The Gillibrand bill in a new political environment

Jennifer Steinhauer writes in The New York Times:

After years of failure to curb the scourge of sexual assault in the military, Lloyd J. Austin III, the new secretary of defense, is open to considering significant revisions to how those crimes are prosecuted, a potential sea change that generations of commanders have resisted.

Overhauling the way the military handles sexual assault cases — by taking them outside the military chain of command and assigning them to military prosecutors with no connection to the accused — would need approval by Congress, where some legislators have long pushed for such a system.

President [Joseph R.] Biden has been a vocal proponent of these changes, even as general after general has gone to Capitol Hill to argue against them over the past decade. “I had a real run-in with one of the members of the Joint Chiefs in the cabinet room on the issue,” Mr. Biden said last year at a fund-raiser.