White House officials and congressional leaders have signaled they could have a deal to raise the country’s debt limit — and avoid a series of potential economic catastrophes — in the next few days. Administration representatives have been negotiating directly with House Republican leaders for the last week on the issue, and have publicly voiced optimism that a solution can be found soon.

‘Devastating’ debt default threatens troop pay, defense programs

Treasury officials have said the country is likely to run out of borrowing power around June 1 absent new legislation from Congress. If that happens, troops paychecks, veterans benefits and a host of other federal debts may not be paid on time, if at all.

The Senate is on recess this week, but could be called back into town on short notice if a debt limit deal is reached. The topic has been the main focus of both chambers for the last few weeks, delaying regular work on the defense budget for fiscal 2024 and the annual defense authorization bill.

Tuesday, May 23

Wednesday, May 24

The move has the potential to affect millions of individuals who access hundreds of sites around the globe annually. At present, the rules are a patchwork of different policies depending on which service runs the base, where the facilities are located and what extra requirements local commanders have decided to mandate.

Lawmakers say they want that simplified. In a letter to senior defense leaders sent May 19, the 12 Republican and Democratic lawmakers — a group led by Rep. Mark Alford, R-Mo., and including multiple members of the House Armed Services Committee — said changes are needed to ensure the safety of both troops stationed at sites and visitors with legitimate business on base.

“All of this has a profound impact on those with legitimate reasons to get on base, including military veterans seeking healthcare, Gold Star Families wanting to visit the gravesite of a loved one, household goods movers charged with relocating our troops, and truck drivers that deliver arms and ammunition, parcel packages, and food and retail goods that are destined for commissaries and exchanges,” the group wrote.

Here’s why some bases aren’t allowing spouses to accompany their newly eligible veteran to shop

“Businesses especially are feeling the impact of the current approach, and some have already or are considering pulling back from serving the Defense Department as a customer due to the high level of difficulty.”

The issue of base access has surfaced repeatedly in recent years as issues like commissary access for veterans and support service expansion for military families have evolved. Most sites require military identification and a vehicle search before entry, though other entry requirements can vary significantly.

Defense officials had promised clarity on base access rules “in late 2018 or 2019″ in communications with Congress five years ago. But the final rules have yet to be announced.

The lawmakers also expressed concerns that military leaders will adopt new rules without any public review, potentially leading to confusion and frustration as visitors attempt to visit installations.

“Standards must be workable and structured to ensure that visitors can have a high level of confidence in compliance before they arrive at the gate,” they wrote. “After all this time, it would be a shame for the Department to publish something that simply does not work.”

Defense Department officials declined to comment on the letter, saying they would respond directly with the congressional offices involved.

The acknowledgment Thursday comes at a time when Pentagon is under increased pressure by Congress to show accountability for the billions of dollars it has sent in weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine and as some lawmakers question whether that level of support should continue.

It also could free up more money for critical weapons as Ukraine is on the verge of a much anticipated counteroffensive — which will require as much military aid as they can get. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously said the offensive was delayed because they did not yet have everything they needed.

The error was caused when officials overvalued some of the systems sent to Ukraine, using the value of money it would cost to replace an item completely rather than the current value of the weapon. In many of the military aid packages, the Pentagon has opted to draw from its stockpiles of older, existing gear because it can get those items to Ukraine faster.

“During our regular oversight process of presidential drawdown packages, the Department discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine. In some cases, ‘replacement cost’ rather than ‘net book value’ was used, therefore overestimating the value of the equipment drawn down from U.S. stocks,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.

When will the war in Ukraine end? Experts offer their predictions.

She added that the mistake hasn’t constrained U.S. support to Ukraine or hampered the ability to send aid to the battlefield.

A defense official said the Pentagon is still trying to determine exactly how much the total surplus will be. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the comptroller has asked the military services to review all previous Ukraine aid packages using the proper cost figures. The result, said the official, will be that the department will have more available funding authority to use as the Ukraine offensive nears.

The aid surplus was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

To date the U.S. has provided Ukraine nearly $37 billion in military aid since Russia invaded in February 2022. The bulk of that has been in weapons systems, millions of munitions and ammunition rounds, and an array of trucks, sensors, radars and other equipment pulled from Pentagon stockpiles and sent quickly to Ukraine.

Members of Congress have repeatedly pressed Defense Department leaders on how closely the U.S. is tracking its aid to Ukraine to ensure that it is not subject to fraud or ending up in the wrong hands. The Pentagon has said it has a “robust program” to track the aid as it crosses the border into Ukraine and to keep tabs on it once it is there, depending on the sensitivity of each weapons system.

There also is a small team of Americans in Ukraine working with Ukrainians to do physical inspections when possible, but also virtual inspections when needed, since those teams are not going to the front lines.

In late February, the Pentagon’s inspector general said his office has found no evidence yet that any of the billions of dollars in weapons and aid to Ukraine has been lost to corruption or diverted into the wrong hands. He cautioned that those investigations are only in their early stages.

Since 2017, thousands of Veterans Benefits Administration employees have been required to work two to four hours extra each week to help keep pace with the workload of incoming claims. Department leaders said this week that they will suspend the mandate in July and August, to reduce stress and provide flexibility for summer vacation plans.

For department leaders, the overtime issue shows the difficult balance leaders need to navigate between the potential risk of making veterans wait longer for cases to be settled and the potential risk of working staff so hard to keep up with demand that they start to leave in droves.

Enrollments in VA medical care spiked after PACT Act passage last year

Under Secretary for Benefits Joshua Jacobs pledged to get rid of the required overtime altogether, during a May 16 House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing.

“I don’t think it’s a sustainable practice,” he said. “But we also can’t yet move away from it completely because of the total workload … Ultimately, we need to move away from it, but we also have to be able to make sure that veterans aren’t waiting lengthy periods of time for their claims.”

VA claims processors completed about 1.7 million cases in fiscal 2022, the most ever. Halfway through fiscal 2023, they’re on pace to surpass that mark.

But the department has also seen a steady increase in the claims backlog in the last year because of the rising number of cases coming in. As of May 15, the number of claims waiting more than four months for a decision was just under 211,000, up about 60,000 cases from last fall.

Much of that stems from the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act — better known as the PACT Act — passed last summer. More than 500,000 veterans have applied for new benefits under the law, which expands compensation for military toxic exposure injuries.

Jacobs said the long-term solution to that workload problem is hiring more staff. The department currently employs about 29,000 Veterans Benefits Administration employees, up 15% over the last 18 months.

But getting all of those new workers fully trained takes up to two years, meaning the existing workforce will have to continue shouldering the burden of high caseloads for now.

While the current mandatory overtime rules have been in place since 2017, VA has used the tool periodically for the last two decades, especially at times of new benefits expansion. Jacobs did not specify a target date for when the policy might be ended.

The deal means five more years of partnership between the department and the digital information firm, both of which have come under scrutiny for work so far on the $16 billion project. Only a few sites are using the new records system, despite five years of effort so far, and future rollouts have been postponed indefinitely until key improvements are made.

Glitches in the system have produced more than 150 cases of veterans suffering harm from medical record mistakes and shortfalls. Administrators reported last fall that the system failed to deliver more than 11,000 orders for specialty care, lab work and other services, all without alerting health care providers the orders had been lost.

Neil Evans, acting program executive director of VA’s health records project, acknowledged in a statement that “the system has not delivered for veterans or VA clinicians to date, but we are stopping at nothing to get this right.”

VA halts all new work on health records overhaul

The contract announcement does not change the full halt on new deployments announced by the department last month. VA officials have said that they will not schedule any more system deployments “until VA is confident that the new [record system] is highly functioning at current sites and ready to deliver for veterans and VA clinicians.”

Getting military and veterans health records onto the same system has been a goal of federal administrators for decades. The Pentagon had some issues implementing the Oracle Cerner software but not as many setbacks as the VA.

The new agreement — five one-year contracts, to allow annual performance reviews of Oracle Cerner’s work — includes new accountability measures such as financial penalties for system down time and regular reporting of software shortfalls.

In a joint statement, House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., and Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., who leads the committee’s technology panel, said they remain skeptical that the new agreement will produce better results.

“The main questions we have about what will be different going forward remain unanswered,” they said. “This shorter-term contract is an encouraging first step, but veterans and taxpayers need more than a wink and a nod that the project will improve.”

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester was more optimistic following the news but added that “this is just the start of what’s needed to get this program working in a way deserving of our veterans and taxpayers.”

Oracle Cerner officials told House lawmakers during a May 9 hearing that they support the pause in rollouts and are committed to fixing the system problems in coming years. With the contract negotiations complete, that work will begin again at the five sites currently using the new records system.

The move comes just a few weeks after GOP leaders were hammered by Democrats and veterans advocates (including Disabled American Veterans and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America) for not including protections for veterans funding, in separate legislation calling for deep cuts in federal spending. The latest move is likely to elevate that political fight again, and cement the veterans budget at the center of partisan fiscal fights on Capitol Hill for months to come.

The appropriations plan — set to be voted on by the Republican controlled House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday — is roughly the same level for veterans benefits and programming that as President Joe Biden requested in his budget plan earlier this year. It would be an increase of almost 6% over current fiscal year funding levels.

Republicans said the plan “honors the country’s commitment to veterans” while also bringing more fiscal responsibility to the department.

But Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., and chairwoman of the appropriations committee’s panel on veterans issues, called the plan “a disappointing, deceptive, and potentially devastating bill for our veterans” that “plays right into Republicans’ larger plan to slash government funding.”

Veteran’s benefits take center stage in partisan budget showdown

At issue is the Toxic Exposures Fund, created as part of the sweeping Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act (or PACT Act) last summer. The fund assigns mandatory federal funding to cover the costs of benefits for veterans suffering illnesses from military toxins from things like burn pit smoke and chemical exposure.

Because the fund is mandatory, lawmakers cannot adjust the money in the same way they do for discretionary funds. Veterans groups who lobbied for that said the protection is needed to ensure that veterans benefits aren’t shortchanged by future political fights.

But Republican leaders have said the move creates a host of cost-projection problems for other veterans bills, and unnecessarily runs up VA spending. They also said that the administration has tried to force unrelated spending into the account. Under their appropriations plan, nearly three-fourths of the money for the fund — nearly $15 billion — would be shifted to discretionary funding, where the total can be adjusted annually.

“Veteran victims of burn pits and other toxic exposure were made a promise under the PACT Act — that their care and benefits would be guaranteed,” said retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, senior advisor to VoteVets, said in a statement after the appropriations plan release. “The Republicans in Congress are now proposing we toss that guarantee in the garbage and put funding at risk on an annual basis.”

The appropriations move is likely to have support in the Republican-controlled House but not the Democratic-controlled Senate. A House plan passed last month to limit non-defense federal spending next fiscal year similarly lacks support in the upper chamber of Congress.

That broader spending plan — locking in funding levels at fiscal 2022 levels — drew criticism from Democrats who said the move could threaten veterans programming because the proposed spending cuts were not specified.

By introducing a VA spending bill at roughly the same levels as the president’s request, Republicans muted much of that political attack, although the changes in Toxic Exposure Fund open up a new series of criticisms.

“House Republicans have repeatedly vowed that there will be no cuts to the care and benefits our veterans deserve, and [this] bill delivers on that promise,” House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Kay Granger, R-Texas, said in a statement.

The VA budget plan is the first of a dozen appropriations bills expected to be introduced by the House committee in coming weeks. Most of the rest have been delayed by ongoing negotiations among congressional leaders and the White House over raising the country’s debt ceiling, work that needs to be addressed in the next few weeks.

Military paychecks could be delayed or stopped altogether. Veterans benefits checks would similarly be delivered erratically. Equipment purchases could be canceled. Contractors and civilian workers could face the choice of furloughs or working without any guarantee of stable pay.

“Unlike the government shutdowns of the past, there is no scripted playbook for how this all goes,” said Rachel Snyderman, senior associate director of economic policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center. “We have never been in such a scenario before. But we know whatever happens, it could quickly become very chaotic.”

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden was scheduled to meet with senior congressional officials in the latest attempt to broker a deal raising the country’s debt ceiling. The Treasury is expected to reach the current limit sometime around June 1 absent congressional action to raise it.

Without a solution, the country could for the first time in history default on its debts, creating a cascade of financial problems across the economy.

Defense Department leaders have already warned those financial complications would have severe consequences for the military and other federal agencies.

At a Senate hearing on May 2, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said a spike in U.S. interest rates would have an “absolutely devastating impact” because of skyrocketing interest rates, which he noted are “already roughly at the level of the defense budget.” Just a few days later, at a separate Senate event, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that defaulting on the U.S. debt would result in “a substantial risk to our reputation” with allies and security partners across the globe amid questions “as to whether or not we will be able to execute programs.”

But a debt default will also have tangible effects on troops, veterans and their families, even if the timing of that impact is not clear.

“Because there is no precedent for a default, it is difficult to know the precise impacts on specific federal programs,” Veterans Affairs press secretary Terrence Hayes said in a statement.

“But what is clear is that, without the ability for the federal government to borrow funds, there is a very real potential that any government program or payment would be halted or severely delayed.

According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Defense Department has about $12 billion in payments to military and civilian retirees due on June 1.

Roughly $7 billion is owed to defense vendors between June 5 and June 17. Another $4 billion in military salary checks are set to be sent out on June 15. Snyderman said if the debt limit is not raised, that schedule of payouts gets thrown into disarray.

“The Treasury could prioritize some payments over others, but they also may just have to wait for other money to come in,” she said. “Now this becomes a cash flow crisis for the country.”

Austin in his Senate testimony warned that “we won’t, in some cases, be able to pay our troops with any degree of predictability.” That means money families need for rent, groceries and other basic expenses could be delayed.

Similarly, about $25 billion in veterans benefits set to be paid out in June could be delayed by days or weeks, causing problems for millions of families that depend on that support for their monthly income.

If Treasury officials prioritize those payments, veterans and service members might not see any disruptions. But that would mean delays to other government payouts instead, things like Medicare support, non-defense federal salaries and interest payments on the national debt (failing to pay that would downgrade the country’s credit rating, creating even more debt).

Todd Harrison, the managing director of the national security consulting firm Metrea Strategic Insights, noted that payment delays would also affect defense contractors.

“They could continue to do work and [the Defense Department] could continue to award contracts and obligate money, but the payment of invoices would be delayed,” said Harrison. “The administration could elect to stop all new contract awards and obligations during this period, but that would make the impact even worse,” while possibly violating the law.

“If they were to halt all new contract obligations, that would have a significant and immediate impact on [Defense Department] programs and activities,” he added.

The damage only gets worse if the crisis drags on well into the summer. Another $14 billion in defense vendor payouts are due before July 15, when another $3 billion in military paychecks and bonuses are scheduled to be paid out.

Failing to pay contractors could result in a host of lawsuits and long-term delays to procurement programs. Hayes said officials worry that vendors could “decide to reduce or completely cease providing goods and services to VA if payment was uncertain.”

Failing to pay troops — and requiring them to keep working anyway — could become a political nightmare for both parties.

Lawmakers in the past have passed legislation to blunt the impact of government shutdowns on military and veterans families, ensuring that some Department of Veterans Affairs appropriations are awarded a year in advance and ensuring that military members receive pay even during an appropriations lapse.

Those protections don’t exist if the money to cut checks isn’t there for the country.

Harrison noted that the Treasury could “continue borrowing and paying bills as usual” if Biden opts to invoke a clause in the 14th amendment. But doing so would likely mean court challenges and other complications, Biden said in a press conference earlier this month.

In March, Virginia Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine introduced legislation that would have enabled all government employees and contractors to postpone paying any bills during a shutdown or debt default. The proposal has not moved forward in recent weeks.

Defense leaders said the real legislative solution is simply passing a measure to increase the debt limit, as lawmakers have done 13 times since 2009.

Earlier this month, after another meeting with congressional leaders, Biden said that he was “absolutely certain” a deal could be reached and that default “is not an option.” But in the days since, no real path ahead on the issue has emerged.

The disparity raises questions about the Defense Department’s ability and commitment to solving the problem of lingering perfluorinated and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (better known as PFAS), used widely in the past in military firefighting foam. They may already be causing harmful environmental effects at military bases and inactive Defense Department locations.

A new analysis released by the Environmental Working Group says the price tag for cleaning up the “forever chemicals” swelled by $3.7 billion from 2016 to 2021, to total about $31 billion. But the Pentagon’s budget for the work rose only $400 million over that time period.

“The Defense Department is facing a ticking cleanup time bomb as funding falls dramatically behind cleanup costs,” said Jared Hayes, a senior policy analyst at EWG, in a statement. “It’s clear that funding at current levels cannot possibly catch up to rising cleanup obligations.”

DoD dragged its feet on toxic chemical exposure prevention and clean-up, IG finds

Defense Department officials did not respond to requests for comment. The department’s cleanup budget for affected sites in fiscal year 2021 was about $1.3 billion.

The department has stated that at least 707 military sites may have lingering contamination related to PFAS. Defense officials have in the past promised a full review of the scope of the problem.

Researchers from EWG said that without increased funding and focus on the problem “some sites plagued by these toxic chemicals might not get cleaned up for more than half a century.” The chemicals have been linked to a host of health problems, including increased risk of certain cancers, metabolic disruption and harm to individuals’ reproductive systems.

Environmental Working Group leaders said they want to see the funding levels for cleanup efforts significantly increased in fiscal 2024 — to $2.75 billion, almost double what the department requested — and maintained at a high level until the problems are resolved.

That funding level disparity is likely to be a point of debate in the upcoming congressional work on the annual defense authorization bill. Senate and House lawmakers are expected to write their respective drafts of the policy bill next month.

The findings are the latest confirmation of the lifelong, devastating effects of the toxic water at the site from the early 1950s to the late 1980s. It also potentially adds new fodder to dozens of civil lawsuits pending against the government for the hazardous conditions there, which may have harmed more than 1 million individuals stationed at the North Carolina base.

Researchers found that about one in every 370 troops reviewed for the study showed signs of the disease, a brain disorder that causes uncontrollable movements of the limbs and body. That is significantly above control groups of veterans examined.

Military families devastated by Camp Lejeune water toxins

The study did not specifically look at spouses and children living at the base, but researchers concluded that the findings “suggest that the risk of Parkinson’s disease is higher in persons exposed to trichloroethylene and other volatile organic compounds in the water.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those chemicals leached into water supplies at the base from an off-site dry cleaning firm in the area. Leaks from underground storage tanks and industrial site pollution also contributed to the contamination, according to the National Research Council. Military officials did not discover the toxic water quality until 1982, almost 30 years after the contamination began.

The Department of Veterans Affairs already has Parkinson’s disease listed as one of multiple presumptive conditions related to service at the site. For veterans who served at Camp Lejeune for at least 30 days and developed the illness, it is presumed the disease originated there. They do not have to prove a military connection when applying for disability compensation.

However, those benefits do not extend to family members. Last year, as part of the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, lawmakers for the first time allowed those individuals (and veterans who believe they are entitled to additional payouts) to sue the government “for harm caused by exposure to the contaminated water.”

Those lawsuits are still pending in federal courts. Lawmakers have expressed concerns about the number of lawyers advertising quick resolutions on the issue, and they are discussing possible limits to attorney’s fees and commissions related to any Camp Lejeune legal decisions.

Individuals with questions related to VA benefits tied to Camp Lejeune water contamination can visit the department’s web site. The JAMA study is available at the publication’s web site.

House Armed Services Committee members were supposed to begin public work on their initial draft of the annual defense authorization bill last week, but Republican leaders halted those plans until sometime next month. Senate lawmakers similarly have pushed back the defense policy work until mid-June, after they see what political deals are made in the next few weeks.

The Congressional Budget Office on Friday warned that the federal government is likely to run out of borrowing authority in early June. White House officials have warned that triggering a national credit default will cause a host of problems for agencies, including potentially delaying pay for troops and civilian workers.

President Joe Biden was scheduled to meet with House and Senate leaders on the issue on Friday, but the meeting was scrapped as staff members continued behind-the-scenes negotiations. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has said if a deal isn’t in place in the next two weeks, lawmakers won’t have enough time to avoid potential problems.

Tuesday, May 16

Wednesday, May 17

Thursday, May 18

Conservatives have blasted Pentagon’s efforts so far, which started in earnest after the January 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, decrying the training on how to spot hateful ideology as an effort to politicize the military and tarnish the public image of the armed forces. But Democratic lawmakers — and senior military officials — say teaching troops to identify and eschew extremism is necessary to prevent the few troops with radical views from poisoning the wider force with their hateful ideology.

“White nationalism has no place in our armed forces and no place in any corner of American society,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the chamber’s floor Thursday. He urged Senate Republicans to make a similar public pledge, in response to controversial comments by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., earlier this week.

Tuberville was asked if he thought white nationalists should be allowed to enlist and serve in the military.

“Well, they call them that,” Tuberville told NPR local station WBHM in Birmingham. “I call them Americans.”

Some troops disappointed by check-the-block extremism stand-downs, others laud commanders

Schumer said any support for such extremist views in the ranks is “utterly revolting,” but Tuberville’s office said the quotes have been taken out of context, insisting in a statement that the Republican senator “was being skeptical of the notion that there are white nationalists in the military, not that he believes they should be in the military.”

Tuberville, and many GOP colleagues, have criticized the Defense Department’s 2021 extremism “stand-down,” a military-wide training on the potential signs and dangers of extremist ideology. Critics said the training – part of diversity, equity and inclusion education embraced by the Biden administration – wasted troops’ valuable time, while military leaders said it amounted to only a few hours of extra work for each individual.

As Schumer delivered his Senate speech on Thursday, House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., introduced legislation which “prohibits the use of appropriated funds to investigate extremism in the military” and would require an audit of all diversity programs currently active across the services.

The measure is sure to be a key point of contention in the committee’s upcoming debate over the annual defense authorization bill, expected to be drafted next month.

Supporters of the Defense Department training and the broader anti-extremism efforts point to recurring issues of violent ideology among individuals linked to the military.

For example, in the eight months following the mandated stand-down, defense officials reported 100 cases of servicemembers engaging in prohibited acts of extremism, according to committee documents.

And last month, National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, 21, was arrested for leaking online classified documents related to U.S. support to Ukraine and other foreign allies. The Associated Press reported that the airman frequently posted racist and violent comments in online chat rooms.

FBI probes how failed soldier turned Texas mall shooter

And only days ago, a Texas man who years ago was booted after only three months of Army basic training, gunned down eight people in an attack investigators believe may have been spurred by his racist and pro-Nazi views.

In the wake of the Texas attack, members of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism are meeting with lawmakers, urging them to adopt the group’s recommendations to address extremism in the military, co-founder Wendy Via told the Military Times.

The group proposed about a dozen measures it wants the Pentagon to implement, including bolstering its tattoo database to keep watch for hateful insignia, investigating the social media activity of prospective recruits, and creating an intervention program for service members after they’ve been forcibly removed from the military and are vulnerable targets for extremist groups. So far, the group has experienced pushback in Congress, Via said.

“There should be more opportunity for members of the military to have this kind of extremist training, just like they have sexual assault training,” Via said. “Just because they have sexual assault training doesn’t mean that every member of the military is prone to commit sexual violence.

“Nor is training about extremism meant to say that every member of the military is racist.” But Via said that’s what lawmakers are saying of the training, “in order to justify their refusal to address any kind of white supremacy.”

National Counterterrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid, speaking Wednesday at the Global SOF Foundation’s SOF Week here, said the most likely type of attack isn’t a large-scale al-Qaida-style coordinated one.

Instead, what’s more likely are is strikes from small “leaderless” cells or lone actors. That’s partly because of the decades spent by U.S. intelligence and military forces dismantling large terrorist networks, she said.

Smaller cells and lone actors are harder to track, and they leverage technology to mask their work and support each other in disparate locations.

Al-Qaida and its affiliates extend from south Asia to both east and west Africa, she said, while the Islamic State continues to proliferate in parts of Africa and its affiliates also continue to operate in Afghanistan.

The bulk of those organizations are “more diffuse and diverse than what we’ve seen in decades,” Abizaid said.

This challenge threatens the work of countering peer adversaries such as Russia and China, experts said. Anne Patterson, former assistant secretary for near eastern and north African affairs at the U.S. State Department, said during the same panel event the U.S. must “keep a focus on terrorism.”

“Nothing would be a bigger distraction to great power competition than a terrorist attack,” added Patterson, who is now a senior fellow at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University.

Patterson said the key to staving off terrorist attacks is special operations.

“What can SOF do to make these countries more resilient and able to protect themselves against terrorist attacks?” she said.

Retired Lt. Gen. Kenneth Tovo, former head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, noted terrorist groups and crises are often used by peer adversaries as part of their approach to competing against the United States.

“We are likely to see an increase in crises that require some level of attention,” Tovo said.

There are more than 70,000 special operations individuals operating in more than 80 countries, but Tovo said they shouldn’t handle it all. Crisis response is vital, but that response, “doesn’t necessarily need to be us.”

The hard part is the “investment in advance” that it takes to build partner forces, he added.

SOCOM commander Bryan Fenton said during his Tuesday keynote address here that the U.S. training support provided to Ukraine in 2014 may have led to some of the recent battlefield successes against Russia, but that support began even earlier.

Fenton said, that all started in 1994 when special operations troops went to Ukraine and started partnering with Ukrainian forces.

“First, it was just being there,” he said.

Then it was staying there and returning to work with the same Ukrainian teammates over the years. And lastly, he said, it was “plowing in the lessons we have learned in places like Iraq and Afghanistan” to the Ukrainian forces, now being used against Russia.

WASHINGTON — The Navy’s top officer for the Pacific region plans to appear before the House China Committee in a closed session Thursday about a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, sources told Defense News.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, the commander of the Navy’s Pacific fleet will brief bipartisan, 24-member committee, which the House established in January in part as a way to help Taiwan defend itself from a potential attack. Paparo is expected to tell lawmakers about what’s needed to defend Taiwan, including resource requirements and shortages, capability shortfalls, modernization efforts as well as logistics and coordination with allies and partners, the committee’s staff said.

“Even though we’ve gotten this massive wake-up call in Ukraine, we haven’t yet done what is necessary to start replenishing new stockpiles and building them at a rapid rate to surge and pre-position them to the [Pacific] theater,” Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., the chairman of the committee, told Defense News in a Wednesday statement. “Given the geography, we can only fight with what we have there.”

Paparo’s appearance before the committee had not been previously reported.

For months, the China Committee has been preparing a bipartisan series of policy recommendations for possible inclusion in the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. The House Armed Services Committee was set to begin work on the defense policy bill this week, but Republican leaders postponed it at the last minute amid a partisan debate over raising the debt ceiling and discretionary spending levels.

The proposals are expected to include specific measures aimed at deterring China from invading or blockading Taiwan. China views Taiwan as a breakaway province and has vowed to retake the island by force if necessary.

In April, the China Committee also held a tabletop war game over Taiwan and Gallagher told Defense News in a subsequent interview that the war game highlighted the need to ramp up production of high-priority munitions, help clear the $19 billion arms sale backlog to Taipei and bolster Pentagon cybersecurity cooperation with the island nation.

“It’s naïve to assume that we could somehow surge hard power to the Pacific,” Gallagher said Wednesday. “The proceedings accentuated this point and I believe surging stockpiles is something we could fix in a bipartisan fashion.”

The war games illustrated that the U.S. would need between 1,000 to 1,200 long-range anti-ship missiles in a conflict with China over Taiwan, and currently the U.S. has less than 250 in its inventory. Other high-priority munitions Gallagher identified are the Naval Strike Missiles, which U.S. Marines are fielding in Japan and the Philippines as part of an expeditionary ship interdiction system; Joint Strike Missiles; Joint Direct Attack Munitions; and SM-6 missiles.

Gallagher reiterated his call for congressional appropriations to fund multi-year munitions procurement as authorized in this year’s defense policy bill. But the fiscal year 2023 government funding bill allocated $687 million for the Army for two years to accelerate production “of critical munitions to replace defense articles” provided to Ukraine and its backers, far less than what he said is sufficient.

“We need to take action to deter [Chinese Communist Part] aggression and arm Taiwan to the teeth before any crisis begins,” said Gallagher in his statement. “The United States needs to deliver on our promises to clear the $19 billion weapons backlog to Taiwan, conduct enhanced joint military training and reinforce our military posture throughout the region.”

The Pentagon is also preparing to transfer weapons from existing U.S. stockpiles to Taiwan using presidential drawdown authority, the same mechanism President Joe Biden has used to arm Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. The Senate has also started work on a large China bill that will include components to bolster U.S. allies and partners in the Pacific.

The warning from the military’s top civilian leader, comes as the number of individuals caught up in the stalemate has swelled to more than 200. Without a political compromise, clearing the backlog of nominations could take months of parliamentary work, snarling all other business in the Senate.

But Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has said he has no intention of dropping the holds, which he enacted in March as a response to the Defense Department’s abortion access policy from last fall. He reiterated his complaints in an interview with WBHM on Tuesday, calling the policies an illegal overreach by military leaders.

Former SecDefs blast senator over ‘irresponsible’ nomination holds

Last week, in a public letter, the seven living former Defense Secretaries blasted Tuberville’s blocking of the military moves as “irresponsible” in terms of national security and military personnel management. Austin, in a similar letter to senior Senate Democrats first reported by USNI, echoed the same message.

“The longer this hold persists, the greater the risk the U.S. military runs in every theater, every domain, every service,” he wrote.

“Never before has one senator prevented the Department of Defense from managing its officer corps in this manner, and letting this hold continue would set a perilous precedent for our military, our security, and our country.”

The list of holds includes the new commanders for U.S. Fifth Fleet in the Middle East and Seventh Fleet in the Pacific; the next director of intelligence for U.S. Cyber Command; a top Air Force strategic deterrence officer; and the next military representative to NATO.

Austin in his letter said 64 senior officers expected to take over new commands in the next three months are stalled by Tuberville’s objection. If the hold is not lifted, the total number of officers affected is expected to grow to around 650 by the end of the year.

“Ultimately, the breakdown of the normal flow of leadership across the department’s carefully cultivated promotion and transition system will breed uncertainty and confusion across the U.S. military,” he wrote.

Senate Democrats leaders have pushed Republican leaders to force Tuberville to drop his block of the military posts. On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he does not support putting holds on military nominations, but said all other questions about the fight should be directed to the Alabama lawmaker.

Tuberville has said he won’t drop his objection until military officials pull back the abortion policy, which provides leave time and stipends for troops or qualified family members to travel across state lines to receive abortion services.

Military leaders have said the new policy is needed to preserve troops’ medical rights following a number of states outlawing abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the long-standing Roe v. Wade ruling last summer.

WASHINGTON — The partisan fight over raising the debt ceiling has temporarily derailed Congress’ work on the annual defense authorization bill.

The House’s markup of the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act — initially scheduled to begin this Thursday — is now postponed until Republicans and Democrats can reach a spending agreement as part of the gridlocked debt ceiling negotiations, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told Defense News on Wednesday.

“I’m hopeful that as the speaker [of the House] meets with the president and the other congressional leaders on Friday that they can get some real specifics that get us closer to an agreement,” Scalise said at a news conference after the weekly Republican caucus meeting. “For now, we’re going to wait and see how that process plays out before starting the NDAA. But we’ve already been doing work on what those policies would look like on a national defense authorization.”

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., announced in a last-minute statement on Tuesday that the NDAA markup would be postponed until “the near future.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., met with President Joe Biden and other congressional leaders at the White House on Tuesday to discuss the debt ceiling, but the parties involved noted no progress was made on the issue.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has told Congress that the U.S. will default on its debts by June 1 absent congressional action to raise the ceiling.

House Republicans passed a bill last month along party lines that would raise the debt ceiling in exchange for several concessions, including $130 billion in discretionary spending cuts. The defense budget accounts for roughly half of annual discretionary spending.

Democrats are arguing Congress should pass a clean debt ceiling bill as congressional Republicans did under former President Donald Trump.

After Scalise noted the delay was due to the debt ceiling fight, Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey became the first Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee to come out swinging against the postponement. She accused Republican leaders of “putting partisan politics and a right-wing agenda above our national security, military readiness and the wellbeing of our servicemembers” as part of their “irresponsible attitude toward the debt ceiling.”

“This bill is the legislative linchpin of our national security,” Sherrill said in a statement. “It’s how Congress sets our national security policy, exercises oversight of the Department of Defense, and invests in military research and innovation. It’s also the legislation that raises servicemember salaries and provides for childcare and healthcare for military families.”

Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the same committee, blamed McCarthy for the markup delay “because reality has come crashing in on this ridiculous, hypocritical fantasy.”

“Republican leadership has been arguing both that President Biden’s very substantial defense budget proposal is somehow billions of dollars less than it must be to meet our defense needs, and that we must make massive cuts to our discretionary budget to meet their idea of what fiscal responsibility would look like,” Smith said in a statement.

The Senate has not officially scheduled a markup for its version of the FY24 NDAA. Politico first reported on Tuesday that the House delayed the NDAA markup.

“We will be prepared to pass a robust NDAA,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., the chair of the House Republican Conference and a member of the House Armed Services Committee. “The NDAA is the one bill that every single year we’ve been able to deliver and pass, certainly since I’ve been in Congress, but for decades.”

Officials from the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Friday that the veterans unemployment rate fell to 2.1% in April, the lowest mark since the start of 2000, when the agency began tracking monthly unemployment for the group.

Four of the five lowest monthly veterans unemployment rates recorded in the last 23 years have come since early 2022. The veterans jobless rate has been at least 1% lower than the national rate each of the last three months. The country’s unemployment estimate for April was 3.4%.

“It’s hard to see this as anything but great news,” said Jeff Wenger, senior economist for the RAND Corporation. “Unemployment is falling for all groups in America, but it’s falling even faster for veterans. The country really focused on this for years, and now we’re winning.”

That focus has included years of improvements to the military’s transition programs, boosted funding for Veterans Affairs’ job assistance efforts, and a concentrated drumbeat from congressional lawmakers about the value of hiring veterans.

Three years ago, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in America, more than 1 million veterans in the United States were collecting unemployment benefits. Last month, that number was about 184,000 individuals.

How companies seek out veterans for employment

“In a lot of ways, we’ve seen a full reversal of the ‘broken veteran’ narrative,” Wenger said. “Today, instead of seeing veterans as not employable, we’re seeing companies really seek them out.”

But in a twist, Congress’ current fight over the country’s debt ceiling may threaten that positive veterans employment news. Last month, analysts from the Brookings Institution warned that even with a short-term default “the economy is likely to suffer sustained — and completely avoidable — damage.”

A politically-based recession brought on by the effects of a national credit default could hit industries with high populations of veteran employees.

“When we’ve seen the technology sector layoffs in recent months, that’s an industry that doesn’t really have as many veterans, so the effects have been minimal,” said Rosalinda Maury, director of applied research at the Institute of Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University.

“But industries like leisure, hospitality and retail, those are ones that could really hurt veterans if there are economic issues during the summer.”

Support services for homeless veterans set to expire

Cutbacks to transportation jobs brought on by slower corporate growth or cutbacks would also significantly impact veterans. About one in every 13 working veterans in America today has a job in that industry. For non-veterans, it’s about one in every 20 workers.

However, Maury said the biggest potential impact would be if a debt ceiling default caused issues with federal and state government hiring, or forced furloughs of those workers. Nearly one-fourth of all veterans have jobs in federal or local government posts, well above the 13% rate for non-veterans.

Wenger said if such a situation arises, the government jobs issues are likely to be only a temporary problem, unless the political showdown drags on for months. In that case, veterans unemployment is likely to increase as national unemployment rates also rise.

“It’s hard to be too doom and gloom right now on veterans employment,” he said. “But we have to see what happens next.”

Congressional leaders are scheduled to meet with President Joe Biden on Tuesday to discuss solutions for the debt ceiling impasse. The May unemployment numbers for veterans are due out on June 2, around the same date that Federal Reserve officials have warned the country may hit the debt limit and start seeing economic side effects.

The defense policy bill is one of the few reliable pieces of legislation to advance through Congress annually, passing into law for more than six consecutive decades. It sets the parameters for military spending priorities, renews a host of pay and benefits authorizations, and includes hundreds of new program parameters and personnel rules.

The six sections of the bill to be released (and likely approved by subcommittees) this week will show just a few sections of the full measure to be marked up by the full committee later this month. But issues like scaling back diversity initiatives in military training and limits on defense abortion policies — topics expected to be major debate points this year — could be previewed in those early looks.

Both the House committee and its Senate counterpart are hoping to get their respective drafts of the legislation onto their respective chamber floors in June. But the ongoing fight between Republicans and Democrats over extending the nation’s debt ceiling could push that schedule back.

Tuesday, May 9

Wednesday, May 10

Thursday, May 11

Friday, May 12

The letter — signed by both Republican and Democratic nominees to the top Pentagon post — is the latest salvo in the ongoing fight between the Biden administration and the Republican senator, who is objecting to the Defense Department’s abortion access policies by snarling normally routine Senate confirmation business.

Tuberville, a Republican, began his holds in March. They now include about 200 general and flag officers awaiting promotion and new assignments, plus several civilian Defense Department nominees. In a letter to Senate leaders, the group of former defense secretaries called the move “irresponsible and uncaring” and urged resolution to the issue.

“We appreciate that senators can have sincere and legitimate concerns about a Pentagon policy, including as it may relate to broader domestic or social issues,” they wrote. “However, we believe placing a hold on all uniformed nominees risks turning military officers into political pawns, holding them responsible for a policy decision made by their civilian leaders.”

No end in sight to Senate fight over military nominations

Signers of the letter were Jim Mattis, Mark Esper, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, William Cohen and William Perry. The list includes every living individual confirmed to the defense secretary post since 1994 except current Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Tuberville has said he won’t drop his objection until military officials pull back the defense policy announced last fall which provides leave time and stipends for troops and qualified family members to travel across state lines to receive abortion services.

Military leaders have said the move was needed to preserve troops’ medical rights following a number of states outlawing abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the long-standing Roe v. Wade ruling last summer.

A series of defense officials have criticized Tuberville’s holds in testimony on Capitol Hill in recent weeks, but Tuberville said he has not seen any evidence that military readiness is being jeopardized by the political fight.

Among the command positions stalled by the move are the new head of the 5th Fleet in Bahrain, the new head of the 7th Fleet in the Pacific, and the next director of intelligence at U.S. Cyber Command.

“If this blanket hold is not lifted, nearly 80 three- and four-star commanders who are ending their terms in the coming months will not be able to be replaced,” the former defense secretaries wrote.

Lawmakers can call up individual nominations and promotions for full-chamber votes, and have done so for a few posts already. But going through all 200 could take months of procedural votes.

Senate Republican leaders have either supported Tuberville’s holds or declined public requests to convince the Alabama lawmaker to find an alternative way to object to the abortion issues.

In a statement following the defense secretaries’ letter, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., reiterated his objection to Tuberville’s holds.

“This blockade is a profound attack on the professionalism of our military,” he said in a statement. “It needs to end. These officers earned their military promotions based on their merits. They do not deserve to be prevented from promotions and positions … because of policy issues that are beyond their control.”

If the funding measure does not pass by May 11, tens of thousands of veterans will be cut off from services like free rides to Veterans Affairs clinics, telehealth medical services and increased financial assistance for rent costs.

“One day, these folks will be able to get from homeless shelters to medical centers for care, and the next day they won’t,” said Spencer Bell, policy analyst for the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. “You’re talking about people who don’t have cars or ways to get there. We’re up against the wall here.”

Veterans Affairs officials and community activists have been warning about the deadline for weeks, but have been unable to convince lawmakers to pass a solution. Now, with just seven days left before the national emergency related to COVID-19 ends, a pair of senators are offering last-minute legislation to stave off the problem. A similar House attempt has already failed, underscoring the difficult path ahead.

VA aims to help 38,000+ homeless veterans again this year

The legislation — introduced May 4 by Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska — extends a host of COVID-19-era authorities given to VA officials, passed at the height of the pandemic to ensure veterans would continue to receive support services amid office closures and quarantine restrictions.

Under the plan, VA would be allowed to continue online conferences between veterans and administrators for health care visits, welfare checks and other case management issues. Free transportation would continue to be provided to veterans without personal vehicles or access to reliable public transportation. Higher rates for housing stipends and clothing allowances would also remain in effect until 2026.

The legislation also includes an option for virtual home visits for veteran caregivers, who must periodically check in with VA staff to confirm the health and welfare of their vets. The program is set to return to in-home visits only if the authority is not approved.

Tester called the services “a critical lifeline” and pledged in a statement to move the legislation “across the finish line as quickly as possible.”

VA Under Secretary for Health Dr. Shereef Elnahal had warned in late April that if the authorities are not extended past May 11, veterans who rely on the assistance will suffer.

“They’re depending on this,” Elnahal said. “We’re talking about authorities that have allowed for 750,000 free rides for veterans since the start of the pandemic. We really need this, and we need Congress to help out with this.”

VA officials say the money needed to keep the programs running amounts to a few million dollars and is already covered in available funds within department budget accounts. However, language included in last year’s Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act (which is not connected to the pandemic authorities) has created technical accounting problems regarding the potential costs of new veterans legislation.

That was the cause of the failure of the proposed House fix. During a April 28 legislative mark-up, Republican leaders rejected a measure to extend the authorities because it ran afoul of chamber rules regarding new spending and budget offsets.

Veterans Affairs drops mask requirement for all agency medical offices

Whether the Senate bill can get around those issues is unclear. House and Senate leaders met with veterans groups on Monday to discuss the problem, but have not offered any long-term solutions. Other veterans bills have advanced in both chambers despite the accounting issues, but only after significant behind-the-scenes negotiations.

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee members are expected to debate and advance the new bill next week, just a few days before the pandemic authorities expire. The measure would need to be fast-tracked in the House and Senate to reach the president’s desk before Thursday night, and a handful of lawmakers could derail the process with related or unrelated objections.

Bell said community leaders are just now trying to find alternative aid for the veterans who could be hurt by the vanishing support services.

“There’s not really a plan, because everyone thought that Congress would have handled this by now,” he said.

The lawmakers asked the Government Accountability Office to launch a probe to help Congress determine whether to scale back or shutter the JROTC program altogether.

“Any incident of sexual abuse or harassment is one too many and betrays the faith and trust that JROTC cadets and their families have placed in the U.S. military,” wrote the group, which included Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee chairwoman Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and House Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md.

The move further clouds the long-term stability of the program, viewed by military leaders as a key recruiting and outreach tool. There are JROTC programs a more than 3,500 U.S. high schools, reaching more than 500,000 students.

Sexual misconduct in JROTC programs higher than previously reported

The lawmakers’ request comes a few months after Defense Department leaders acknowledged that sexual abuse and harassment of high school students has been a significant problem in the program. Between 2017 and 2022, at least 58 such cases occurred.

At least 46 instructors have been decertified over the last five years because of sexual abuse allegations. Two other instructors died by suicide before their cases could be settled.

GAO officials have not yet responded to the request, but typically pursue investigations in response to lawmaker inquiries. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have previously called on the Pentagon to investigate the issue.

Junior ROTC has ‘mixed’ impact on student outcomes, new study shows

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been focused on recruiting and retention issues since the military services last year struggled or failed to meet recruiting goals. On May 2, Army leaders told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee that they believe they will miss their recruiting goals again this year.

The new package includes Hydra-70 rockets, which are unguided rockets that are fired from aircraft. It also includes an undisclosed number of rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, mortars, howitzer rounds, missiles and Carl Gustaf anti—tank rifles. The weapons will all be pulled from Pentagon stocks, so they can go quickly to the front lines. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid has not yet been formally announced.

The latest shipment comes as Ukrainian officials say they are readying a counteroffensive — with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov declaring they are in the “home stretch, when we can say: ‘Yes everything is ready.’” Ukrainian officials have said they are stockpiling ammunition to stow it along potentially long supply lines.

Reznikov said Monday that the key things for the assault’s success would be “the availability of weapons; prepared, trained people; our defenders and defenders who know their plan at their level, as well as providing this offensive with all the necessary things — shells, ammunition, fuel, protection, etc.”

The U.S. in recent months has declined to say exactly how much materiel will be sent to Ukraine, but the latest package resembles other previous deliveries. Officials said there will also be trucks, trailers, spare parts, and other maintenance assistance.

This is the 37th package of Pentagon stocks to go to Ukraine since the war began in February 2022, and it brings the total U.S. military aid to about $36 billion.

Officials have said the weapons and other equipment will help as Ukraine prepares to shift from what has been a long and bloody winter stalemate, focused on heavy fighting in Ukraine’s east, particularly around the town of Bakhmut in the Donetsk province.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Russia was continuing to concentrate its efforts on offensive operations in Ukraine’s industrial east, focusing attacks around Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Marinka.

The balloon was first detected by radar on Friday and “Pacific Air Forces launched three F-22s to assess the situation and visually identified a spherical object,” U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said. “We monitored the transit of the object and assessed that it posed no threat.”

The defense official said the balloon was floating at about 36,000 feet (11,000 meters), and it did not fly over any critical defense infrastructure or sensitive sites. After determining that the balloon presented no threat to people on the ground or to aviation over Hawaii, the military took no action to bring it down, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

It’s not clear who owns the balloon, which has now passed out of Hawaii’s airspace, the official said.

The latest balloon sighting comes about three months after the U.S. military shot down what officials said was a Chinese spy balloon that crossed Alaska and part of Canada before returning to the U.S. and triggering widespread interest as it flew across the country. It was shot down over the Atlantic off the South Carolina coast on Feb. 4. Large portions of the balloon were recovered by the U.S. military.

U.S. officials said it was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals as part of a huge, military-linked aerial surveillance program that targeted more than 40 countries. Beijing insisted the balloon was just an errant civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research that went off course due to winds and had only limited “self-steering” capabilities.

The U.S. military acknowledged there have been several other balloons that have been tracked over and near the U.S. in recent years, but none lingered over America for as long as that one did. The incident further eroded relations between the U.S. and China.

About 1,500 active duty troops will be deployed to the U.S. southern border to assist Homeland Security Department personnel in advance of an expected new wave of migrant crossing attempts later this month, according to officials close to the plan.

Homeland Security confirmed the news in an unsigned release Tuesday afternoon, saying that it requested the 1,500 troops for 90 days “due to an anticipated increase in migration.” Fox News first reported the mission on Tuesday morning.

The service members won’t handle law enforcement tasks and will instead try to “free up” border patrol agents, the release said, by focusing on “duties such as ground based detection and monitoring, data entry, and warehouse support.”

Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson, also confirmed the pending deployment in a Tuesday afternoon statement.

Ryder emphasized that the mission “is consistent” with previous Defense Department deployments to the southwest border. He said the increase in troops is temporary “until [Customs and Border Protection] can address these needs through contracted support.”

Troops are expected to start arriving on May 10, Ryder told reporters during a briefing Tuesday. They will come from active duty Army and Marine Corps units, he added, but declined to name them.

The 1,500 active troops would join 2,500 National Guardsmen who are currently deployed to the border as part of a years-long mission.

This is what it’ll take to end the military’s border mission

The deployment could potentially last longer than 90 days, Ryder confirmed. The Pentagon is looking at replacing them with reserve component troops or “contracted entities” at the end of that initial period, he said.

The orders come just a few days ahead of the expiration of certain coronavirus pandemic authorities to regulate border crossings into the United States. The national emergency regarding COVID-19 will end on May 11.

Homeland Security officials and outside advocates have warned that the changes could lead to a rush of migrants attempting to enter the country, particularly along the southern border.

Although the military has supported border security efforts in “every year since 2006,” according to Homeland Security, the ongoing major mission there has been underway since 2018. That year, former President Donald Trump ordered more than 5,000 troops to the region in response to immigration concerns.

Trump’s mission initially began with active duty troops, primarily from the Army, but later transitioned to mobilized National Guard members under the Pentagon’s control.

But under the Guard’s watch, the federally-controlled military border mission suffered from misconduct and leadership problems, exacerbated by undermanned leadership structures and problems getting equipment there, a December 2021 Military Times investigation found. The Pentagon is still yet to disclose the findings of a major investigation into those issues.

It’s not yet clear whether the same command overseeing the federally-mobilized Guard troops along the border — Joint Task Force North — will also gain control of the active duty forces.

The feds’ border deployment is separate from a state-led initiative ordered by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that began in March 2021. Approximately 4,500 members of the Texas National Guard are assigned to the mission, dubbed Operation Lone Star, which experienced its own endemic issues with pay, benefits and mental health, according to reports by Military Times and The Texas Tribune.

A small portion of the Texas National Guard troops, legally considered state employees on Operation Lone Star, have been arresting migrants there. One Texas soldier shot a migrant in January.

The Homeland Security statement emphasized a key difference between troops operating under Defense Department authority and those operating under state orders.

“DoD personnel have never, and will not, perform law enforcement activities or interact with migrants or other individuals in DHS custody,” the agency said.

As soon as this summer, eligible refugees will be able to renew temporary work permits and protections from deportation for another two years, according to two administration officials, who spoke to The Associated Press condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss plans that haven’t yet been released. The protections were initially given in 2021, and renewed last year.

The effort is a temporary fix for more than 76,000 Afghans who arrived in the U.S. following the military’s chaotic and deadly withdrawal of U.S. troops, some of the darkest moments of Biden’s presidency. Many of those who arrived in the country have worked with U.S. officials, some for many years, as translators, interpreters and other partners.

Details of the renewal were first reported by CBS News. An official announcement is expected by the Department of Homeland Security later this week.

Immigrant advocate groups and veterans who have been working alongside the government trying to find a more permanent pathway for Afghans called the move a bandaid — but better than nothing.

“Afghans have been languishing on our shores awaiting a long-term answer and Congress continues to play games with their future,” said Shawn Van Diver, a Navy veteran and head of #AfghanEvac, a coalition supporting Afghan resettlement efforts. But he said he was happy the Biden administration would allow them to stay as Congress can’t find a solution.

The U.S. government admitted the refugees temporarily as part of Operation Allies Welcome, the largest resettlement effort in the country in decades, with the promise of a path to life in the U.S. for their service.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress had hoped to resolve their immigration status as part of a year-end government funding package in December. The proposal would have enabled them to apply for U.S. citizenship come August, when their temporary status was set to expire, as was done for other refugees from other nations in the past, including those from Cuba, Vietnam and Iraq.

But that effort failed over some Republican opposition, most notably Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who argued last year the bill went too far by including evacuees beyond those “who were our partners over the last 20 years,” and providing a road to residency without the proper screening required.

Some lawmakers are hopeful that with advanced screening measures added to the bill, it can gain the support needed to pass a Republican-controlled House and a slim Democratic majority in the Senate.

“It cuts to the core question of whether the U.S. keeps its promise of protection to its allies,” said Helal Massomi, an evacuee from Afghanistan and Afghan policy advisor at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, in a statement Monday. “Congress needs to keep our nation’s promise and make it clear to Afghans that this country is more than their temporary safe haven — it’s their home.”

Bloomberg News reported this week that House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., has set the last week of May as the target for committee mark-up of the authorization bill, which has passed into law for more than 60 years and contains hundreds of defense spending and programming provisions. In a typical year, it’s the only bill advanced by the committee that becomes law.

The Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to follow a similar schedule, although no details have yet been announced. Senators on the panel have several budget posture hearings set for this week, but have already begun crafting authorization bill priorities behind the scenes.

Even if the two chambers pass their separate drafts in early summer, final adoption of a compromise measure is likely to drag on until late fall. That’s because the bill is tied to congressional appropriations work, which still does not have a clear timeline for completion in either the House or Senate.

House members are on break this week, but the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee does have a field hearing scheduled for Thursday evening in San Diego to discuss efforts to prevent veteran homelessness in the region.

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