Army faces fresh heat over security briefing that labeled pro-life groups as ‘terrorists’

Army officials were on the hot seat again Thursday as lawmakers on Capitol Hill pressed for answers over training materials meant to warn soldiers about potential threats while on guard duty. The program, which the Army has since repudiated, lumped in prominent pro-life organizations with other “terror groups.”

The episode that broke this summer caused a furor and fueled conservative complaints that the Biden administration’s campaign to root out “extremism” in the ranks after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol was masking an effort to target and blackball conservative and Christian service personnel for their political and religious opinions.

Rep. Jim Banks, the Indiana Republican who chairs the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee, said the Army under President Biden is using an overly broad ideological approach to police the speech of conservative service members, effectively forcing them to hide their beliefs for fear of retaliation from their superiors in the chain of command.

“At any time, the administration could weaponize this policy against any Army soldier with values different from the administration,” he said. “The First Amendment is broad for a reason. Once speech is limited — no matter how offensive or vulgar — individual freedoms are dangerously infringed upon. That is a real threat to our democracy.”

Despite a campaign initiated by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in early 2021 to target extremists in the ranks, a study commissioned by the Pentagon itself concluded early this year that there was no evidence that the military harbors a disproportionate number of radicals of any political persuasion. A team of researchers from the Institute for Defense Analyses found “fewer than 100 substantiated cases per year of extremist activity by members of the military in recent years.”

Since 2017, thousands of Army troops at Fort Liberty, North Carolina — formerly Fort Bragg — have sat through slideshows intended to highlight the threat posed by foreign and domestic terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State and the Ku Klux Klan. Included in the list of “threatening” organizations were legitimate advocacy groups such as the National Right to Life, the largest and oldest pro-life group in the country…