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A bill to disinter a serial killer from a military cemetery, psyche, it's now an omnibus appropriations bill

S 1071

Author

Dusty Wilson
December 15, 2025

Note: Due to the sheer size of this bill, I placed most of my focus on the Defense appropriations part. I did skim the other sections, but if I missed anything fascist in them, please feel free to let me know via my account on Bluesky.

What is this bill?

This bill is one of the truest forms of a Frankenstein’ed bill I’ve seen this year. What started out as a very simple 1-page Senate bill has evolved into a piece of legislation that tops 3,000 pages & includes two bills that I have previously called out for being intensely fascistic.

When S 1071 was first submitted on March 14th, 2025, it was a simple bill that requested that a veteran by the name of Fernando Cota be disinterred from the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in Texas. He had served in the Vietnam War, which granted him the honor to be buried in a military cemetery, but following his service he was found to be a serial rapist and is one of the prime suspects to a series of murders in San Jose, California in 1984. He was still buried at Ft. Sam Houston, but after a large petitioning movement, Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn made a push to have Cota’s remains moved & Cornyn introduced S 1071. It passed the Senate by unanimous consent on August 1st.

It then sat in the House until December 7th. This is when the bill received these bulk amendments via committee, rather than the traditional way, via floor vote. This new version now includes appropriations bills for the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, and the Coast Guard. It also has a spattering of other non-appropriations bills as well. For more details, please feel free to look at each link above.

Is this bill fascist?

Seeing as it contains many of the fascist sections from both Mike Rogers and Roger Wicker’s competing NDAA bills, it is absolutely fascist.

S 1071 doesn’t contain every fascist section detailed in both bills, but it does retain:

  • Secs 502 & 916 from the Wicker bill, granting a pathway for Trump to fire Judge Advocate Generals (JAGs) and Joint Chiefs of Staff prior to the end of their terms (in S 1071 these are now Sec 506 & 911)

  • Sec 547 from the Wicker bill ordering Service Academies rely entirely on a ‘merit-based’ system (in S 1071 this is now Sec 525)

  • Sec 584 from the Wicker bill ordering public schools to have four military recruitment events each school year (in S 1071 this is now Sec 531)

  • Sec 548 from the Wicker bill that institutes the first federal ban on trans women from sports (specifically in collegiate sports for the Army, Navy, and Air Force) and a federal definition of sex that erases the basic existence of trans and intersex people. (in S 1071 this is now Sec 559A)

  • Sec 920 of the Wicker bill, the complete removal of DEI and CRT initiatives in the DoD (in S 1071 this is now Sec 901)

  • Secs 1021-24 of the Wicker bill, forbidden the closing of Guantanamo Bay until December 31st, 2026 (now Secs. 1032-35)

  • Secs. 1255, 1256, and 1534 of the Wicker bill funding specific defense initiatives in Israel (now Secs. 1231, 1232, & 1657)

Compared the whole of the Wicker and Rogers bills, this is a paired down version of both, but it does keep a lot of the elements that made both obviously fascist.

Which Dems voted for this?

Did this bill pass?

  • passed the House on 12/10/25 by a vote of 312-112

  • passed motion to proceed in the Senate on 12/11/25 by a vote of 75-22

  • passed cloture in the Senate on 12/15/25 by a vote of 76-20

  • passed the Senate 12/17/25 by a vote of 77-20