An analysis of a trove of internal documents by The Daily Caller has revealed that the US Air Force has been excluding white male applicants from its popular Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program in favor of minorities.
Highlighting the Biden administration’s obsession with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), the prejudice reflects a broader push by Washington's liberal establishment to turn Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote about not judging people “by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” on its head.
Team Biden went to work on DEI and "equity" (not to be confused with "equality") guidelines for the military immediately after stepping into office, firing off three key executive orders in January 2021, including:
EO 13985: "Advancing Racial Equality and Support for Undeserving Communities Through the Federal Government" (including the military).
EO 13988: "Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender-Identity or Sexual Orientation."
EO 14004: "Enabling All Qualified Americans to Serve Their Country in Uniform" – aimed at easing transgender individuals' ability to serve.
Together with the June 2021 EO 14035 on "Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce," the trio of directives kicked off a fundamental transformation of the military, sparking a series of bizarre scandals and leading to an unprecedented drop in readiness and morale:
In 2021, the Air Force and Navy faced widespread derision after rolling out maternity flight suits, with Tucker Carlson calling the move a “mockery of the US military,” and highlighting the absurdity of having “pregnant women…fight[ing] our wars.”
In June 2023, facing an outcry from conservative lawmakers, the military banned drag shows on base, deeming them “inconsistent with regulations regarding the use of resources,” with DoD spokespeople scrambling to assure that “the Department does not fund drag shows or drag activities.”
In October 2023, the advocacy group which won a historic Supreme Court case against race-conscious admissions to US universities brought cases against West Point and the US Naval Academy on grounds of DEI-based bias. The Supreme Court binned the West Point case in February 2024, with the Naval Academy’s affirmative action trial kicking off this past week.
The staggering costs of Pentagon DEI initiatives has also garnered considerable attention and criticism, with spending jumping from $68 million in 2022, to $86.5 million in 2023, and $114.7 million in 2024. The funds provide for things like mandatory diversity training and the hiring of onsite "diversity officers" to ensure compliance with DEI regulations.
The Biden Pentagon has been hailed as the most diverse in history, with racial and sexual minorities receiving a host of top jobs, from a proud lesbian tapped to serve as Air Force under secretary, to a transgender assistant secretary of defense, to Lloyd Austin – the Pentagon’s first black chief.
But these DEI "milestones" have not exactly helped the military achieve its goals over the past four tumultuous years, with the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Navy’s impotence against the Houthis from January 2024 on showing that more diversity does not mean more won battles.
In fact, the DEI seems to have made things worse, with the military facing an unprecedented “crisis of recruitment, trust, and spending,” as a Newsweek piece recently put it, forcing some observers and lawmakers on Capitol Hill to consider returning the draft, or offering immigrants citizenship in exchange for service amid recruitment numbers dropping between 20-40%, public trust in the military plummeting from 73% in 2019 to 60% today, and morale and readiness described as being among the lowest since World War II.
DEI, combined with other Biden policies aimed at the military, including mandatory COVID shots, have been blamed for the crisis.