On Monday night, while aboard Air Force One, Donald Trump signed four executive orders designed to restore our military to its original greatness. All of this came just after Pete Hegseth was officially sworn in as the new secretary of defense over the weekend, proving that the Trump administration is serious about making our military as strong and competent as possible.
The first executive order reinstates members of the military who were discharged under the Joe Biden administration for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Not only will they be reinstated, but they will also receive their previous rank and be provided back pay and benefits. This will impact over 8,000 service members.
While the Biden administration's COVID-19 vaccine mandate was rescinded in 2023, only a handful of those discharged rejoined the military. It will be interesting to see how many more might do so under Trump.
According to the White House fact sheet, the president said that a mandate never should have happened and it caused us to lose "some of our best people in the military." He also said that the entire situation had a major negative impact on recruitment and led to "the Department of Defense missing its collective recruiting targets by around 41,000 recruits in FY2023.''
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The second executive order is aimed at ramping up national defense by building the Iron Dome, a "next-generation missile defense shield for the United States against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks." The White House fact sheet states that it will speed up development and secure the supply chain. It's also aimed at furthering the goals of "peace through strength" and modernizing the previously outdated system.
A third executive order is all about ensuring "military excellence and readiness." It gives the Department of Defense 30 days to "update its guidance regarding trans-identifying medical standards for military service and to rescind guidance inconsistent with military readiness."
While it doesn't directly ban trans-identifying people from serving in the military, it learns in that direction. It tells the Defense Department to update "medical standards to ensure they prioritize readiness and lethality" and "end the use of invented and identification-based pronouns." It also "prohibits males from using or sharing sleeping, changing, or bathing in facilities designated for females.
Finally, it "revokes Biden Administration Executive Order 14004 and all policies, directives, and guidance pursuant to that order." Biden's executive order was aimed at "accommodating 'gender identity' in the military — to the detriment of military readiness and unit cohesion."
The final executive order, which is titled "President Donald J. Trump Restores Merit and Lethality to America’s Armed Forces," is aimed at cutting DEI programs from the military or "eliminating race- and sex-based discrimination within the armed forces." It directs the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to abolish any trace of DEI from its operations.
The White House fact sheet states, "Prior to harmful changes introduced by the Obama and Biden administrations, the United States military offered equality of opportunity to every American capable of and interested in serving their country. Yet these two administrations exploited the military in favor of identity politics—harming our national defense, undermining the non-political nature of our military, and eroding morale and recruitment."
It's nice to have people in charge who realize that wokeness has no place in the military. And I don't know about you, but I feel safer already.
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