FY ’26 NDAA Conference Bill

By Scott McQuarrie, USMA ’72
President of Veterans for Fairness & Merit

The FY ’26 NDAA final bill is available here: https://thehill.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/NDAA.pdf

Reportedly, it will go to both houses for floor votes this week.

DEI opponents may be pleased with section 901’s (see attached pdf) repeal of certain DEI enabling legislation and prohibition of certain DEI practices at DoD.

I am unfamiliar with the existing DEI statutes’ language and do not know how comprehensive the provisions of section 901 are to reverse all elements of the statutory enablement of DEI in DoD. Expert review of those statutes and section 901 would be necessary to understand how far reaching the provisions of 901 are and the degree to which they would prohibit the reconstruction of DEI in DoD in the future.

Some other provisions of interest include:

Section 525 (p. 347) added “command selection” to an existing note (FY ’24 NDAA) preceding 10 USC 501 that says accessions and promotions (and now “command selection”) “shall be based on individual merit and demonstrated performance.”

This weak amendment of a “note” is a disappointment when considered against the possibility that HR 3838, section 524, which would have expressly prohibited consideration of race, ethnicity and national origin in all military personnel actions could have been adopted but was not.

The amended note would not prohibit racial discrimination in DoD military personnel actions. Longstanding DOD Instructions containing stronger language – requiring merit based military personnel actions and expressly prohibiting racial discrimination at DoD – have existed for many years but have been regularly ignored, illustrating the need for statutory prohibition.

Other notable sections:

555. (p. 379) Makes a technical correction to existing statutes governing service academy admissions regarding number of congressional nominations of alternates when a member submits a nominating slate using the principal/alternate slate type, changing the number of alternates from 9 to 14 to conform to FY ’24’s change of such statutes allowing members to nominate up 15 candidates per vacancy instead of the former 10. This technical correction had been included in HR 3838, section 544 (the rest of which was not adopted) and S 2296, section 541, which was adopted as section 555.

556. (p. 380) Changes from 3 to 5 the number of cadets/midshipmen who each year may lawfully obtain employment as professional athletes and, when commissioned, be transferred to the Selected Reserve, et al.

557. (p. 381) Changes from one to two the number of House of Representatives “other members” who may be appointed to the service academies’ Boards of Visitors by the Minority Leader of the House.

558. (p. 381) Modifies existing statute regarding USNA Director of Admissions to require the person be appointed by the President with advice and consent of the Senate and who shall have the “regular grade of captain in the Navy or colonel in the Marine Corps,” and specifying other parameters, and permitting the continuation of service of the current Director of Admissions until a replacement is named. This would appear to be a pathway for eventual replacement of the current USNA Dean of Admissions, who is a retired Navy captain.

HR 3838 sections

• 524 (Requirement of Equal Opportunity, Racial Neutrality, Equal Opportunity and Exclusive Use of Merit in Military Personnel Actions), which would have required all military personnel actions to be based exclusively on merit and expressly prohibited consideration of race, et al, in such actions, and
• 544 (Service Academies, Appointments and additional appointees), which would have updated existing statutes to codify, and incorporate basic minimum standards for, best current practices for merit-based admissions to increase the quality of entering service academy classes,
  were not adopted.

S 2296 section 547 (Prohibition on consideration of race, sex, color, ethnicity, national origin, or religion in service academy admissions decisions) also was not adopted.

Until there is statutory prohibition against racial discrimination in the military (as there is in federal law for the rest of the federal government – see Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964), there will be no practical impediment to resumption of racial discrimination, as happened (until very recently) frequently at DoD in the past 30 years in the form of racial preferences in accessions, assignments, command selection, school selection, and promotions. The only place in the federal government where racial discrimination is still not prohibited by statute is the U.S. military.

Inability/unwillingness among congressional leadership to pass legislation to improve the quality of service academy entering classes and, separately, to prohibit racial discrimination in the military should be deeply troubling to anyone who believes in racial neutrality, equal opportunity, merit, and optimizing the quality of military leaders provided to our warfighters.