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A few of the nation’s legendary “nice males”—leaders like George Marshall and Clark Clifford—have served the nation as protection secretary. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped a Fox Information host for the job. Pete Hegseth is a veteran of wars in each Iraq and Afghanistan, however he stands out as being uniquely unqualified amongst his predecessors to supervise an company with almost 3 million workers. For those who perceive what Trump desires him to do, nonetheless, he’s most likely the right man for the job.
A number of former Trump administration officers, along with the conservative Heritage Basis, created a blueprint for a second Trump time period often called Challenge 2025. A lot of the brand new protection secretary’s doubtless agenda is spelled out in it. And whereas it makes a couple of nods to transparency, requires higher contracting procedures, and, in fact, large price range will increase, a lot of the doc is solely a roadmap for a tradition battle.
Christopher Miller, who served 72 days as appearing protection secretary in the course of the first Trump administration, is the writer of the Challenge 2025 part on the Protection Division. He begins by suggesting that the Pentagon has emphasised “leftist politics” over navy readiness. To fight this drawback, Miller lays out a bunch of priorities for a brand new Trump administration. Amongst these are ridding the lively navy of transgender folks and their well being care, together with ending abortion entry.
As Miller explains:
Exceptions for people who’re already predisposed to require medical therapy (for instance, HIV optimistic or affected by gender dysphoria) ought to be eliminated, and people with gender dysphoria ought to be expelled from navy service. Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the calls for of navy service, and using public monies for transgender surgical procedures or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers ought to be ended.
Miller appears to consider that the navy is filled with “Marxists” seeking to perform social justice experiments whereas indoctrinating the ranks. He urges the subsequent protection secretary to verify senior navy officers “perceive their main responsibility to be guaranteeing the readiness of the armed forces, not pursuing a social engineering agenda.” To that finish, he requires axing range and equality applications and rooting out Marxist professors within the navy academies—the place tenure ought to be abolished. As well as, the brand new administration ought to audit the curriculum and well being insurance policies of faculties on navy bases to allow them to be cleansed of “inappropriate” content material.
Every thing on this conservative want listing dovetails properly with Hegseth’s rhetoric on Fox Information. He has railed in opposition to “woke” insurance policies that he claims have harm navy recruitment and has decried the Pentagon’s “social justice” messages. “The Pentagon likes to say ‘our range is our energy.’ What a bunch of rubbish,” he stated on Fox. “Within the navy, our range will not be our energy, our unity is our energy.” On a podcast hosted by conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt, Hegseth as soon as stated, “There should not sufficient lesbians in San Francisco, Hugh, to man the 82nd Airborne. You’re going to want to go to guys in Kentucky and Colorado and Ohio, who love the nation.”
“There should not sufficient lesbians in San Francisco, Hugh, to man the 82nd Airborne. You’re going to want to go to guys in Kentucky and Colorado and Ohio, who love the nation.”
Hegseth’s televised assaults on “wokeism” within the navy helped kill a Pentagon initiative to crack down on intensive white supremacy and extremism throughout the armed forces. In 2021, Hegseth devoted a section on Fox Information’ Primetime to attacking a Black fight veteran named Bishop Garrison, whom Biden had tapped to supervise a brand new Countering Extremism Working Group. The working group was tasked with determining how you can determine folks like Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air Nationwide Guard member with a historical past of violent, racist habits who leaked a trove of labeled paperwork on Discord in 2021. This week, Teixeira was sentenced to fifteen years in jail.
However Hegseth reframed the anti-extremism effort as simply one other liberal try to impose woke insurance policies on the federal authorities. He described Garrison’s project as “a purge, a purge of the Protection Division led by a brand new, and now highly effective, radical leftist, a 1619 Challenge activist, a hardcore social justice Democrat, a person who believes all Trump supporters are racist and extremists.” Biden’s appointment of Garrison, he informed viewers, was “the equal of Ibram X. Kendi, the writer of Learn how to Be an Antiracist, answerable for vetting the complete US navy, previous, current, and future.” His assault finally generated sufficient political strain from Republicans that the working group disappeared in lower than a yr with out having had a lot of an affect.
Over the last Trump administration, there have been no fewer than six protection secretaries—seven for those who rely Mark Esper’s two separate stints within the job. (By comparability, there was only one in the course of the Biden administration, Lloyd Austin.) Solely two of Trump’s protection secretaries had been ever confirmed by the Senate. On condition that monitor report, the chances are excessive that Hegseth might be again at Fox Information quickly sufficient. However even a brief tenure may give him sufficient time to verify off some gadgets on Challenge 2025’s to-do listing.