FORT LIBERTY, North Carolina (LifeSiteNews) –– U.S. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth rejects characterizing pro-life organizations such as the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) as “terrorist groups,” but revealed that a slide presentation suggesting exactly that has been used by military instructors for “at least” seven years, following a congressional inquiry into a recently-leaked terrorism presentation given to troops at Fort Liberty (the renamed Fort Bragg).

Earlier this month, independent journalist Sam Shoemate posted to X/Twitter a photograph of a slide he said was shown during an anti-terrorism briefing at Fort Bragg, right after one about the Islamist terror group ISIS.

The slide named NRLC and Operation Rescue (OR) as “terrorist groups,” characterized by their opposition to abortion and Roe v. Wade (misspelled “Row”). It listed various types of peaceful activism pro-life groups typically practice, as well as “Bombing of Clinics” and “Attempted Murders,” echoing common pro-abortion efforts to tar pro-lifers as a whole with the rare violent acts of a few, which mainstream pro-life activists and organizations have always overwhelmingly condemned. It also showed an example of “Choose Life” license plates, which are available in many states.

Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee, as well as a group of Republican lawmakers led by Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) wrote to Wormuth demanding answers about the story.

On Thursday, Budd published the Secretary’s reply. “I want to state unequivocally that non-profit groups such as National Right to Life and PETA are not terrorist groups and should not be described as such in Army documents or training materials,” she wrote. “I share your view that it is critical for the Army to remain politically neutral.”

She went on to reveal that her information “indicates that this set of slides (enclosed) has been used for at least the last seven years by the Directorate of Emergency Services at Fort Liberty to train Soldiers as they prepare to take on installation access control duties.” Wormuth added that they “do not represent the official policy or views of the U.S. Army and pre-date Army Directive 2024-07 (Handling Protest, Extremist, and Criminal Gang Activities.” She pledged that they “will no longer be used to train Soldiers at Fort Liberty.”

In response to our letter, the Army Secretary disclosed that the training slides labeling pro-life Americans as terrorists have been used for at least 7 years.

Totally outrageous and unacceptable.

The Army must fully renounce this attack on pro-life Americans and conduct a full… pic.twitter.com/XWnzOyJ07p

— Senator Ted Budd (@SenTedBuddNC) July 18, 2024

Budd called the revelation of how long the slides had been used “totally outrageous and unacceptable,” and demanded the Army not only “fully renounce this attack on pro-life Americans” but also “conduct a full investigation to ensure similar materials aren’t being used at other installations.”

The presentation is far from the first instance of military officials attempting to stigmatize right-of-center political views, or more generally turning its attention to the domestic political and cultural priorities of liberals at the expense of the Armed Forces’ historical mission of defending the nation.

The steady rise of “woke” ideology within the military, which has persisted and grown since the Clinton years despite the presidencies of Republicans George W. Bush and Donald Trump, has been intensified by current President Joe Biden, who upon taking office quickly moved to open the military to recruits suffering from gender dysphoria in a reversal of Trump administration policy, then had his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin launch a review of supposed “domestic extremism” within the military that many saw as a pretext to purge conservative views from the ranks.

In March 2023, the Center for Military Readiness (CMR) published an update on the administration’s work to infuse the armed forces with left-wing gender ideology, ranging from enforcement of preferred pronouns, to allowing cross-dressing and the use of opposite-sex showers and restrooms on military bases, to making it harder to access information on the negative consequences of such policies. Last November, the Pentagon requested an additional $114.7 million for diversity programs in the upcoming fiscal year, representing a total of $269.2 million in taxpayer dollars just on military diversity since Biden took office.

Until December 2022, Biden’s Pentagon leaders also enforced COVID-19 vaccine mandates on American service men and women, provoking lawsuits and threatening soldier and pilot shortages in the tens of thousands, which only added to broader problems of force strength, troop morale, and public confidence.

Such priorities have taken their toll. During a Pentagon press briefing in April 2022 on the Army’s budget for Fiscal Year 2023, Under Secretary of the Army Gabe Camarillo announced the Army had “proactively made a decision to temporarily reduce our end strength from 485,000 Soldiers to 476,000 in FY ’22, and 473,000 in FY ’23.” The Military Times reported at the time that this “could leave the service at its smallest size since 1940, when it had just over 269,000 troops.”

Gallup and Ronald Reagan Institute polls have both shown that the public has lost confidence in the military’s leaders, which presumably also has a significant effect on prospective soldiers’ willingness to sign up.