WASHINGTON – On Monday evening, a Senate Democrat blocked U.S. Senator Joni Ernst’s effort to build a new memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to honor the troops who served during the Global War on Terrorism. Ernst, a Republican from Iowa who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, commanded 150 troops during Operation Iraqi Freedom and is the first female combat veteran to serve in the U.S. Senate. She has worked across the aisle since 2017 to create a memorial to those who served in our nation’s longest war.
In 2017, through bipartisan legislation, Ernst helped create the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation, a private foundation, to begin the process of pursuing the construction of a memorial. Earlier this year, Ernst and U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., introduced the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Location Act, which proposed three locations for the memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Earlier this month, Ernst wrote a column highlighting the importance of creating a Global War on Terrorism Memorial on our National Mall, especially after the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan that’s left Americans and our allies stranded behind Taliban lines. This effort has the support of the six surviving secretaries of defense—spanning Democratic and Republican Administrations—who led the Defense Department during the past 20 years of the Global War on Terrorism.
Watch her remarks on the Senate floor in the embedded video above.
