Sweeping Policy Changes Seek to Give the Military New Life

What’s happening: A wave of new executive orders from President Trump and recently minted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are sweeping in, aiming to reshape and improve the US military.

• Rolling back Biden: These latest actions target policies implemented during the Biden-Harris administration, focusing on eliminating what Hegseth calls “woke ideologies” that affect military cohesion, preparedness, and recruitment.

The new orders: Donald Trump signed into law a ban on transgender-identifying individuals from military service, a roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) provisions in the Pentagon, and a reinstatement of 8,000 troops dismissed for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine with full back pay and rank. Hegseth also insisted on pursuing an Iron Dome for America — a campaign promise of Trump.

• Catch up: Iron Dome is a defense system Israel uses to blast incoming rockets out of the sky with a roughly 90 percent success rate.

Hegseth’s agenda: “Our job is lethality and preparedness and warfighting,” announced Hegseth on the steps of the Defense Department. He also referred to “Fort Bragg” and “Fort Benning,” which were renamed in 2023 to Fort Liberty and Fort Moore, respectively, as part of a Biden-era initiative to remove Confederate names from American military installations.

• Deep State retaliation: Some within the federal bureaucracy, in this case, the Air Force, retaliated against Hegseth and his anti-DEI policies by attempting to ban teaching about the Tuskegee Airmen to undermine him — though Hegseth quickly reversed their actions.

Hard truths: Under President Biden, recruitment numbers hit their lowest levels since 1940, a trend Hegseth and Trump attribute to the “woke assault” on the armed forces and policies that made the military unappealing to young men.

Why it matters: These policies represent a fundamental shift in how the military operates, with a renewed emphasis on warfighting capability and national security. Trump’s and Hegseth’s reversal of Biden-Harris policies are intended to better deter threats from America’s adversaries — though only if the federal bureaucracy complies.

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From the left: The progressive magazine The Nation aggressively went after Hegseth, claiming that his goal is fire racial minorities and women “to deter any officer from calling for greater diversity in the officer corps.”

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