Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2026

HR 4016/S ???

Author

Dusty Wilson
July 15, 2025

What is this bill?

This is a 148-page bill that sets the 2026 spending budget and limitations of the Department of Defense. This includes all branches of the military and a bit of the CIA.

What makes this bill fascist?

At first glance, this is a typical funding bill and is, frankly, boring beyond words. But that’s how they get ya. After 128 pages of specifics about how many of what kind of plane the Air Force can buy and what specifics needs to be met for the Navy and Coast Guard to repair anchoring systems, we get to the first batch of spending limits that transcend being strictly military issues.

Due to this being a huge spending bill, I’m just going to cite the offending sections and explain why each are fascist.

  • Sec 8130: bans the DoD from granting money to the EcoHealth Alliance.

    • I had never heard of this org before, but they are a great entrance into the first of four fascist themes of this bill: covid conspiracy & pro-eugenics nonsense. The EcoHealth Alliance was founded in 1971 as Wildlife Preservation Trust International. They rebranded in 2010 to the EcoHealth Alliance due to a shift from general conservation to environmental health. By 2019 they were receiving between $9-15 million in funding per year from the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. They were also deep into the study of coronaviruses, specifically in China. As such, they developed a working relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. When covid hit, the conspiracy wheels started churning and suddenly the only American org working with Wuhan became target number one for people espousing the lab leak theory. The Alliance was accused of aiding in “gain-of-function” research in order to make coronaviruses worse. Evidence has never come forth proving this, but it did lead to the Department of Health and Human Services ending all their funding of EcoHealth Alliance and Joe Biden debarring them from funding until 2030. I do want to note that this isn’t nearly the most fascist part of the bill, but it is a very good intro to what is coming next.

  • Secs 8135, 8136, and 8137: bans the DoD from spending money to enforce mask mandates, enact disciplinary action against any soldier or civilian employee that doesn’t get a covid vaccination, and requiring students who attend DoDEA schools from getting a covid vaccine.

    • I’m tempted to make this section far too long for its own good by going into how covid disables people and further harms and continues to kill people who are already disabled. This would have to be followed by the eugenics-minded attitude of the entire Department of Health and Human Services who have stated that people should stop eating carrot cake if they want Medicaid or how all disabled people could be helped via forced labor on wellness farms. But, I think a lot of how I feel on the subject is stated best by Jacqueline Fox in the Harvard Bill of Health blog:

    • “While many people have exhibited heroic commitments to their fellow citizens, much of our governmental response is indefensible in a society that professes to care for all of its members. This implies we are not such a society. Rather, we are a society riddled with healthism discrimination based on health status and eugenics…As a result, although we are armed with the power to prevent much harm, we lack the will or inclination to use that power for our most vulnerable. Instead, we place different values on people’s lives using arbitrary definitions of quality, and treat people differently based on their health status. Examples include placing a lower value on a life because a person is older, disabled, or overweight.”

    • Fox stated this back in 2021, when things were, grading on a curve, better. This hard pivot into making it harder to stop covid and the current attitude of HHS makes it hard not to assume that eugenics is the end goal. Or, as Umberto Eco put it in Ur-Fascism: “contempt for the weak.”

  • Sec 8138 & 8145: healthcare supplied by the DoD is banned from covering gendering affirming care for children and adults

    • This bill has been on my mind since I read these sections. In December 2024, Joe Biden signed said spending bill into law that funded the military while banning gender affirming care for children of service-members. The Senate passed it 85-14 and HRC noted that it was the first anti-LGBTQIA+ bill that had passed since the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. Supporters of President Biden stated that this bill had to pass to ensure the military was funded and that if Trump had the ability to dictate this spending, it would just be worse…and thanks to the precedent set by Joe Biden, the Republicans know now exactly how to pass a bill while loading it with onerous stipulations. So long as you don’t overdo it, you can put in just enough to chip away at human rights while parroting that military spending is too important to leave on the table. People whined about purity politics then, but this is exactly what happens when you give fascists an inch. If they see you throw one person under a bus, that is enough to know they have your support to throw the rest right under.

  • Sec 8139: bans use of funds to punish anyone who believes that marriage is “a union between one man and one woman”

    • Speaking of the Defense of Marriage Act, if this bill is passed the DoD could no longer spend funds punishing people for being anti-LGBTQIA+ at work. Just legalized bigotry, so long as you work for the Department of Defense.

  • Sec 8144: bans the use of funds on drag queen story hour on military property or hiring drag queens for military recruitment

    • I’m jumping around a bit, but wanted to get to this one to close out the anti-LGBTQIA+ section of the bill. The furor over drag queens and the military hit its peak in 2023. This was the year that the Pentagon banned Drag Queen Story Hour from military bases and online weirdos discovered that the Navy hired a sailor, who went by the stage name Harpy Daniels, to act as a digital ambassador. The Pentagon has not lifted the ban on Drag Queen Story Hour, making this stipulation both hateful and pointless. As for Harpy Daniels, that ambassadorship was only for 2022 and by the time the weirdos found out about it, the campaign was already done. Again, the only goal of this section is to be hateful and to really drive it home that any non-heteronormative display has no place in the military. I believe Eco referred to this kind of posture & strict adherence to gender norms in Ur-Fascism as machismo.

  • Sec 8140: bans the use of funds to state that people are spreading misinformation and bans the military/DoD from partnering with orgs that censor speech or recommend the removal of social media content

    • On to the selective populism section of the bill, this part would block the DoD from spending money or awarding grants to organizations that claim people are spreading misinformation. They particularly seem interested in social media companies that ‘censor’ misinformation by removing said content. The bill doesn’t state who is the arbiter of truth in the government which leaves a lot open to Trump becoming “the interpreter of popular will.”

  • Secs 8141, 8147, and 8148: ban the use of funds for anything related to Critical Race Theory or DEI programs & offices

Which Dems voted for it?

Did it pass?

  • Passed the House on 7/18/25 by a vote of 221-209