By Elaine Donnelly
President, Center for Military Readiness
In a December 2024 CMR Policy Analysis titled How to End Wokeism in the Military, the Center for Military Readiness predicted:
“Dismantling the Pentagon’s DEI infrastructure won’t be easy, but there was a time when the Berlin Wall appeared impregnable too. Leadership and focused political pressure could cause the Diversity Industrial Complex to crack and fall sooner than anyone thinks.”
A blizzard of Executive Orders and Memoranda from the newly inaugurated Commander-in-Chief and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have targeted harmful policies and reinforced the best qualities of military culture: merit and non-discrimination, readiness, morale, cohesion, and lethality in war.
This CMR Policy Analysis provides excerpts from consequential Executive Orders that President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have issued as of February 14, 2025, and summarizes key directives:
CMR Policy Analysis: DEI Wall Crumbles Under Pressure from New Commander-in-Chief (pdf)
Taken together, these Executive Orders and mandates deliver on promises to directly address Wokism in the Military – defined as progressiveness taken to extremes and imposed with coercion, even if it hurts the institution.
Still, as this detailed CMR Special Report explained last December, Congress must act legislatively to make President Trump’s Executive Orders permanent.
The U.S. Constitution assigns to Congress the power and responsibility to make sound policies for our military, and commonsense personnel policies enjoy widespread public support.
This brief outline and excerpts are encouraging, but there is no time to rest:
I. MERITOCRACY “YES,” DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION (DEI) “NO”
A. Executive Order: Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, Jan. 20, 2025.
“Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect, and to expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great.”
B. Executive Order: Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions, Jan. 20, 2025.
“[I]t is the policy of the United States to restore common sense to the Federal Government and [to] unleash the potential of the American citizen.”
C. Executive Order: Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, Jan. 21, 2025.
This EO repeals eight previous orders, including President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 EO 11246. In its 2023 opinion in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard & University of N. Carolina, the U. S. Supreme Court noted how the 1965 Executive Order was stretched beyond its original, limited purpose. As a result, officials imposed the full range of arbitrary preferences and mandates favoring some demographic groups at the expense of others.
D. Executive Order: Restoring America’s Fighting Force, Jan. 27, 2025.
“As Chief Executive and as Commander in Chief, I am committed to meritocracy and to the elimination of race-based and sex-based discrimination within the Armed Forces of the United States. No individual or group within our Armed Forces should be preferred or disadvantaged on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, color, or creed.”
E. Memorandum of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth: “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” Jan. 29, 2025.
“The DoD will strive to provide merit-based, color-blind, equal opportunities to Service members but will not guarantee or strive for equal outcomes.”
II. GENDER IDENTITY, DYSPHORIA, AND COMMONSENSE DEFINITIONS
A. Executive Order: Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, Jan. 20, 2025
“‘Sex’ is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of ‘gender identity.’”
B. Transgenders in the Military
Executive Order: Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness, Jan. 27, 2025.
“Success in [the military’s] existential mission requires a singular focus on developing the requisite warrior ethos and military excellence, which cannot be diluted to accommodate political agendas or other ideologies harmful to unit cohesion.”
C. Memorandum – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Senior Pentagon Leadership, Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness, Feb. 7, 2025.
“The Department must ensure it is building ‘One Force’ without subgroups defined by anything other than ability or mission adherence.”
D. Executive Order: Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, Jan. 28, 2025.
“[M]edical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.”
III. AFFIRMING SOUND PRIORITIES, NOT CRITICAL RACE THEORY (CRT)
A. Executive Order, Jan. 29, 2025, Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling
“In many cases, innocent children are compelled to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics.
In other instances, young men and women are made to question whether they were born in the wrong body and whether to view their parents and their reality as enemies to be blamed.
These practices not only erode critical thinking, but also sow division, confusion, and distrust, which undermine the very foundations of personal identity and family unity.”
B. EO “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, Jan. 21, 2025, cited above also states:
“Success in [the military’s] existential mission requires a singular focus on developing the warrior ethos and military excellence, which cannot be diluted to accommodate political agendas or other ideologies harmful to unit cohesion.”
C. News Release, Guidance from the Secretary of Defense: Identity Months Dead at DoD, Jan. 31, 2025.
“We are proud of our warriors and their history, but we will focus on the character of their service instead of their immutable characteristics.”
D. Executive Order, Jan. 24, 2025, Enforcing the Hyde Amendment
“It is the policy of the United States, consistent with the Hyde Amendment, to end the forced use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion.”
E. Executive Order, Jan. 27, 2025, Reinstating Service Members Discharged Under the Military’s COVID-19 Vaccination Mandate
“The vaccine mandate was an unfair, overbroad, and completely unnecessary burden on our service members. Further, the military unjustly discharged those who refused the vaccine, regardless of the years of service given to our Nation, after failing to grant many of them an exemption that they should have received. Federal Government redress of any wrongful dismissals is overdue.”
IV. ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS OF INTEREST
- White House Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Protects Civil Rights and Merit-Based Opportunity by Ending Illegal DEI, Jan. 22, 2025
- White House Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Restores Merit and Lethality to America’s Armed Forces, Jan. 27, 2025
V. WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN NEXT
The Trump Administration has done an excellent job addressing issues of concern to CMR with Executive Orders and Memoranda, but the administration cannot act unilaterally to repeal statutory language.
The new 119th Congress should take advantage of what may be a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity to eliminate statutory barriers, and to write well-defined legislation that restores sound priorities and establishes durable, high standards that will withstand legal challenges in court.
Major topics should include meritocracy as the sole consideration in personnel decisions, clear definitions and allowances for situations requiring exceptions, prohibitions on the use of Defense Department funds for questionable policies that deny reality and common sense, and defunding of the Diversity Industrial Complex infrastructure, which has been promoting wokeism in our military regardless of the consequences.
As Defense Secretary Hegseth stated in his February 7 Memorandum:
“The strength of the DoD comes from our unity and our shared purpose. We will focus on lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards, and readiness.
Providing Servicemembers an equal opportunity to excel will help us remain the strongest and most lethal fighting force the world has ever known.”
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Prepared by the Center for Military Readiness, an independent public policy organization, founded in 1993, which reports on and analyzes military/social issues. This CMR Policy Analysis is not intended to promote or oppose legislation. More information is available at www.cmrlink.org, and tax-deductible contributions to CMR can be made by clicking here.
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