A congressional hearing on national security turned into a debate over “woke ideology” as Republican lawmakers criticized diversity programs funded during the Biden administration. During the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing titled “Advancing National Security Through Public Diplomacy,” Chairman Brian Mast of Florida questioned State Department official Sarah Rogers about several Biden-era grants.
Mast acknowledged that discussing the issue was embarrassing. Rogers described one example involving mapping projects. She told Mast, “So I think we were trying to make the maps more gay.” Mast asked, “Literally? How do you make a map more gay? Or gay at all?” Rogers replied, saying, “I don’t know.” Mast then listed grants supporting diversity programs overseas, including research on non-binary and transfranophone linguistic attitudes in Montreal and DEI initiatives in countries like India and Spain.
He demanded to know the individuals who were writing these grants, as he believes, “they have no business receiving another paycheck from the people of the United States of America.” The Florida congressman is an Afghanistan war veteran and ally of Donald Trump, who soon realized that Congress has “real things” to address, including the “imminent threat of Iran.”
