Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog
Protect Our Defenders (POD) has this to say about the recent vote on Sen. Gillibrand’s Military Justice Improvement Act.
Last week, 50 U.S. Senators stood with survivors and voted for Senator Gillibrand’s Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA).
For two years in a row, a majority of the Senate has told the Pentagon to fix the arbitrary and biased military justice system. Unfortunately, this common-sense legislation was blocked with a threat of a filibuster, as it was last year, requiring 60 votes to pass instead of a simple majority.
But one thing is clear: we are gaining ground in this struggle and it is because of people like you. Despite the Pentagon’s misinformation campaign, two Republican Senators who voted against MJIA last year switched their vote in support of survivors. We also won over three new Senators who were voting on MJIA for the first time. This was no small feat, and shows that momentum continues to be on the side of justice (emphasis added).
What they do not say is that they have lost votes, having gone from 55 to now 50.
What they do not say is that eight new senators voted against the MIJA.
There are many reasons why the vote totals have changed. A simple one is that quite a few supporters of the MJIA are no longer in Congress. So that doesn’t suggest Congress is uninterested in an important subject.