Fresh opposition to defense cash in infrastructure bill

With help from Paul McLeary

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Quick Fix

— Four dozen groups deliver a fresh warning to congressional leaders not to use an emerging infrastructure package to fund defense projects.

— Former President Donald Trump reups his attacks on the top military officer he picked for the job after reports Gen. Mark Milley sought to head off a potential coup.

— Raytheon Technologies poaches a Boeing executive to fill its top lobbyist job.

HAPPY FRIDAY AND WELCOME TO MORNING DEFENSE, where we’re always on the lookout for tips, pitches and feedback. Email us at [email protected], and follow on Twitter @connorobriennh, @morningdefense and @politicopro.

On the Hill

JUSTICE OVERHAUL NEARS A VOTE: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand expects her legislation to strip military commanders of their authority to prosecute serious crimes will likely receive a vote in the Senate in the fall, marking a breakthrough for the two-thirds of the Senate that backs the change to address sexual assault and other problems in the ranks, your Morning D correspondent reports for Pros.

Speaking at a Defense Writers Group event Thursday, Gillibrand told reporters she's received assurances from Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that the bill will get a standalone floor vote. Floor action will likely be on hold until after August recess given Congress' crowded agenda for the remaining two weeks of July.

Dual track: Gillibrand plans to offer her bill as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act during a markup next week. She's also pursuing a separate floor vote to ensure the measure isn't torpedoed in a compromise defense bill hammered out with the House.

In the House: Military justice and sexual assault reform advocates are pursuing a similar approach across the Capitol. The House Armed Services Committee is expected to consider similar freestanding legislation offered by Rep. Jackie Speier to remove the chain of command from prosecuting major crimes as early as next week. The measure is also expected to be considered when the committee takes up the NDAA in the fall.

FIRST LOOK — GOP PRESSES FOR GUARD FUNDING: With the National Guard just weeks away from having to curtail training and maintenance due to budget shortfalls, GOP Rep. Steve Womack will introduce standalone legislation today that would reimburse the Guard $521 million for its months-long Capitol deployment. Womack will be joined on the bill by Rep. Ken Calvert, the top Republican on the House Defense Appropriations panel.

Guard funding is tied up in a broader debate over legislation to fund post-Jan. 6 Capitol security improvements. Republicans have opposed larger Democratic-written security packages, arguing lawmakers should resolve the immediate funding needs of the Guard and Capitol Police, then address other issues.

DEFENSE ISN'T INFRASTRUCTURE: Four dozen anti-war, faith and government watchdog groups are calling on Democratic leaders in the House and Senate not to give the Pentagon more money as part of a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure and jobs package that's still taking shape this week on Capitol Hill.

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Schumer, the groups argued that extra military spending — urged by members of both parties to shore up defense industrial facilities such as shipyards and depots — would detract from pressing domestic priorities, such as unemployment, housing and climate change.

"Militarized spending has not solved these problems, and in many ways has made them worse," they wrote. "Every additional dollar allocated to the Pentagon is another dollar that is not being used to address these urgent challenges, and will not provide the relief our communities desperately need."

Groups that signed onto the letter include the Council for a Livable World, Demand Progress, Public Citizen and Win Without War. Read the full letter.

Senate Democrats this week announced a $3.5 trillion spending plan that will allow them to fast-track funding for many of Biden's agenda items without GOP support. The larger Democratic-only plan is a vehicle for proposals that won't make it into a smaller $600 billion bipartisan infrastructure deal that could see votes in the Senate next week.

Or maybe defense is infrastructure? A bipartisan group in the House and Senate has pushed to include a variety of projects to modernize aging defense industrial facilities, such as shipyards, depots, arsenals and test ranges. The wish list could amount to tens of billions of dollars. Chief among them, naval advocates are seeking to wrap the Navy’s $21 billion plan to modernize shipyards into an infrastructure deal.

Backers of defense cash may have a shot at including some of those plans in a bipartisan infrastructure deal that’s still being written.

Progressive push: The missive comes after two dozen progressive Democrats — led by Reps. Barbara Lee, Mark Pocan and Cori Bush — wrote Pelosi and Schumer urging the leaders to keep new defense funding off of the massive spending package.

NDAA PUSH BEGINS: The Senate Armed Services Committee kicks off the annual NDAA process in earnest next week, holding its seven subcommittee and full committee markups in the span of three days.

Subcommittees will begin considering their portions of the defense bill on Monday and continue into Tuesday. The full committee meets in a closed session Wednesday to debate the bill, and may continue into the next day if needed.

Stay tuned for the Pro Defense team's coverage of what makes it into the must-pass bill. Here's the full SASC markup schedule.

ON THE FLOOR: Majority Leader Steny Hoyer confirmed in a letter to colleagues that the House will take up its first fiscal 2022 spending package the week of July 26. The seven-bill minibus includes measures that fund military construction projects and nuclear weapons programs under the Energy Department.

Not yet on the agenda is the $706 billion Pentagon funding bill approved this week by appropriators, though it could see a vote before August. Hoyer said in his note that other spending bills may come up that week, too.

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Happening Today

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, former ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker and others join a panel discussion on how the U.S. should aid Afghans who partnered with the U.S. hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies at 2:30 p.m.

Pentagon

'IF I WAS GOING TO DO A COUP...': Former President Donald Trump attacked Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley again Thursday, this time over new reports the Army general sought to prevent Trump from perpetrating a government takeover following his 2020 loss, our colleague Quint Forgey reports.

In a lengthy statement issued from his post-presidential office, Trump denied that he had ever “threatened, or spoke about, to anyone, a coup of our Government."

“Sorry to inform you, but an Election is my form of ‘coup,’” Trump said, “and if I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Milley.”

The statement from the former president came after excerpts published this week of a forthcoming book by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker stated that Milley described Trump’s efforts to reverse the results of the election as “a Reichstag moment” and that he and other military leaders began informally planning how they would block the then-president from using America’s armed forces in a way that could help him hold onto power.

Trump, of course, nominated Milley for the top post in 2018 despite then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' preference for then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein. In lashing out at Milley, Trump said he named him Joint Chiefs chair “only because the world’s most overrated general, James Mattis, could not stand him, had no respect for him, and would not recommend him.”

MARINE NO. 2 TAPPED: The Pentagon announced Thursday that Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Eric Smith has been nominated for his fourth star as part of his planned promotion to assistant commandant of the Marine Corps. Smith is currently the deputy commandant for combat development and integration, where he has been at the forefront of pushing for the rapid modernization of the Corps, keeping with the ambitious agenda of Commandant Gen. David Berger.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Minihan was also tapped for a fourth star and to become commander of Air Mobility Command. Minihan is currently the deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

Industry Intel

RAYTHEON SNAGS BOEING EXEC: Raytheon Technologies has hired Jeff Shockey away from Boeing to be its top lobbyist, POLITICO's Theodoric Meyer scoops for Pros.

Shockey was Boeing’s vice president of global sales and marketing for defense, space and government services. He’s also a former House Intelligence Committee staff director and was a co-founder of the lobbying firm now known as the S-3 Group. He'll succeed Tim McBride, who is retiring, as Raytheon’s head of global government relations.

Shockey is the second senior staffer to leave Boeing’s Washington office in recent weeks. Tim Keating, Boeing’s top lobbyist, abruptly left the company last month.

Shockey wrote in an internal Boeing announcement obtained by POLITICO that Mike Manazir, vice president of Government Services sales, will take over his job on an interim basis.

THANKS FOR THE TANKS: The U.S. has received a letter from the Polish government indicating Warsaw wants to buy as many as 250 Abrams tanks, an Army official confirmed to POLITICO. Delivery of the first General Dynamics-made tank could come as early as 2022, Polish officials said at a news conference announcing their interest on Wednesday. “Our task is to deter a potential aggressor. We all know where that aggressor is,” Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said, winking at Moscow.

The U.S. and NATO have been bolstering Polish defenses since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, including selling Warsaw $4.7 billion worth of Patriot missile systems in 2018, and agreeing to a $4.6 billion deal in 2020 for 34 F-35 fighter planes. Also last year, Poland agreed to pay all of the costs associated with stationing 5,500 U.S. troops in the country on a rotational basis.

More money, more ships. The Navy has announced a $90 million addition to an existing $192 million contract to support “maintenance and modernization efforts” for the first two Zumwalt destroyers — ships that have blown well past their initial budgets, are years behind schedule, and continue to struggle to find a place in the fleet.

After a string of failures, including the second ship being delivered with a broken $20 million engine, the service thinks it might have settled on a plan — outfitting the three ships with hypersonic missiles. That won’t happen until at least 2025, however, and that’s assuming the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic missile program stays on track. Overall, the three ships of the class are projected to cost over $13 billion to build.