include a dedicated warrior-pay package to reward combat troops, structural reform of how the officer corps is formed, and a serious effort to streamline the Joint Staff and the Pentagon bureaucracy. Those fights move to the House and to conference. They were always the heavier lifts, and ROAF will keep pushing them.
For now, the Senate has done something rare. It took priorities that lived in executive orders and started writing them into law, where the next administration cannot erase them in an afternoon. Merit over identity. Standards built for the battlefield. An arsenal deep enough to deter a war and win one. Chairman Wicker and the SASC deserve credit for the wins on the board. The job now is to hold them through conference and finish the ones still outstanding.
MORE MILITARY & DEFENSE NEWS:
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CHINA THREAT: America's Foreign Land Ownership Problem is a Growing National Security Threat
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Restoration News, a project of Restoration of America, is your trusted investigative news source for the America First movement. As a rapidly growing conservative news site, we focus on delivering accurate and insightful exposés on political news, immigration news, leftist lies, and other pressing issues affecting everyday Americans. Our uncompromising commitment to a hard-hitting, fact-based, America First, and faithful perspective ensures that you receive news that aligns with your values.
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